MORGANTOWN — At second glance, Neal Brown may not exactly be wandering around with the walking wounded as much as originally thought.
It appeared the opposite was true Saturday, as the West Virginia football team turned an 11-point deficit with 5:39 remaining into a 32-28 victory against Kansas.
Along the way, key players were falling left and right, be it from a collision of two players in punt coverage or the case of defensive back Aubrey Burks, who was helped off the field in a stretcher while WVU’s defense wasn’t even on the field.
Burks was evaluated at Ruby Memorial Hospital for an upper-body injury, but returned to the sidelines in time to watch Rodney Gallagher’s touchdown reception to win the game with 26 seconds remaining.
“It was an injury he took during a play that didn’t really affect him until he was on the bench,” Brown said Monday. “That’s kind of when the incident occurred.”
The good news Brown passed out during his weekly press conference is the wait may not be long to get most of those players back.
WVU (2-2, 1-0 Big 12) certainly has time to spare with its bye week before getting ready to travel to No. 20 Oklahoma State on Oct. 5.
“Hopeful we’ll have everybody back,” Brown said. “A couple of the upper-body injuries, you have to wait and see how the first few days go. Other than some of the (players with head injuries), I feel confident everyone else will be back.”
That could include Burks, who has 13 tackles through the first four games.
“We’re hopeful,” Brown said of Burks. “Those situations take upwards of five days to get a good picture of where he’s at. I would say hopeful right now. We’ll see how he does.”
Fast and slow
WVU’s two fourth-quarter possessions that led to 15 points and the comeback win came with the Mountaineers in a two-minute mode, meaning a hurry-up offense looking to pick up yards in chunks rather than a methodical drive.
The two drives covered 142 yards in 16 combined plays.
The time? The four minutes, eight seconds covered by those two drives would have been missed by most who had made a trip to the concession stand or restroom at the wrong time.
So the question is asked: Why not be in hurry-up mode from the beginning of the game?
“If you do that all the time, you make it really hard on your defense, first of all,” Brown said. “The second thing is, if you’re going to do that all the time, then (the opponent) is going to be working on that all the time.”
As Brown went deeper into the explanation, it came with what his expectations were on what opposing coaches spend the bulk of their preparation time in getting ready to defend the Mountaineers.
First up was defending WVU’s running game, whether it’s from running backs C.J. Donaldson and Jahiem White or quarterback Garrett Greene.
“That’s the first thing they’re thinking about and then how do you stop (the deep passes),” Brown said. “They probably don’t get to the two-minute stuff into later in the week, but at the very start they’re going to go, ‘All right, how are we going to limit the run game and how are we going to play all the quarterback stuff?’ ”
By showing more hurry-up offense, Brown would basically be telling opposing coaches they need to spend more time drawing up ways to defend it.
“If you do that all the time, there’s some cat-and-mouse stuff you can do that makes it really hard,” Brown said. “And you’re also putting your offensive line in a really tough spot.”
Going one-on-one
Brown had high complements for the WVU receivers, especially with how they handled man-to-man coverage by Kansas defensive backs.
“We won a bunch,” Brown said. “Traylon Ray really got grabbed, I thought egregiously, on the interception. That one sticks out to you as far as not winning, but it’s hard when you got the back of your collar (pulled).”
WVU averaged 19.7 yards per completion against the Jayhawks, who came into the game playing a lot of man-to-man, because they have two of the better cornerbacks in the Big 12 in Mello Dotson and Cobee Bryant.
“We won a bunch,” Brown said. “That’s the best we’ve done against man coverage all year.”
