Talking to reporters at Big 12 football media days on Thursday, WVU head coach Neal Brown announced that he would retake play-calling duties for the 2023 season.
“The decision goes back to, we’re in a year where we need to have success,” Brown told ESPN’s Heather Dinich. “That’s not something I try to hide from. … Really, in a pivotal year, you fall back to your strengths. Last year didn’t go the way we wanted to. We underachieved, especially on the offensive side of the ball.”
Based on the negative reactions I saw from WVU fans online, you’d think Brown announced that I’d be calling plays.
Brown isn’t overly popular among the WVU fanbase right now — for good reason as we are still waiting for a breakthrough season five years into his tenure — but that does not change the fact that Brown calling plays is the best chance the Mountaineers have for success in 2023.
Among WVU’s offensive staff, Brown is the only member with any substantial play-calling experience. First-year offensive coordinator Chad Scott experimented with calling plays this spring and quarterbacks coach Sean Reagan has some experience, but in terms of calling plays for a full season, Brown is it. And in what Brown admits is a pivotal season for him at WVU, why would he trust somebody who is unproven with play-calling duties?
That’s not to say Brown is stuck with play-calling out of desperation, the reason Brown is a head coach at all is because of his ability to coach offense.
“One of the things that’s been really clear to me is, you’ve got to focus on your strengths,” Brown told The Dominion Post last month. “To me it’s, where are your strengths and where are the most-important things. One of my strengths is offensive football and so I made a decision to spend a lot of time.”
Brown was his team’s primary play-caller from 2008 as an offensive coordinator at Troy all the way up through 2021 at West Virginia. In those 14 seasons, Brown’s teams averaged more than 30 points per game eight times and more than 25 points 12 times. The two seasons where Brown’s teams failed to reach 25 points per game were in 2013 as Kentucky’s offensive coordinator and in 2019 as WVU’s head coach; both instances were his first season in that role.
In relation to the rest of the country, Brown-led offenses have finished top-50 in scoring seven times and Troy finished 51st in 2018. He’s cracked the top-25 of scoring offenses five times.
“I know we need to win,” Brown said last month. “I know what high-quality offenses look like, I’ve been a part of them as a coordinator and as a head coach.”
Last season was the first time Brown didn’t call plays full-time when he ceded those responsibilities to then-offensive coordinator Graham Harrell to start the year.
“I didn’t really get involved until the end of the year when I felt that we needed to change quarterbacks,” Brown said. “I was not involved hardly at all and then I got involved at the end of the year because I thought we needed to see what we have.”
WVU’s season averages from last season look good — the team averaged 30.6 points and 399 yards per game, but the Mountaineers fell into a mid-season lull, scoring just 10 points against Texas Tech and 14 at Iowa State.
That’s when Brown took more control, made the quarterback switch and WVU won two of its final three games to finish at 5-7.
Even before Brown announced on Thursday that he would be calling plays, he was committed to being more involved in the offense in 2023.
“I’m going to be deeply invested,” he said in June. “I’m going to be involved and I think that’s the best thing for this team right now.”
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