MORGANTOWN — Spring is a season of renewal. It was fitting then that on the first day of spring in 2023, WVU football coach Neal Brown talked about starting a new begining for the Mountaineer program.
“Our staff and our players are energized by the start of spring,” Brown said Monday, the day before WVU begins its 15 spring practices. “Talking about objective, what we want to get out of it, I think the first thing is establishing an identity. We’ve treated January as a new beginning. Even though we’re going into year five here, we’ve kind of gone back to the basics.”
A new beginning would be perfect for Brown as he enters his fifth year in Morgantown. His 22-25 overall record with the Mountaineers and 5-7 finish in 2022 do not show that there has been very much progress made since he took over in 2019.
“This is our first opportunity to get it fixed,” Brown said, borrowing a sentiment from men’s basketball coach Bob Huggins. “We’re not trying to hide from last year not being good enough.
“We didn’t get the results that we wanted. We did not play well enough last year. That’s not something we’ve been hiding from, we’ve confronted that. When things don’t go the way you want them to go, you don’t have the results, I think you reset. That’s kind of where we’re at.”
Resetting the program, according to Brown, means creating a new team identity based on fundamentals and the team’s scheme. It also means putting a greater emphasis on what he calls the three E’s.
“First is efficiency,” Brown began. “We’ve got to get better at first down, third down and red zone efficiency. Then it’s explosives. Last year, we gave up way too many explosive plays and we’ve got to figure out a way, offensively, to utilize our ability to run the ball to create explosives down the field. The third E is eliminate errors. Offensively, that’s procedure penalties, that’s turnovers, TFLs, sacks. Defensively, that’s alignment issues, communication and missed tackles.”
As far as a team identity for 2023, Brown said Monday was still too early to tell with any degree of certainty, but the team’s focus on both offense and defense will revolve around the ground game.
“I think what we have to do is, we’ve got to continue to run the ball and even improve on what we’ve done,” Brown said. “Then we’ve got to go back from a schematic standpoint and the personnel we’re using on defense and focus on stopping the run, we have to do that. So much is talked about last year us giving up pass yardage and explosive plays. That’s accurate, but what hurt us was giving up run yardage, especially on first downs.”
The Mountaineers will begin their path to renewal with their first of 15 spring practices Tuesday morning.
Injuries
A few players will be limited in what they can do this spring and a few will be held out entirely. Center Zach Frazier, receiver Graeson Malashevich, running back CJ Donaldson and defensive lineman Jalen Thornton will be limited at the start of spring. Brown said Frazier will most likely be held out of full 11-on-11 drills, but is healthy enough that he would game-ready. Malashevich is only expected to miss the first week and Donaldson is still recovering from the procedure to address his season-ending knee injury from last year.
Safety-turned-wide-receiver Davis Mallinger and defensive linemen Zeigui Lawton and Asani Redwood will all be out for the spring. Mallinger, who Brown said they are moving to receiver to better utilize his speed, and Lawton are recovering from injuries they sustained last season and are expected to be ready after the team’s May break. Redwood was injured during winter workouts and could be out longer.
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