Photo by: All Pro Photography/Dale Sparks
Mountaineers Embracing Multiple Ways to Win Football Games
September 18, 2019 11:55 AM | Football
| Tale of the Tape |  |
 |
|---|---|---|
| Points Per Game | 26.3 | 23.7 |
| Points Against | 17.7 | 26.0 |
| Rushing Yards Per Game | 201.7 | 79.0 |
| Rushing Yards Allowed Per Game | 182.0 | 182.7 |
| Passing Yards Per Game | 195.3 | 224.3 |
| Passing Yards Allowed Per Game | 185.7 | 177.0 |
| Total Yards Per Game | 397.0 | 303.3 |
| Total Yards Allowed Per Game | 367.7 | 359.7 |
| First Downs For | 60 | 51 |
| First Downs Against | 66 | 68 |
| Fumbles/Lost | 5/3 | 0/0 |
| Interceptions/Return Ave. | 1/7.0 | 2/35/0 |
| Net Punting | 37.7 | 44.4 |
| Field Goal/Attempts | 3/5 | 3/5 |
| Time of Possession | 28:34 | 28:41 |
| 3rd Down Conversions | 16/45 | 16/37 |
| 3rd Down Conversion Defense | 17/46 | 16/42 |
| Sacks By/Yards Lost | 9/60 | 7/46 |
| Red Zone Scoring | 6/7 | 10/11 |
That's great when you do, but what happens when the other guys score a lot, too, like Oklahoma State and Oklahoma did last year?
Or what about when you go up and down the field and put all of those crazy numbers on the stat sheet and the other team has far fewer yards, but MORE points? It's exciting watching all of this transpire over the course of three hours until you get into your car and sit in traffic for another three hours trying to figure out what the hell just happened.
Sometimes you've got to stop the other team.
Sometimes you have to take your medicine and live to fight another day instead of trying to score from your own 3 with less than a minute to go in the first half.
And special teams is not just a bridge between playing offense and defense.
Football games CAN be won (and lost) during those four-to-six seconds when 10 different guys are on the field surrounding that skinny dude kicking the ball.
For the first time in a long, long time, West Virginia won a football game during those four-to-six seconds when senior Logan Thimons' blocked punt midway through the third quarter of last Saturday's NC State victory turned things upside down.
At the time, the Mountaineers were leading just 24-21 and it was anyone's ballgame.
The analytical people will say a blocked punt assures victory 90 percent of the time. Who knows? It's sort of like taking vitamins or fish oil … does it really work?
If you think it does then it probably does, and Neal Brown has already got his guys believing.
Thimons is one of them.
"It's such a science now," he said Tuesday afternoon. "You have coaches that dedicate their lives to researching different things and seeing what the formula is by calculating different ways to win games. They say one of the stats is you block a punt and that gives you a 90 percent chance of winning the game.
"That's what they tell us all the time, and that's something I really believe as well because you could see it's a big momentum play, especially when you go and punch it in right after that."
And Kennedy McKoy did three plays later on two runs, which we will get back to in a moment.
Analytics also led to Brown's decision to take a knee on the extra point attempt late in the game instead of kicking it to go ahead by 18 points.
There is no difference between 17 or 18 points; both constitute a three-possession lead in football, but a blocked PAT returned for two points makes it a 15-point lead and a two-possession game. That's simple football math everyone around town this week is talking about, even in the Wise Library where the smartest people congregate.
But more to the point, what all of this demonstrates is Brown's willingness to win football games whatever way is necessary.
Why limit yourself to just one method, i.e., scoring lots of points?
Why not try and win games on defense if you can by causing turnovers or by stopping the other team? Why not try and help your defense occasionally by running the clock and possessing the football on offense instead of trying to score touchdowns every time you have it?
Why not try and steal a possession or score some points during those four-to-six possessions on special teams?
Those points count on the scoreboard, too, even if they rob you of opportunities to put more yards on the stat sheet.
Adding these elements to your football program and emphasizing them with your players gives you many more ways to win football games. Now you can better understand why Penn State won all those games against West Virginia through the years. Yes, the Nittany Lions had far better players than West Virginia, but better players don't win all the time.
Sometimes you have to call a screen pass at the right moment like Joe Paterno always seemed to do whenever West Virginia came with all-out blitz, sort of like Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown every time he tried to kick it as hard as he could.
Maybe it's defensive line coach Jordan Lesley getting the Stills brothers over to the sideline and drawing up a little twist on the grease board to free up little brother Dante to make a key second-half sack.
Or perhaps it's Blake Seiler up in the box seeing something in NC State's punt protection scheme the Mountaineers could exploit. Seiler noticed that State was rotating its tackle over to the edge to block Thimons when he rushed the punter, so he relayed a message down to Al Pogue on the field to switch Thimons to the opposite side of the formation.
"Let's see if you become free," Pogue told him.
"I expected to come free off that outside edge, but not so much in the middle shield," Thimons explained. "I thought the middle shield would have picked me up but he didn't and I came right in front of the punter."
The first thought going through Logan's mind was not to rough him. He did that once before and he didn't want to do that again after the defense had done such a great job stopping NC State on its side of the field.
"My biggest thing was to make sure I got the punt, but I didn't get him," Thimons said.
He did get the punt and Exree Loe, another special teams terror, came up with the football at the Wolfpack 12. Three plays later West Virginia was sitting in the end zone with a 10-point lead.
Then, late in the game, Thimons was back out on the field doing his thing on offense to sew things up. The defense had just come up with another fourth-down stop at the Wolfpack 23 with 4:48 remaining.
Brown brought in Thimons to play football in front of 212-pound tailback Leddie Brown. In front of them on the line of scrimmage was a tight end – good, ol' fashioned 21 personnel.
And Brown ran Brown four straight times until he reached the end zone - this coming from an offense that was ranked next to last in the country in rushing yardage after two weeks!
Instead of avoiding a shortcoming or trying to cover it up, Brown chose to address it head on and get it fixed immediately.
If you can't run it at all you can't win and Neal Brown is all about winning football games.
"After the poor performance we had in the run game two weeks before we wanted to take pride in that and show that we can run the ball," Thimons said. "We can be physical and that's who we are as an offense. What we showed in the first two games wasn't who we are as an offense, and it was a good opportunity for us to turn that around and show what we really could do."
After seeing all of the different things that took place during last Saturday's victory over NC State, it appears Brown's Mountaineers are just scratching the surface on playing winning football.
And that's giving people around here lots to discuss.
Players Mentioned
RB
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RB
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TE/FB
/ FootballRich Rodriguez | Dec. 3
Wednesday, December 03
Reid Carrico | Nov. 29
Saturday, November 29
Jeff Weimer | Nov. 29
Saturday, November 29
Rich Rodriguez | Nov. 29
Saturday, November 29
