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United Bank Playbook: Kansas
November 02, 2016 11:49 AM | Football
One of the most difficult things to do in baseball is string together three straight hits to score a run. Lately, Dana Holgorsen’s West Virginia University offense has been required to do football’s equivalent of that in order to cross the goal line.
The Mountaineers (6-1, 3-1) are averaging 31.1 points per game, which is okay in the high-scoring Big 12, but they are having to get their points the hard way - by driving the length of the field.
Twenty of the 26 touchdowns West Virginia has tallied so far this year have been on scoring drives of at least five plays or more, and seven of those have been of the 10-play-or-more, length-of-the-field variety.
That’s a hard way to score points. Ten-play, time-consuming drives are a thing of beauty. They have a way of controlling football games and can break the will of an opponent, but a lot of things have to go right in order for that to happen.
You can’t have a bunch of penalties, you can’t have a lot of blown assignments or mistakes that lead to negative yardage plays and you’ve got to hold on to the ball.
So, when penalties occur, blown assignments and mistakes happen and the ball winds up in the hands of the other team (as was the case last Saturday against Oklahoma State) the teams that can usually overcome those are the ones who possess explosive playmakers - guys who can take a short pass out in the flat, make someone miss and take it to the house.
If you recall, a decade ago the Mountaineers had a bunch of those type of players such as Pat White, Steve Slaton, Darius Reynaud and Noel Devine who could make defenses pay dearly whenever they got out into space with the room to kick it into fourth gear.
That was the case, too, a few years ago when Tavon Austin and Mario Alford had the speed, the moves and the instincts to break off big plays.
And that’s one aspect that has been sorely missing from West Virginia’s offensive arsenal this season, and it’s something Holgorsen would love to see more of as his Mountaineers hit the home stretch of the regular season.
“Boy that would be nice, wouldn’t it?” was his response on Tuesday when asked about his team’s lack of explosive offensive plays. “God, I forget what it’s like.”
According to the list of long plays provided by the WVU Athletic Communications Office, West Virginia has had 10 plays of 40 yards or longer so far this year - which is not too bad.
However, all of them have been passes - three of those going for touchdowns to Shelton Gibson and Ka’Raun White - and just two of them, from what I can recall, were pass plays near the line of scrimmage where an offensive player made somebody miss and turned a small gain into a big one. Both of them occurred against Texas Tech.
That’s it.
The run game has produced very little in the way of explosive plays, too, with the exception of a couple Kennedy McKoy runs against the Red Raiders that netted 38 and 35 yards.
For that matter, the run game has not produced many explosive plays from scrimmage the last few seasons, despite having some NFL-caliber talent in the backfield in Wendell Smallwood and Charles Sims.
“We’ve got to make guys miss when we’ve got open space and getting guys to finish blocks when running backs are setting up and pressing blocks,” running backs coach Ja’Juan Seider admitted. “That stuff goes hand in hand. I wish I had the answer because it’s been a thorn in our side. You look every week and you see guys running 50, 60 yards and you look at us we’ll get 10, we’ll get 12 or 15. Wendell last year led the country in 10-plus-yard runs, but didn’t have a lot of long, 40 or 50-yard runs. Imagine what his rushing stats would have been if he had some of those.
WVU is seeking more explosive plays from young playmakers like Jovon Durante. All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks photo.
“You just coach them and make sure they continue to play and continue to make the routine plays and not try and do too much,” he added.
Holgorsen is devising plays to get his playmakers out in the open, as we’ve seen on numerous occasions so far this season, but for one reason or another they are just not leading to long touchdowns, causing Holgorsen to scratch his head.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Stay on your feet - go score, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll have to pull out some film from way back in the day. I think we have guys who are capable of doing it. Different things have to happen - accuracy of the ball, confidence in your ability to do it, the wherewithal of staying on your feet, turning up field, your dude getting a block, seeing it and doing it.”
Of course, some of it is on the guys carrying the ball to be able to make people miss, press blocks and kick it into gear and get past people (which is something you either have or don’t have) but some of it, too, is a reflection of the effort from others needed to help spring ball carriers free whenever they get out into the open.
That means wide receivers sticking with blocks a little bit longer, or the guys up front straining to make the extra effort to get down field to get one more block to get someone loose.
“The downfield blocking was not as good last week as it was against TCU, and I think that has something to do with effort, and I think that has something to do with the mentality that you have,” Holgorsen said.
“It’s a lot more than just the guys with the ball,” Seider added.
Years ago, when Ryan Stanchek was blocking for Slaton, White and Devine, there was a play against Rutgers when Stanchek made a block at the line of scrimmage to spring White free, and then as White methodically weaved his way down the field toward the goal line, a hustling Stanchek reemerged as White was approaching the goal line to make the final block to get him into the end zone.
It was a play that was shown repeatedly to every offensive lineman in the program as an example of the type of effort that is required to make great plays and win championships.
You can’t always expect to rip off 10, 15-play scoring drives to get into the end zone, particularly against good defenses.
“There was a study done once on the biggest difference between winning and losing and for years it was obviously turnovers, and what you do with those,” veteran offensive coordinator Joe Wickline said. “But the second thing was ‘chunk plays’ or big-yardage plays. Even if a team didn’t play well but they had like 17 chunk-yardage plays (teams could still win the game). We can go back and forth on field position, or third down, but obviously, ball security and more yards per play would help us.”
A lot of things have to go right in order to sustaion long scoring drives, and when it doesn’t it’s always nice to have someone you can hand the ball to, or throw it to out in space, and see him do the things to be able to make someone miss to get into the end zone.
The more frequently that happens, the better, particularly against teams you are favored to beat.
“Guys are committed to stopping the run. They were squeezing the box hard and that’s why we threw it 40 times, more than half the time,” Holgorsen noted. “That’s not going to change. Guys are going to try to stop the run, which means we have to block better, which means we have to make a guy miss at times, and we’re average when it comes to that right now.”
Saturday’s opponent, Kansas, comes to town with a 1-7 record and an 0-5 mark in conference play; the Jayhawks haven’t won a league road game in eight years and are giving up an average of 51 points per game away from Lawrence so far this season - a lot of those coming on opponents’ big plays.
Getting few of those this weekend would certainly help the cause.
A 7 p.m. kickoff has been established for Saturday’s game, which will air nationally on ESPN2 (Beth Mowins, Anthony Becht and Rocky Boiman).
The Mountaineer Sports Network from IMG’s game coverage will get underway with the Go-Mart Mountaineer Tailgate Show at 3:30 p.m. leading into regular game coverage with Tony Caridi and Dwight Wallace beginning at 6 p.m. on stations throughout West Virginia and online via leanStream and the mobile app TuneIn.
Tickets still remain and can be purchased by calling the Mountaineer Ticket Office toll-free at 1-800-WVU GAME or by logging on to WVUGAME.com.
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