Radio sideline reporter Jed Drenning provides periodic commentary on the Mountaineer football program for WVUsports.com. Be sure to follow him on Twitter @TheSignalCaller.
 
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - I remember it like it was yesterday. September 18, 1982. 
 
Three days after the first-ever issue of USA Today was published. Four days after 36 inches of snow hit Red Lodge, Montana, and one week after Don Nehlen's Mountaineers stunned the world with a program-defining win over Barry Switzer's Sooners in Norman, Oklahoma.
 
But I wasn't in Red Lodge or Norman. I was in Morgantown. Nestled at field level not far behind the south end zone of Mountaineer Field, I was joined by my dad, a few of my Pop Warner coaches and more than a dozen of my Davis-Thomas Rams teammates for my first-ever, up-close-and-personal WVU game. 
 
West Virginia's opponent that afternoon was Maryland, carving out a strangely nostalgic place in my heart for the Terrapins football program that remains today. As it turned out, the Davis-Thomas Rams were in the house for a dandy battle between future Super Bowl quarterbacks Boomer Esiason and Jeff Hostetler.
 
None of Hoss' throws were bigger that day than the one he made to Rich Hollins in the fourth quarter. Hostetler showed a half roll to the left then stopped and flipped his hips, launching the ball in our direction. The action was so close we could see the breathable holes in Hollins' jersey (at least it felt that way) as he approached at full speed. Hollins separated from a pair of Maryland defenders with a diving grab, landing on his knee and crashing through the pylon right before our wondering eyes. 
 
After stopping a late two-point attempt by the Terps, the good guys held on to win 19-18. I'd found my happy place.  
 
Might Maryland Stadium be a happy place for Neal Brown's Mountaineers Saturday at 3:30 p.m.? To navigate its first opening day win in a true road game since knocking off Syracuse in the Carrier Dome to get the 2005 season rolling, West Virginia will need to solve a Terrapins team that features new coordinators in all three phases of the game.
 
Offensively, Terps coach Mike Locksley hired Dan Enos, a staffmate of his at Alabama in 2018. Despite Enos' pedigree in the West Coast system and Locksley's background in the spread, that one season together in Tuscaloosa was enough for the two coaches to realize they're kindred spirits offensively.
 
"One of the reasons I'm here is because I know the system. I'm very familiar with it," said Enos, who's made tongue in cheek references to his offensive philosophy as 'spread coast.' 
 
Locksley's first taste of the spread offense was alongside Larry Fedora on Ron Zook's staff at Florida in the early 2000s. The versatility of the scheme appealed to Locksley, and he's stuck with it in various forms since. As the offensive coordinator at Illinois a decade-and-a-half ago, that meant deploying the zone read to attack defenses with the combination of quarterback Juice Williams and running back Rashard Mendenhall. At Alabama, it meant torching opponents with two and sometimes three read run-pass option concepts behind trigger man Tua Tagovailoa, the older brother of Locksley's signal caller at Maryland, Taulia.     
 
For the Terps last season, the younger Tagovailoa was a streaky passer. Watch him in wins over Minnesota (394 yards, 3/1) and Penn State (282 yards, 3/0) and you'll see borderline-elite play. Watch him with a short-handed lineup in Maryland's loss at Indiana (1TD, 3 INT) and against the Big Ten's top pass defense at Northwestern (0 TD, 3 INT), and he was less impressive.  
 
According to ESPN writer David Hale, the Alabama transfer averaged 6.3 more yards per drop back against man coverage than against zone – the largest such disparity among all returning Power Five passers. Man-to-man coverage is a strong indicator of blitz. It follows that Tagovailoa responded favorably against the blitz with crisp decisions and accurate throws. When you bring pressure against him, you better be crafty. If it's a vanilla look, he'll hurt you. 
 
The other side of this coin? Tagovailoa can be an impatient player. Six of his seven interceptions in 2020 came with Maryland playing from behind. Compare that to WVU's Jarret Doege who hasn't thrown a single pick in the 232 career passes he's attempted with the Mountaineers trailing on the scoreboard.
 
When teams dropped numbers into zone coverage and made Tagoviloa hold onto the football, he sometimes got antsy, bailing from the pocket prematurely and/or becoming a more indiscriminate passer. At times you'll see him lose sight of certain defenders entirely. 
 
Watch Tagovailoa's second interception against Indiana. With Maryland trailing 7-0 just outside the red zone, the Hoosiers dropped seven into a cover-three zone coverage and rushed just four defenders. Despite a clean pocket that lasted a full four seconds before IU linebacker Micah McFadden broke free to finally force a throw, Tagovailoa delivered the ball directly into the hands of boundary cornerback Jaylin Williams.   
 
Last year, West Virginia became the first Big 12 team since 1999 to lead the nation in pass defense. Jordan Lesley's penchant for chopping up the front and sneaking an occasional blitzer in behind it could serve the Mountaineers well against a guy as discerning as "Baby Tua." The potential that WVU defensive tackles Dante Stills and Akheem Messidor have to push the pocket into the quarterback's lap with interior pressure could be critical.  
 
It might take all that and more to disrupt what's become a staple of Locksley offenses – using smoke and mirrors, particularly on third down, to isolate favorable match-ups for explosive receivers such as Dontay Demus (6-foot-3, 217 pounds) and Rakim Jarrett, a former five-star who flipped from LSU to Maryland on National Signing Day in 2019. 
 
"What they do as good as anybody is find the match-ups they want," Lesley said. "Moving those guys around by shifts, motions and formations."
 
On the defensive side, Locksley tapped Brian Stewart as the Terrapins new coordinator. If Brian Stewart sounds familiar to Mountaineer fans, he should. Most recently, Stewart was the cornerbacks coach on Dave Aranda's staff at Baylor last year. He faced WVU three times as the Terrapins defensive coordinator from 2012-14 and before taking the job in College Park in early 2012, Stewart's name was attached to the defensive coordinator opening in Morgantown, having coached on Kevin Sumlin's staff at Houston with Dana Holgorsen two years prior.  
 
Stewart has coached at the pro and college levels for a quarter century. His defensive philosophy has been heavily shaped by his NFL mentor, Wade Phillips, a well-known advocate of the 3-4 defense. The difference between the variant of the 3-4 Stewart learned under Phillips as compared to others – which are traditionally two-gap, read and react schemes – is that it's a one-gap concept that asks the defensive line to attack and penetrate instead of occupying blockers.  
 
Like most defensive coaches in the modern game, Stewart isn't tied to a specific look. His scheme includes multiple alignments that go beyond the base 3-4 he mastered under Phillips, but the attacking posture he learned along with that defense is still apparent. 
 
West Virginia fans saw that in Stewart's last stint at Maryland. Whether he was facing a hot-handed senior like Geno Smith or a wide-eyed freshman like Ford Childress, Stewart's defense manned up, rolled the dice and brought pressure.
 
If you think his mentality has changed since then, a quick listen to the comments he's made about the abilities of the defensive personnel he inherited this time around in College Park will disabuse you of that notion. 
 
"We found some things we do well," Stewart said during camp last month. "I think one of those things is play close coverages, whether it's man or match coverage, and that's because we have the speed and the corners that can do that."
 
Maryland won't hesitate to take its chances with man-to-man defense on the back end in exchange for the blitzes it affords them, hoping to put as many turtle whacks as possible on Doege.
 
This game is replete with intriguing matchups but none will be more pivotal than the Mountaineer passing game against the man coverage of the Terps' secondary. Chunk plays have been the Achilles heel of the Mountaineer offense. The WVU passing game in 2020 managed just three completions of 40-plus yards. Among Big 12 schools, only Kansas had fewer. If West Virginia hopes to take the next step this year, they'll need to take that sad song and make it better.
 
An offseason restricted by COVID last year likely contributed to the issues that limited WVU's explosive plays through the air. The good news is those issues -- dropped balls, erratic protection and inconsistent accuracy – can be rectified. Let's unpack them one at a time.
 
DROPPED BALLS
In the movies, robots come to help when a liquid metal Robert Patrick arrives to hunt you down (Terminator 2 is the gift that keeps on giving). In college football, they do so when you lead the Big 12 in dropped passes. The 31 drops suffered by WVU were distributed among 10 different players and help arrived this offseason in the form of a robotic quarterback called the Seeker.
 
Mountaineer receivers put the machine's pulse tracking tag to work, repping all summer with it and the old-fashioned way to minimize those costly drops.
 
"They caught over 110,000 balls," offensive coordinator/wide receviers coach Gerad Parker said. "They have put in a great deal of work that they've done and charted on their own in order to get into a position that they have confidence to be able to catch the football consistently but also handle the ugly word called a 'drop.' We call it a 'bad catch.'"
 
ERRATIC PROTECTION
Ah, that unsung group that never gets the credit but often gets the blame – the offensive line. When it comes to pass pro breakdowns, the statistics tell part of the story and the more in-depth metrics dig a little deeper. Only if you study each snap on game video, however, do you get a real sense of how catastrophic a missed assignment or poor technique along the offensive line can sometimes be.
 
Cue up West Virginia at Texas last November. Midway through the second quarter, WVU was facing a third and long from its own 9-yard line. The Mountaineers went with a seven-man protection and sent three verticals into the Texas secondary, including two by the twin receivers to the right. 
 
The Longhorns ran an interior stunt with T'Vondre Sweat looping in behind Ta'Quon Graham. West Virginia's right guard reacted in time to catch Sweat bearing down on Doege, but poor technique forced him to lose leverage and get bull rushed back into the pocket toward the QB, just as the same thing was happening to the right tackle who was trying to hold the edge against defensive end Keondre Coburn. 
 
Consequently, when Doege targeted Isaiah Esdale down the right sideline – who had broken free past the safety, he couldn't adequately transfer his weight to follow through on the throw. Doege cut the ball loose, but because of the pass rush pushing the pocket, his plant foot remained on the ground as the ball flew downfield short of its mark. 
 
Esdale was forced to slam the brakes before making an incredible, leaping grab between two defenders for a nice gain and a first down. The stat sheet showed a 28-yard completion. The analytics went deeper than that, maybe even slapping the o-line with a QB Hurry and/or a Pressure Allowed. What no set of numbers revealed, however, was the lost opportunity for a 91-yard touchdown pass that would've put WVU in the lead and given them a major momentum boost.
 
But that was a year ago – and a lot of good things have happened in the West Virginia offensive line room since then. 
 
"To win the games we did and have the success we did, a lot of them we called around the deficiencies we had up front," assistant head coach/offensive line coach Matt Moore said. "Now we're getting to the point where, hopefully, we can call a game and we don't have deficiencies. We expect everybody to win, to be able to run the offense." 
 
INCONSISTENT ACCURACY
Doege's precision on downfield throws was patchy at best last year -- but that's not always been a hole in his game. 
 
At Bowling Green in 2018, Doege completed nine passes of 40-plus yards, the second-most in the Mid-American Conference. Fire up the game video of the Falcons' trip to Autzen Stadium that September and watch the 63-yard scoring strike he delivered up the rail for a third-quarter touchdown against Oregon's man-free coverage. Everything about that play by Doege was time-capsule worthy, from the manipulation of the safety with his eyes to the perfectly timed dime he dropped 40 yards downfield. 
 
And in just three games in 2019 during his inaugural season in Morgantown, Doege's ability to push the football down the field helped West Virginia notch a few victories. His 50-yard, game-winning throw to Bryce Ford-Wheaton at K-State and his 35-yarder to Isaiah Esdale to knock off TCU traveled 40-ish yards in the air. 
 
But last fall, the consistency with such throws was absent. According to Pro Football Focus, Doege's accuracy rate on passes thrown 20 or more yards downfield fell from 42% in 2019 to 20% in 2020. 
 
Let's explore by popping in last season's TCU game. From their own 21-yard line on the left hash in the first quarter, the Mountaineers lined up in an Ace set (twins to each side) with Winston Wright Jr. in the short side slot. Into the Frogs' quarters coverage, Wright went vertical on the snap. Thirteen yards upfield, he broke into a corner move that snookered TCU cornerback C.J. Ceasar into turning his eyes back to the quarterback, which cost him ground. 
 
Three steps into the corner route, Wright redirected on a dime, bursting down the WVU sidelines with Frogs safety Ar'Darius Washington trailing him at an angle after taking the bait on the double-move. TCU was toast. A perfectly placed throw over his boundary shoulder could've meant a career long 79-yard touchdown for Wright and Doege. Instead, the throw steered Wright back toward the numbers where Washington was able to recover and break it up for a harmless incompletion.
 
Muscle memory matters with deep throws. That's developed through training and repetition with specific receivers. You don't take direct aim on those throws as much as you feel things out and trust your eyes and your mechanics to sync up with the moving target that is the receiver. That's why the reps Doege lost during the disjointed offseason of 2020 were costly.
 
The beauty of a deep ball is that a pass catcher has a larger radius of space to react because he's so far downfield. As such, if you combine the right placement with the right velocity (neither needs to be perfect), a good receiver will bake a certain margin of error into the throw by adjusting to the ball on the fly, making you look more accurate than Carlos Hathcock. I can't tell you the number of times I let a ball fly deep and thought it was off the mark to the inside or out, but, because I put air under it, the receiver adjusted perfectly and made the throw look a whole lot more precise than it actually was. (Don't tell Chris George I said that!). 
 
Doege, meanwhile, has worked like a man possessed since January to improve his game, and it appears to have paid off. He was consistently sharp in August, demonstrating the kind of accuracy that gives receivers a chance to make plays. 
 
His performance peaked in the team's final scrimmage of camp when he connected on his last 14 throws, including an off-balance deep shot that Sam James hauled in 40 yards downfield. That kind of play from Doege could get the Mountaineer offense back in the deep-ball business and transform him from game manager to game changer.
 
By the way, this won't be the first time Neal Brown has called a game against Brian Stewart. In Brown's first year as the offensive coordinator at Texas Tech in 2010, the Red Raiders faced a Houston team that featured Stewart as the defensive coordinator. Tech won 35-20. 
 
Folks will,of course, tell you that game won't matter on Saturday. And that's probably true. But they'd tell you the same thing about that showdown between Hoss and Boomer back in '82. 
 
And that game will always matter. 
 
At least to the Davis-Thomas Rams.
 
I'll see you at the 50.