Photo by: Ben Queen
Preseason Football Magazines Hitting Newsstands
June 08, 2021 05:18 PM | Football, Blog
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – I guess you can count me among the creatures of habit. In the mornings, I always stop at convenience stores on the right side of the highway to get my cup of coffee because I don't have to cross traffic to do so.
Since the pandemic began, most of my Friday evenings have been spent listening to vinyl records in the rec room while posting some of them on social media in what I've come to call my Friday Night Spins.
Another habit of mine going way, way back is to always look at the list of contributing writers before diving into any preseason football magazine that I read. I guess this practice dates back to the late 1970s when Syracuse Herald-Journal sports editor Arnie Burdick used to write the Eastern football section for Street & Smith's Magazine.
With Burdick, you knew what he wrote about Syracuse, Penn State, Pitt and Boston College was probably going to be pretty positive because he spent years watching those teams play and formed longstanding relationships with their coaches and sports information directors.
Burdick's West Virginia write-ups were also generally supportive of the Mountaineers, particularly during the Bobby Bowden years in the early 1970s, because the affable Bowden was always so generous with his time to reporters.
I mention this because West Virginia's director of football communications Mike Montoro put a copy of the 2021 Athlon Sports College Football Annual on my desk earlier this week. The Nashville, Tennessee- based publication has been around for years, which is no small feat considering the volatility and unprofitability of print journalism these days.
It has Mountaineer running back Leddie Brown on its regional cover, now on sale locally, but the returning 1,000-yard rusher didn't make one of the three preseason All-America teams the magazine picked.
Brown also did not find a place on Athlon's preseason All-Big 12 first team, which was dominated by Oklahoma and Iowa State players. Brown was the only offensive guy from the Mountaineers named to the second squad, while Akheem Mesidor, Dante Stills and Alonzo Addae were listed on Athlon's Big 12 second defensive unit.
The Mountaineers on the third-team offense were wide receiver Winston Wright Jr., center Zach Frazier and Virginia Tech offensive line transfer Doug Nester, while linebacker Josh Chandler-Semedo was the lone Mountaineer representative on the third defensive unit.
The magazine listed its top 12 Big 12 games to watch this year and none of them included West Virginia, and its 2021 Big 12 unit rankings had the Mountaineers in the middle or toward the bottom in every category.
As a matter of fact, West Virginia's highest-ranked unit was its offensive line at No. 5. The rest were either ranked No. 6 or No. 7, which means the sum of the parts must be greater than the whole when it comes to Neal Brown's third Mountaineer football team because the magazine has West Virginia only eight spots outside its national top 25 at No. 33.
For what it's worth, I have a sneaking suspicion that West Virginia's ranking could wind up being even higher once the final sentence is written about the 2021 football season.
For curiosity sake, I went back and looked at how West Virginia fared in the 2016 Athlon College Football Preview.
Among individual units, the offensive line was ranked No. 1 in the Big 12 that year, the linebackers ranked dead last, and the rest ranked anywhere from No. 4 to No. 8. Two players, center Tyler Orlosky and defensive tackle Noble Nwachukwu, made the preseason first teams. Only one player, offensive guard Kyle Bosch, was listed on the second offensive and defensive units.
Athlon's national forecast had West Virginia slotted at No. 40 with the following team synopsis: "West Virginia has won almost entirely via offense before, and it might have to in 2016 in order to return to a bowl game, and, perhaps, save (Dana) Holgorsen's job."
The 2016 season ended up being West Virginia's best since joining the Big 12 in 2012. The Mountaineers won 10 regular season games and finished tied for second with Oklahoma State in the final league standings that year.
Hitting the fast-forward button five years, I can see some similarities between the two squads. The 2016 edition had eight starters returning on offense, as does this year's team, and the 2016 offense was the most balanced of Holgorsen's West Virginia tenure with a running game that ended up averaging 228.4 yards per contest. It was the closest the Mountaineers ever got to having the all-around unit synergy that Neal Brown currently promotes within his football program.
West Virginia's offense this year is going to revolve around Brown, a workhorse back capable of putting up some big numbers in 2021. Through hard work and some exceptional recruiting and player development, the offensive line is finally getting back to the place it once was in 2016 when Orlosky was under center, and despite some unexpected departures, the Mountaineer defense is far ahead of where it was heading into the 2016 campaign when they only had three returning starters.
Here is part of Athlon's final take on the 2021 Mountaineers: "Staying in conference title contention in late November will be the main goal for this group."
We'll see.
One other thing to consider: Look at what Neal Brown did in year three at Troy when he had enough time to put his stamp on the program. The Trojans won 11 games, upset 25th-ranked LSU in Baton Rouge, captured a share of the Sun Belt Conference regular season title and routed North Texas in the 2017 New Orleans Bowl.
Said one anonymous opposing coach about Brown, "What you keep seeing on film is that they're playing hard, they're detail-oriented, and if you saw those Troy teams, he just kept them steady, steady, and then boom, they're a complete team. It's coming slowly."
It's clear West Virginia, as the Big 12's outlier program, still has some proving to do when it comes to the regional writers Athlon hired this year to preview the conference.
Perhaps that will happen in Year Three under Neal Brown.
Stay tuned.
Since the pandemic began, most of my Friday evenings have been spent listening to vinyl records in the rec room while posting some of them on social media in what I've come to call my Friday Night Spins.
Another habit of mine going way, way back is to always look at the list of contributing writers before diving into any preseason football magazine that I read. I guess this practice dates back to the late 1970s when Syracuse Herald-Journal sports editor Arnie Burdick used to write the Eastern football section for Street & Smith's Magazine.
With Burdick, you knew what he wrote about Syracuse, Penn State, Pitt and Boston College was probably going to be pretty positive because he spent years watching those teams play and formed longstanding relationships with their coaches and sports information directors.
Burdick's West Virginia write-ups were also generally supportive of the Mountaineers, particularly during the Bobby Bowden years in the early 1970s, because the affable Bowden was always so generous with his time to reporters.
I mention this because West Virginia's director of football communications Mike Montoro put a copy of the 2021 Athlon Sports College Football Annual on my desk earlier this week. The Nashville, Tennessee- based publication has been around for years, which is no small feat considering the volatility and unprofitability of print journalism these days.
It has Mountaineer running back Leddie Brown on its regional cover, now on sale locally, but the returning 1,000-yard rusher didn't make one of the three preseason All-America teams the magazine picked.Brown also did not find a place on Athlon's preseason All-Big 12 first team, which was dominated by Oklahoma and Iowa State players. Brown was the only offensive guy from the Mountaineers named to the second squad, while Akheem Mesidor, Dante Stills and Alonzo Addae were listed on Athlon's Big 12 second defensive unit.
The Mountaineers on the third-team offense were wide receiver Winston Wright Jr., center Zach Frazier and Virginia Tech offensive line transfer Doug Nester, while linebacker Josh Chandler-Semedo was the lone Mountaineer representative on the third defensive unit.
The magazine listed its top 12 Big 12 games to watch this year and none of them included West Virginia, and its 2021 Big 12 unit rankings had the Mountaineers in the middle or toward the bottom in every category.
As a matter of fact, West Virginia's highest-ranked unit was its offensive line at No. 5. The rest were either ranked No. 6 or No. 7, which means the sum of the parts must be greater than the whole when it comes to Neal Brown's third Mountaineer football team because the magazine has West Virginia only eight spots outside its national top 25 at No. 33.
For what it's worth, I have a sneaking suspicion that West Virginia's ranking could wind up being even higher once the final sentence is written about the 2021 football season.
For curiosity sake, I went back and looked at how West Virginia fared in the 2016 Athlon College Football Preview.
Among individual units, the offensive line was ranked No. 1 in the Big 12 that year, the linebackers ranked dead last, and the rest ranked anywhere from No. 4 to No. 8. Two players, center Tyler Orlosky and defensive tackle Noble Nwachukwu, made the preseason first teams. Only one player, offensive guard Kyle Bosch, was listed on the second offensive and defensive units.
Athlon's national forecast had West Virginia slotted at No. 40 with the following team synopsis: "West Virginia has won almost entirely via offense before, and it might have to in 2016 in order to return to a bowl game, and, perhaps, save (Dana) Holgorsen's job."
The 2016 season ended up being West Virginia's best since joining the Big 12 in 2012. The Mountaineers won 10 regular season games and finished tied for second with Oklahoma State in the final league standings that year.
Hitting the fast-forward button five years, I can see some similarities between the two squads. The 2016 edition had eight starters returning on offense, as does this year's team, and the 2016 offense was the most balanced of Holgorsen's West Virginia tenure with a running game that ended up averaging 228.4 yards per contest. It was the closest the Mountaineers ever got to having the all-around unit synergy that Neal Brown currently promotes within his football program.
West Virginia's offense this year is going to revolve around Brown, a workhorse back capable of putting up some big numbers in 2021. Through hard work and some exceptional recruiting and player development, the offensive line is finally getting back to the place it once was in 2016 when Orlosky was under center, and despite some unexpected departures, the Mountaineer defense is far ahead of where it was heading into the 2016 campaign when they only had three returning starters.
Here is part of Athlon's final take on the 2021 Mountaineers: "Staying in conference title contention in late November will be the main goal for this group."
We'll see.
One other thing to consider: Look at what Neal Brown did in year three at Troy when he had enough time to put his stamp on the program. The Trojans won 11 games, upset 25th-ranked LSU in Baton Rouge, captured a share of the Sun Belt Conference regular season title and routed North Texas in the 2017 New Orleans Bowl.
Said one anonymous opposing coach about Brown, "What you keep seeing on film is that they're playing hard, they're detail-oriented, and if you saw those Troy teams, he just kept them steady, steady, and then boom, they're a complete team. It's coming slowly."
It's clear West Virginia, as the Big 12's outlier program, still has some proving to do when it comes to the regional writers Athlon hired this year to preview the conference.
Perhaps that will happen in Year Three under Neal Brown.
Stay tuned.
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