Football Notebook
October 02, 2009 08:00 PM | General
October 2, 2009
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – There are 14 reasons why West Virginia is fortunate to have a 3-1 record after Thursday night’s victory over Colorado. Fourteen is the number of turnovers the Mountaineers have committed in their last three games – and two of those games were victories over East Carolina and Colorado.
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| Jarrett Brown has completed 67.6 percent of his passes for 946 yards and seven touchdowns so far this season.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks photo |
WVU overcame four turnovers each in home wins over the Pirates and the Buffaloes. West Virginia was not so fortunate at Auburn. Still, name another team in college football that has committed at least 13 turnovers so far this year and also owns a winning record.
You can’t because there isn’t. There are five other teams in college football with 13 or more turnovers - Miami, Ohio, Washington State, San Diego State, Maryland and Buffalo – and all of them have losing records.
It kind of makes you wonder how good West Virginia can be if it can quit shooting itself in the foot?
“I don’t know if I’ve ever coached a game where we’ve come out of it 100 percent without mental or physical errors or a lack of execution,” said offensive coordinator Jeff Mullen. “Those are things that we certainly need to address and work on.”
Against Colorado, Mullen did not want to see a repeat of the fourth quarter at Auburn when West Virginia threw interceptions on four straight drives when the outcome was still in doubt. So he put the ball in tailback Noel Devine’s hands.
Eight of Devine’s season-high 22 carries came in the fourth quarter during West Virginia’s 15-play TD drive that chewed up 6:48 of the clock and covered 69 yards.
“We kind of felt like from a team standpoint that we needed to keep the defense on the bench,” Mullen explained. “The first couple of plays worked so let’s keep doing that. There were a lot of factors. Certainly taking care of the football was one of them. We were fumbling so you think throwing the ball would be the deal.”
Quarterback Jarrett Brown was an efficient 12 of 19 passing for 148 yards and two touchdowns with no interceptions, but two of his misses were sure touchdown passes to Alric Arnett and Tavon Austin. Both Arnett and Austin were at least five yards behind their defenders when Brown overthrew them.
After the misfire to Austin, Brown was sacked on consecutive plays for minus 28 yards that took the Mountaineers out of potential field goal range.
“The frustrating thing is we get a turnover and we take a shot. It’s wide open and we missed it,” Mullen said of the first sack. “The second one we were actually moving the pocket and sprinting out on that one. The third one was a schematic issue where there were too many guys and we were trying to get the ball out of his hands and he didn’t get that done.”
Colorado sent pressure from the corners when West Virginia went empty. Brown said it was a combination of protection breakdowns and him not recognizing the blitz fast enough that caused the three sacks.
“They shot the gaps pretty quick,” he said. “They just did a good job of it and we didn’t pick it up. I have just got to do a better job of helping my line out. It’s not just my line. I think it’s me, too. We have got to get on the same page with that.”
“Credit Colorado,” Mullen added. “They had a pressure package in that we were ready for and we were doing a lot of hard cadence to look for it and when we got it we tried to give him a max protection.”
Some of what Colorado did Thursday night with its pressure packages were things Brown had never seen before in game conditions.
“We tried to give him some mesh routes to try and get the ball out. They were just able to get home before he got some of those off. The thing I’ve got to do is I’ve got to coach this guy up on not taking bad sacks,” Mullen said. “Eliminate the loss or the hidden yardage. A five-yard sack is better than a 15-yard sack. That’s one less first down they’ve got to get on us.”
“It’s just me having to get the ball out of my hands quicker,” Brown said. “We have a five-man protection and I think they sent more than we can block.”
The turnovers and the mistakes are the result of a young and inexperienced team. The feeling in the Mountaineer locker room is that when all of the mistakes are finally cleaned up, West Virginia will clean up.
“This was the difference between a 65-point game and a 35-point game,” Brown said. “We turned the ball over four times. We had one on defense. I think that is taking points off the board. It’s taking yards off the board. We’ll get those corrected.”
Mullen said you would be hard pressed to find another offense in the country that performs flawlessly against high quality opposition.
“There are very few people that can go through 60-80 plays against a really good opponent and execute perfectly on every snap,” he said. “Clearly you can go through a game without turning the ball over. You can go through a game without as many penalties. You can go through a game without as many missed assignments, and that’s what we are striving for.
“You are never happy. We’ve got a long, long way to go. We realize that we could be very special. Our players realized it but we certainly need to eliminate the mistakes,” he added.
Briefly:
“He is going to hear about that from us this week,” laughed linebacker Reed Williams.
