WVU vs. USF Grades: A Unit-By-Unit Look At The Mountaineers Victory Over The Bulls

But most of the other SBNation fan blogs try to give you something extra beyond what you’d find on just a random message board. Otherwise, what’s the point? Not asking for Mike Mayock or something but I just found this particularly useless. As you say, SBNation is all about fan blogs so that’s just my opinion and others can disagree.

In terms of grades I think I give a lot of Bs, B minuses and Cs. To be specific the issues with the offensive line are well documented: not only has WVU done a poor job recruiting those guys the past few years, plus the injury to Josh Jenkins in preseason, but the offensive line was recruited to run block like Trickett wanted which required slim guys who could make reach blocks on outside zones. They didn’t really work for Mullen and they aren’t a good fit for Holgorsen because they want big bodied guys who can pass protect and block screens. That’s why he went to Feigt and Spain against Pitt; they have bodies they need. Dana has tried to adapt by running the ball more. And despite not having Noel Devine and starting a slow but trusty Shawne Alston and a two-star freshman because he’s the only guy you have with vision, the running attack averages basically the same yards per carry and has more rushing touchdowns, and that includes if you just limit the stats to conference only over the last two years (eliminates the Bowling Green this year but also the weak early season rushing performances).

There are also a lot of NFL guys on the defensive line this season in the Big East. Even UConn, who sucks, has a legit first round defensive tackle, and Pitt, Cincy, and USF have NFL guys up front. Not an excuse but it is what it is.

This has altered playcalling a lot for Dana. Again, I’m not saying that it’s good or bad, or that he shouldn’t be able to adapt, but it just is a fact. (I also remember a guy by the name of Rodriguez who believed in running his system even through struggles and recruiting players to fit it.) The big thing is that Holgorsen’s offense is built around dropback passing and that has had to go out the window because they can’t protect it. It’s one thing to say “call different plays” but you have to remember you fit your practice schedules to your offense, and right now West Virginia practices in the same way that Oklahoma State and others do in terms of going from one period to the next and where they focus. Dana has been working on adjusting this but it’s a work in progress.

In terms of receivers, I give this group a C or C+ for the season. One of the key tenets of Holgorsen’s offense is he wants to spread the ball around. Before the season Shannon Dawson talked about how “the ball finds the playmakers” but that they wanted the distribution of the ball to be “fairly even.” Bailey has obviously exceeded expectations and is a wonderful, dynamic player. He’s not as physically gifted as say Justin Blackmon or Michael Crabtree, two other receivers Holgorsen coached, but he’s dedicated and consistent. The problem is that the other guys are not consistent at all. Both Pitt and USF put a guy over Stedman to jam him at the line and rolled a safety to play over the top, often over the top of him alone (rather than the half-field generally). Even on the big fourth down catch he had, they were rotating two guys to his side and he bent his route outside and came inside — just an amazing play.

The problem is that the other receivers have generally been disappointing. The “Y” position guys, Urban and Brown, aren’t world beaters but I expected them to be more consistent. You can say they don’t “call enough plays” for those guys but that’s false as they are an option on every pass play — that’s how the O is built. They just haven’t done a great job getting open, and in the last two weeks each of Urban and Brown had a really killer fumble that nearly cost WVU the game. I suppose that’s coaching but it’s also an issue.

The “Z” receiver position has also been extremely frustrating. McCartney showed flashes early as he’s obviously a pretty raw kid but has great size and ball skills to catch it at the high point, but either for physical reasons (he’s been jammed at the line every week) or injury (he got dinged up at Syracuse and I have no idea how serious that’s been) he hasn’t been the same player since. Against Pitt he was matched up one on one and just got abused by Pitt DBs. The coaches put JD Woods out there for most of the game against USF and he seemed to do a little better but couldn’t get free down field one-on-one and McCartney saw some time late as well. The upshot is that for the offense to go they need other guys to step up besides Bailey to take away the pressure and provide more diversity. This is coaching but it’s also just guys rising to the occasion the way Bailey did.

The X factor of course is Tavon, who is a remarkable player and is a big reason why we’ve won the last three weeks, though he also potentially cost us the game against Pitt with the punt he should have fielded that hit Banks and the punt he muffed. I hope he comes back next season as he still has a long way to go develop as a receiver in route running (most of his best plays are still screens, reverses and that flip forward jet sweep), but if you watch him closely he still misses blocks when asked to block for teammates and doesn’t always run his routes full speed.

After the game against USF he took the blame for the screen pass interception. He was supposed to block the guy who intercepted it and he went to block someone else. As I said he’s still the most dynamic guy on O but he has a long way to go.

I won’t get into runningback except that it’s not a perfect situation though it should be better next year. Buie is disappointing, Garrison is a great story because he’s so little and playing with great vision but obviously doesn’t have great breakaway speed or strength, and Alston gets you tough yards but takes a lot of losses on plays because he doesn’t have much burst and has only okay vision. They’re all getting better.

I’ll try to be less wordy on defense but those guys have obviously improved. A big change for them is that after the Louisville game they started rotating in more players, which was something Dana talked about as Casteel was basically just going with the starters and those guys would wear down, especially with the tempo on offense. Dana slowed down the tempo but they rotated in more guys, as now Jenkins is starting at CB, Banks sees action, we have multiple linebackers rotating in and out and guys like Will Clarke and Shaq Rowell have been doing work on the D line. I think that has helped a lot.

The biggest problem for the defense has been the mediocre nose guard and middle linebacker play. You can say it’s a 3-3-5 thing but it’s also the case with 3-4 teams and some pretty good coaches use that. Worked better last season with Nield, but it is what it is. Casteel has long said in the 3-3-5 your nose guard needs to be your best player and that hasn’t been the case. Couple it with mediocre linebacker play and you have issues. We’ve gotten killed on play action and wheel routes this year because we struggle against inside runs so guys overcommit.

I won’t say much about special teams except that I am convinced there’s no magic recipe for having great special teams and ST are a big reason why WVU won against USF.

Finally, how did Dana do as an HC this year? I said previously in a comment that I give him an okay grade as an OC because that was the job he was hired to do, he put together the system and got guys bought in, and the offense has dramatically improved, even if the last couple of weeks weren’t exactly high scoring. They got the scores when they needed them and the knock earlier in the year was that Dana’s offense got yards but no wins. Now it’s getting wins and still leads the conference in yards (including yards just versus conference opponents) and it’s suddenly terrible or the same as Bill Stewart. That’s silly.

Dana as head coach is trickier. He’s hardly Vince Lombardi just yet, having to learn on the fly. I think he’s gotten better, as his teams have found ways to win. You never know if that’s just luck or there’s something to it, but for now at 9-3 with the hand they were dealt I think he did an okay job, considering he and the Ohio State coach must have the shortest head coaching tenures of anyone other than guys hired now — June or July to now is not a long time. This isn’t an excuse, but more that he knows he’s got to get better and I think he’s doing it. I didn’t see a lot of clock management issues this year or other really weird things. There were questionable decisions, including the choice to kick the field goal against Louisville, but if he erred it was usually on the side of the “conventional” wisdom rather than just going crazy video game out there with it.

So I think Dana is a lot like this team: Surprisingly, maybe shockingly, they are much better than average, but they are young, inexperienced, prone to mistakes, but with massive upside. I get the frustration as sometimes the offense looks like a machine and then you wonder how they can go punt, turnover, punt, punt, halftime? But nobody is perfect, these are kids, and I think the program is going the right direction. Dana needs to better embrace West Virginia, the state, the program, and his role as head coach, but I’m a lot happier having a guy who knows at least a few things well than the previous guy who I wasn’t sure knew much of anything at all. But that’s my view. As you said, it’s a fan site, and what’s football if we’re not entitled to our opinions?

(And yes, this is exactly what I’d like to see from people given the space to comment on this website full time. Even if they disagree with everything I said, it’d be nice to get some quality info.)