MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — The WVU football team finally reached yet another plateau on head coach Neal Brown’s climb after last week’s 24-21 win over Army in the Liberty Bowl.
It was exactly two years ago — Jan. 6, 2019 — a chartered plane carrying Brown and WVU athletic director Shane Lyons landed at Morgantown Municipal Airport, beginning Brown’s tenure as the 35th head football coach for the Mountaineers.
Right out of the gate, “Trust the Climb” was the mantra of the program and it had meaning from the start. Brown wanted to put his footprint on it, taking over for Dana Holgorsen, who had a different way of handling things during his eight seasons at WVU.
Another reason, under similar circumstances, most knew the 2019 version of the WVU football team was not going to compete for a Big 12 title. There were pieces, but Holgorsen didn’t leave much behind when he bolted for Houston.
A couple road wins at Kansas State and TCU helped ease the pain, but the 2019 season ended without a bowl bid at 5-7, the first time since 2013 the Mountaineers did not play in the postseason.
Heading into Year 2, the COVID-19 pandemic changed the offseason completely, not just for WVU, but the entire country. Unsure of whether a season would even be played, the Mountaineers did what they had to do to get on the field and played nine games before the virus took its toll, forcing a cancellation of the regular-season finale against Oklahoma.
However, WVU received a bowl bid at 5-4 and finished with a win to end the year at 6-4 — the first bowl win since the 2015 campaign was capped off with a Cactus Bowl victory.
So here we are, two years into Brown’s climb at West Virginia, and where do we stand?
It’s easy to look at 6-4 and not be all that impressed, considering WVU has had five 10-win seasons the last 16 seasons, but that’s a small-minded way to look at where the Mountaineers are as a program.
WVU won more games in 2020 than 2019 despite playing two fewer games, which is why the Liberty Bowl was so important. Not only did the team finish with a winning record, but it erased the sour taste of the 42-6 loss to Iowa State.
“Going into this game, we had played football and were great representatives of how the game should be played for eight games,” Brown said. “We didn’t win them all, but we had a chance to win every single one of them. Our ninth game (against Iowa State) was ugly. It wasn’t who we were. For us to bounce back and have a come-from-behind victory here in the fourth quarter, win our second bowl game since joining the Big 12 … I thought it was huge.”
The goal for Brown from the end of the 2019 season to the Eastern Kentucky game in mid-September was to be one of the most improved teams in the country. Comparing records (5-7 to 6-4) is one thing, but the numbers back up Brown’s claim that the goal was reached.
Many fans hate stats and analytics, but let’s take a quick dive into a few major categories:
- Scoring offense: 2019, 20.6 points per game (116th nationally); 2020, 26.5 (86th)
- Rushing offense: 2019, 74.3 yards per game (128th); 2020, 135.1 (92nd)
- Passing offense: 2019, 248.7 yards per game (54th); 2020, 248.7 (28th)
- Total offense: 2019, 321.9 yards per game (119th); 2020, 412.6 (50th)
- Scoring defense: 2019, 28.8 points per game (73rd); 2020, 20.5 (21st)
- Rush defense: 2019, 159.42 yards per game (69th); 2020, 131.8 (28th)
- Pass defense: 2019, 239.9 yards per game (88th); 2020, 159.6 (1st)
- Total defense: 2019, 399.3 yards per game (74th); 2020, 291.4 (4th)
- Turnover margin: 2019, -0.50 (103rd); 2020, 0.20 (51st)
- Time of possession: 2019, 28:21.92 (101st); 2020, 31:59.90 (24th)
There were significant leaps forward in all of the above, while a few could certainly be improved on. Stats tell a deeper story than just wins and losses, and when rebuilding a program, they need to be visited.
This isn’t to say everything is peachy. In 2019, WVU was penalized 48.9 yards per game (46th nationally), and in 2020, it plummeted down to 74.1 yards per game (116th nationally). The undisciplined flags seemed to cause problems all year.
Now, the next step in the climb is to make sure it keeps going up. The 2021 Mountaineers look primed to compete with many returning starters on both sides of the ball.
But “compete” has many different meanings, and for Brown, it needs to mean entering November and heading into Thanksgiving with a shot at the Big 12 Championship game. The top of the conference will be loaded next year with Oklahoma and Iowa State both returning key pieces, and Texas will always make noise and could be motivated with new head coach Steve Sarkisian.
The next step for Brown is to win more than six games in 2021, and while WVU doesn’t have to play in the Big 12 title game in Year 3, it needs to be in the conversation late.
So looking back at the last two seasons, there is no reason to believe the Mountaineers are heading in the wrong direction, but expectations will begin to ramp up considerably.
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