MORGANTOWN – The West Virginia University football team’s season-long quest to find answers for its pass defense woes went fruitless again this past Saturday.
In a 49-35 home loss to Baylor, the Mountaineers allowed quarterback Sawyer Robertson to throw for a career-high 329 yards – the fourth 300-yard passing game WVU has allowed this season – along with three touchdowns and no interceptions. The problems WVU has been trying to correct in its pass defense all season remained a problem.
Communication issues led to mix-ups. The defense allowed too many big plays. It struggled to get off the field on third and fourth down.
For the sake of the remainder of the season, the search for answers must continue. WVU will host UCF at 3:30 p.m. Saturday in its home finale (ESPNU). The Knights (4-6, 2-5 Big 12) own the seventh-most prolific offense in the Football Bowl Subdivision in yards gained and average 33 points per contest. The Mountaineers (5-5, 4-3 Big 12) need one win in their last two games to qualify for their fourth bowl game in five seasons.
“I’d be wasting air if I got up here and tried to say it wasn’t a deficiency,” head coach Neal Brown said. “It’s been a deficiency all year.”
The Mountaineers find themselves at the bottom of the FBS statistically in several pass defense categories:
– 128th in yards allowed (269.6 per game)
– tied for 123rd in passing touchdowns allowed (21)
– tied for 117th in interceptions (four)
– 108th in opponent’s completion percentage (64%)
– 129th in opponent’s passer rating (160.86)
Those defensive doldrums have contributed mightily to WVU’s inability to stop big plays and get the ball back to the offense. Of the 26 plays of 30 yards or longer the Mountaineers have allowed this season (112th in the FBS), 21 of them have been passing plays (124th in the FBS). WVU is 127th nationally in opponents’ third-down conversions (47.58%) and tied for 115th in opponents’ fourth-down conversions (66.67%)
What frustrates Brown – and what he’s sure frustrates players and fans – is that there have been spurts where the pass defense has played well. It held Kansas and Oklahoma State to under 200 yards passing in back to back games and recorded three of their four interceptions in those two games.
Yet too often, Brown said, signals get crossed and defenders are found out of place. And it only takes one.
“Let’s say, you know, you’ve got one of these box puzzles,” he said. “You put all the pieces together, and you’re missing two. Well, it doesn’t look exactly right, and it may be a critical piece. When you’re playing defense, if you don’t have 11 pieces doing their job, and that offense finds the one piece that does it, then it’s an explosive play. And that’s happened too many times for us this year.”
Defensive coordinator Jeff Koonz – promoted to the job when former coordinator Jordan Lesley was dismissed October 29 – echoed Brown’s call for WVU’s defenders to work in concert with each other. The Mountaineers’ bad pass defense isn’t solely the fault of the secondary, he said. He mentioned that, against Baylor, the Bears often found themselves in third down and short. That, Koonz said, limits the coverage options for the secondary.
“Our third down percentage wasn’t near good enough, but almost half of those were all by one or two yards,” he said. “And when you’re living in third and 1 or 2, it’s really hard to sit there and bring the farm on third and 1 when they’re backed up on their own 35 yard line, and if one gap gets through, which is what happened on the very last touchdown, one piece is out, it’s going to be a touchdown.
“We’ve got to do a good job of understanding the why behind the coverages that are called, whether it’s man or zone, and all the pieces have to work together,” he added. “Not every single one of those (problems) was a corner or was a safety. There’s underneath parts of this, too, that all tie in, and it’s very important that they understand that moving forward.”
On top of fixing things schematically, WVU has to look at fixing things emotionally and psychologically as well. The defense has been working the entire season to improve its performance against the pass, but nothing so far has worked. Coaches and players don’t want frustration to turn into depression.
Defensive lineman T.J. Jackson said that, when things go awry, he’ll try to get players’ minds off of it with a moment of levity. He might point out a tackle he missed a few plays before. Mentioning something like that, he said, helps other defenders feel like they’re not alone.
“When I was an underclassman (at Troy), I looked up to this guy Will Choloh,” Jackson said. “He would try to do the same thing and I was like, ‘Dang, if Will Choloh messed up, me being messed up shouldn’t mess with my confidence.’ I try to learn from what he taught me.”
In the end, Koonz said, the key to improving WVU’s pass defense will be every defender coming together to find the solution during the practice week, just as they all need to come together during the games.
“There’s no magic answer,” Koonz said. “There’s no magic potion. At the end of the day, it’s about going to work and understanding that I got to do my part better as a coach. They got to do their part better as a player, because we’re all in this thing together. And collectively, building that camaraderie and building that ownership as a whole is, hopefully, what gives them hope.”
-by Derek Redd
