COMMENTARY
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — There is no doubt that West Virginia coach Neal Brown will do anything to protect his starting quarterback.
Even after Austin Kendall’s lowest of lows this season in a four interception game against Texas, Brown quickly defended his senior signal-caller, believing three of those four picks were not just his fault.
And through this past week, when Kendall was questionable after missing most of the Iowa State game with a pectoral injury, Brown tried to put out fires that Trey Lowe was on his way to be the savior of the Mountaineers’ season.
Kendall did play Saturday against his former school in Oklahoma, and yet again, the junior performed with mixed results. He finished 15 of 31 for 182 yards and two touchdowns, and he didn’t turn the ball over — that’s been an issue in Kendall’s brief West Virginia career.
Again, his head coach came out to his defense.
“I don’t think today was a good indictment on Austin — I don’t know if this season has been,” Brown said. “We have just not played well enough around him. Outside of two games, we haven’t been able to establish a running game around him. I think we had at least four drops in the first half and I don’t know how many we had in the second half. I thought he made good decisions, and outside of two plays, I thought he threw the ball well.”
Like Brown mentioned a week ago, the quarterback gets too much credit when a team wins and too much blame when they lose. Truth be told, West Virginia’s offense has much deeper issues that don’t include Austin Kendall.
For the third-straight week, the running game was non-existent. The Mountaineers had just 51 yards on 30 carries, a putrid 1.7 yards per carry. The Sooners had nine tackles for loss, and though Kendall wasn’t sacked, he was hit four times, so the offensive line struggles are apparent.
Brown mentioned the drops, a few of those would have been big gains and possibly touchdowns if hauled in by the wide receivers.
It was known going in that West Virginia’s defense would probably struggle against OU’s vaunted offense, but it was the offensive woes that continue to be more worrisome for the Mountaineers — and it’s way more to blame than Kendall.
“We’ve tried about everything (in the running game),” Brown said. “It was going to be a struggle. When we play against really good people, we’re playing young guys who aren’t quite physically mature. We get two or three yards per carry, but then we have a negative play or a procedure penalty, well then those three yards aren’t good enough. We’ve got to do better, I think we will do better finishing the year, but it’s not going to be a position of strength until our guys get older and we’re able to make some personnel changes.”
Kennedy McKoy, who was relegated to backup behind Leddie Brown on Saturday, came into the season averaging 5.5 yards per carry in his career. So far through seven games this season, he’s averaging 3 per carry, including 0.25 against the Sooners — four carries for one yard.
McKoy’s season is proof that something is off with the running back, and it’s likely along the offensive line. With the running game underperforming, it hurts the pass game, and when the passing game suffers, Kendall gets most of the blame.
But the coaching staff is sure this is simply growing pains, and at some point, it’ll all come together.
“As a staff, we’ve been here before,” offensive coordinator Matt Moore said. “That’s good when you’ve got guys around you that know where you’re going and know where you are. Sometimes, when you haven’t been here before, you don’t always believe in what we’re doing or how we’re doing it. We have to make sure these kids think the same way.”
