Pick Your Poison
October 30, 2004 09:50 PM | General
October 30, 2004
PISCATAWAY, N.J. – According to Rutgers coach Greg Schiano, it can be a pick-your-poison proposition with West Virginia quarterback Rasheed Marshall.
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| Rasheed Marshall passed for 165 yards and two touchdowns and ran 17 times for 79 yards and another score Saturday against Rutgers.
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Load up the box and try and stop the run and Marshall will go up top to wide receiver Chris Henry. Pull the safeties out and give help to Henry and Marshall will check down and run the football.
West Virginia’s offense this year has been molded entirely to Marshall’s immense talents. The senior personally accounted for three of West Virginia’s five touchdowns during Saturday’s 35-30 victory against Rutgers to boost the Mountaineers’ overall record to 7-1.
Marshall only threw the ball 13 times against Rutgers, but two went for touchdowns. Marshall averaged 18.3 yards per completion and he also carried 17 times for 79 yards and another score. His 26 pass-run attempts accounted for 244 total yards, an average of 9.4 yards per touch. Marshall has now run for 410 yards in the Mountaineers’ last four games against Virginia Tech, Connecticut, Syracuse and Rutgers.
During that same span he has completed 37 of 64 passes for 528 yards, six touchdowns and only two interceptions. He has a string of three straight 200-yard total offensive games following the Virginia Tech loss.
“When you double cover people they read it and they count it,” Schiano said during his post-game press conference. “They say if you’ve got the same amount of people around the ball as we do then we’re just going to run it until you do something else and that’s what we did.”
And that’s when Marshall went to the air to Henry for two game-turning pass plays. The first covered 69 yards to the Rutgers seven on a second and six play at the start of the fourth quarter when West Virginia was leading just 21-17.
The second came on West Virginia’s next possession when Marshall lobbed a high arching pass in the corner of the end zone that Henry out-jumped Rutgers defensive back Joe Porter to secure for a 39-yard touchdown.
“It reminds me when I coached in the NFL and we played Randy Moss,” Schiano said of Henry’s two leaping catches. “We got caught today three times where we were one on one with their receiver.
“We were in pretty good position,” Schiano added. “That’s a 6-5 guy (Henry) jumping and Joe (Porter) probably couldn’t get his feet under him to jump up for the ball. I don’t think on either one of them that they were in beat positions.”
Because Marshall is so dangerous running the football, defenses have to always make sure first that he doesn’t leave the pocket and take off. Sometimes Marshall can be as far as 10 yards downfield before the defensive back is even out of his backpedal.
“You’ve got to remember the guy they’ve got running the ball, number two, you can’t get him down on the ground with as many guys as we’ve got,” Schiano said. “Their whole offense is based on if you put as many as we’ve got in there then we’ve got one more because number two carries the call and good luck. We did as many things schematically as we could and had double coverage on five to try and still stop that.”
The classy Rutgers coach also complimented West Virginia’s three running backs Jason Colson, Kay-Jay Harris and Pernell Williams saying “some of them are more adept at running perimeter plays and some of them are more adept at running inside.” But the real issue with defending West Virginia’s offense, according to Schiano, is containing Marshall. “The quarterback makes that thing go.”
The Rutgers coach had good things to say about senior nose tackle Ben Lynch, who unofficially finished the day with five tackles, a sack and a tackle for a loss.
“That nose guard is a legitimate, big-time player; he’s not easy to move and we’ve got a 255-pound center (Ray Pilcher) on him,” Schiano said. “We really had to work to get some movement in the middle of the line.”
Rutgers defeated 4-4 Michigan State, which took No. 11 Michigan to overtime Saturday, and has also played 5-2 Pitt and 4-4 Syracuse. Schiano was asked after the game if he thought West Virginia was the best opponent his team has faced this year.
“It’s hard to rank them,” he answered diplomatically. “The week you play them you think they’re all the best. They’re pretty darn good. I think they have a good scheme and they’re a complete football team. I don’t think they have any glaring weaknesses. They may not have strengths in every area but they don’t have any weaknesses.
“I’m sure Rich has some things he’d like to be doing better but they’re a pretty darn good football team. Are they the best? They may be … it’s hard to say,” he added.
