MORGANTOWN — Let’s be clear, WVU’s offense did not have a good day on Saturday.
By points and yards, the Mountaineers’ showing against Penn State was worse than just about anything they did last season. 12 points is lower than any game from 2023 and 246 total yards only tops the 211 yards WVU mustered against Pitt last September.
The Mountaineers did score 17 points in that game against the Panthers, in which backup quarterback Nicco Marchiol played the majority of snaps, and, most importantly, they won that night. The same can’t be said for the 34-12 loss to PSU over the weekend.
Most disappointing from Saturday was that West Virginia only rushed for 85 yards, averaging just 2.3 yards per carry. The Mountaineers ran for at least 146 yards in all 13 games last season.
For as bad as the numbers look, WVU head coach Neal Brown said Monday that the Mountaineers’ offense wasn’t quite as bleak as the box score makes it look.
“If you just watch it, we didn’t do as poor a job of running the football as the numbers show,” Brown said. “Now, they are what they are, I’m not trying to convince you that the numbers are lying.”
Brown pointed out that two fumbles — one snap that hit a motioning receiver and another that hit quarterback Garrett Greene in the shoulder — counted for negative 30 yards against the Mountaineers’ rushing total. Two sacks of Greene in the second half counted for another negative 15 rushing yards. Sacks only count against rushing yards in college.
Without those four plays, WVU’s rushing numbers are 130 yards with a 3.9 average. Not up to last season’s standard, but much more respectable.
“We had one negative outside run where Jahiem (White) went backward and we lost six yards,” Brown said. “That was really the only significant negative run we had that wasn’t self-induced.
“Our play up front wasn’t as poor as the numbers show.”
Throwing the ball, Greene completed 15-28 passes for 161 yards. Those numbers, too, could have been improved upon had receivers made a handful of more plays, according to Brown.
Four passing plays — to Traylon Ray on the first play of the game, one Kole Taylor couldn’t hold onto and balls Preston Fox and Jaden Bray got their hands on — would all have been big hitters for the Mountaineers.
“Those are all minimum 15-plus yard gains,” Brown said. “There were plays there, we didn’t make them.”
Had those four catchable passes been pulled in, Greene’s numbers jump to 19-28 for 249 yards.
Had those six plays — the two fumbles and four dropped passes — gone in the Mountaineers’ favor, their total yardage would have been 364. Again, not on par with last season but much, much better.
“We’ve put a lot of time and effort into that and we’re not going to bail out just because we didn’t play well in the first game,” Brown said. “With that being said, there wasn’t the improvement we were expecting to see.”
WVU will have a good opportunity to clean up their mistakes against FCS opponent Albany this Saturday (6 p.m., ESPN+) before traveling to face rival Pitt in the Backyard Brawl on Sept. 14.
