A five-game stretch does not make or break a coaching tenure.
That is why, despite West Virginia’s 4-1 start to the season, you will still see some people wondering if Neal Brown is the right coach for West Virginia. Even after last week’s road win at TCU, I saw people online saying, vehemently, that they do not think Brown should be the coach of the Mountaineers next season.
If there’s one thing I’ve realized from watching WVU this season it’s this; it does not matter what we think about Neal Brown. You and I can have all the opinions we want about Brown, his time in Morgantown and his future. But we won’t be playing a single snap this season, so what does it matter what we think?
Through five games, one thing has become abundantly clear with the WVU football program; the people who are actually taking snaps, making tackles and gaining yards are all-in on their head coach. If the players obviously believe in Brown, what does it matter if anyone in the fanbase does not?
“Our backs have been against the wall,” Brown said after the team’s win last week. “Nobody’s believed in us. I don’t want to hear anybody that’s on social media, ‘Oh yeah, I saw them being 4-1.’ Nope. The only people who really believed were us.”
Brown’s WVU tenure was on life support at the end of last season. Shane Lyons, the athletic director who hired Brown, was fired and cited the state of the football program as the reason why. Brown survived the transition to new AD Wren Baker — his $17 million buyout seemingly playing a big part in the decision — but it wasn’t smooth sailing from there.
Brown was 22-25 at WVU after the 2022 season and his tenure underwent heavy scrutiny in the media over the offseason to the point where the Mountaineers were, now famously, picked to finish 14th in the expanded Big 12. And it was a distant 14th as WVU was over 70 points behind No. 13 Cincinnati.
When Brown says nobody believed in them, he’s telling the truth.
For all the scrutiny and with his job seemingly on the line, Brown made no sweeping changes in the offseason. Outside of replacing a pair of offensive assistants, Brown’s staff remained in tact and WVU used the transfer portal to supplement its current roster rather than go for a full overhaul that several other teams opted for.
Those moves, viewed as overly conservative at the time, seemingly served to pull the team closer together and strengthen their belief in themselves,
“We have a really tough team that’s really close and has grown together,” Brown said.
It has all manifested this season in a WVU team that is playing harder than it has at any point in recent memory.
“We’re a team that strains,” is how Brown describes it. “We’ve got to continue to do it, but nobody plays harder than we do.”
And being picked 14th only further brought the team together and further motivated them.
“We’ve just got to keep playing,’ said defensive lineman Sean Martin. “Nobody believes in us, we were No. 14 for a reason.”
Some people say WVU still hasn’t made enough progress in Brown’s fifth season at the helm. Like I said at the outset of this column, a five-game stretch will not make or break a coaching tenure. The only thing Brown and the Mountaineers can do now is keep winning, no matter what any of us think.
