MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — West Virginia head coach Neal Brown spoke during the Big 12 coaches teleconference Monday morning, heading into WVU’s second bye week of the season:
- Opening statement on wrapping up the Baylor win: “Good win on Saturday, really tough, hard-fought, physical football game. It was a Baylor coach that is really well coached and is a group that plays extremely hard. Fortunate to win. We played at a really high level and thought we really flew around. I thought our defensive line was dominant at times with several tackles for a loss, sacks, hits on the quarterback. We tackled well, forced some takeaways and were really good in the red zone.
“Special teams were OK but not great. Offensively, it was a struggle. We ran the ball well but our pass game was not very good. We’ve got to play better with turnovers and just getting in our own way.”
- On this difference between this bye week and the first three weeks ago: “We gave everyone off — staff and players — until about noon [Monday]. It’ll be a more traditional bye week with less good-on-good work. We treated the first one as an extension of fall camp. This will not be that way. We’ve got some guys who just played long snaps, and while we haven’t been good offensively, we played a lot of plays. Defensively, we don’t have a whole lot of depth.
“We definitely have some things we want to work on and at some point, it will be physical, but we’ll work on some short-sighted stuff early on.”
- On working through COVID-19: “We’re fine, we’ve tried to mitigate as much as we possibly can. We had a positive test result (left guard James Gmiter) on Friday, so since Saturday, we’ve tried to stay apart. We tested Sunday, so we’ll continue to do that.
“At the facility, we’ve done a good job of mitigating, mask wearing, all that kind of stuff — social distancing, cleaning services. We’re using our indoor facility a lot for meals and team meetings by spreading them out.”
Stills receives Big 12 honor
The Big 12 announced WVU senior defensive lineman Darius Stills was named the league’s co-defensive player of the week for his four tackles, including three solo stops, 2 1/2 sacks and 3 1/2 tackles for loss performance in WVU’s 27-21 double-overtime victory over Baylor last Saturday.
Over the past two years against Baylor, Stills has recorded 14 tackles, including 10 unassisted, 5 1/2 sacks and 6 1/2 tackles for loss.
For the 2020 season, Stills has seven tackles, including six solo stops, 2 1/2 sacks and 4 1/2 tackles for loss. He is ranked No. 21 nationally in tackles for loss and No. 45 in sacks.
Stills shared the award with TCU’s La’Kendrick Van Zandt, who led TCU with a career-high seven tackles, an interception and one tackle for loss in the Horned Frogs’ upset road win at Texas
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