WVU’s Brown Addresses Preseason Media Poll at Big 12 Football Media Day
July 17, 2023 05:00 PM | Football, Blog
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By: John Antonik
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Throughout the years, there is ample evidence that West Virginia has performed much better when it plays with a chip on its shoulder.
Such was the case way back in 1993 when the Mountaineers, despite having nearly all their starters returning from a hard-luck 1992 season, was predicted to finish fourth in the Big East and became the league's first outright, round-robin champion in conference history.
West Virginia that year didn't just want to beat people– it wanted to beat people up!
Coach Don Nehlen led WVU to a Big East title in 1993.
In 2002, coming off a disappointing 3-8 record in coach Rich Rodriguez's first season, WVU was picked to finish sixth and ended up four spots higher in second place behind Miami, which was upset by Ohio State in the national championship game.
A year later, in 2003, West Virginia exceeded its predicted finish by three spots to end the season tied with Miami for first in the league standings.
In 2005, WVU was two spots better than its prognosticators by winning the Big East outright with a 7-0 conference record. In all, West Virginia finished higher than its predicted finish eight times when it was in the Big East. On seven other occasions, it finished where it was picked and only four times did it finish lower.
Since joining the Big 12 in 2012, that trend has continued. Just twice, in 2012 and 2018, has West Virginia finished lower than its predicted finish.
WVU was coming off an Orange Bowl blowout victory over Clemson and returning all its key offensive weapons, but it got a dose of reality at Texas Tech and lost five straight games before ending the regular season with wins over Iowa State and Kansas.
In 2018, with quarterback Will Grier leading the team, the Mountaineers were picked to finish second and ended up one spot lower tied for third with Iowa State. The other nine times, WVU placed higher than its predicted finish, including five spots in 2016 and four in 2014.
In fact, during all four years Neal Brown has coached the Mountaineers his teams have placed at least one spot better than their predicted finish.
So, when Brown got up to the dais to take questions during last Thursday's Big 12 media day activities at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, he immediately confronted the giant elephant sitting on top of his football team.
Of course, by now everyone in Mountaineer Nation knows West Virginia was picked to finish last in this year's preseason poll, one spot lower than Cincinnati, two spots lower than Houston, three spots lower than BYU and five spots lower than Central Florida – all conference newcomers this season.
"I'll start with this, because I'm sure I'm going to get asked about it; I'm upset with the media poll and I definitely do not agree with that," he began.
Brown said he was at the beach enjoying summer vacation with his family when he looked at his cell phone and saw a text message about the forthcoming poll from his sports information director, Mike Montoro.
"I made the mistake of looking at it and from that point on, my vacation was over. I went into football mode," he said.
When he returned to Morgantown, he met with his team on Tuesday, July 11, to discuss the poll.
"We talked about it in detail," he said. "We have a clear vision of what we have to improve on. I think if you talk about offensively, we've got to get better efficiency wise, especially first down and in the red zone. We've got to be more explosive and eliminate errors.
"Defensively, what we've got to do better is we've got to eliminate explosive plays. You're going to give up some, especially in the league that we play in, but we have to limit those explosive plays, and then we've got to create takeaways," he said. "Explosive plays and the lack of takeaways last year were the biggest negative effect on us defensively."
He added, "We've been focused on ourselves by getting ourselves better. (The media poll) is something that's going to increase the size of the chip. The chip was already there on the shoulder – it just increased in size."
Brown also took some time to list what he believes are his team's many overlooked positives, citing late-season wins over Oklahoma and Oklahoma State – West Virginia's two biggest obstacles since joining the Big 12.
He mentioned the team's impressive experience at offensive line, noting the 132 combined starts among his returners.
"If that's not the most in the country, it's got to be close," he said.
He brought up the four former freshman All-Americans still on the roster and three players whom he believes are "for sure" all-conference caliber performers – offensive linemen Zach Frazier and Doug Nester, and running back CJ Donaldson Jr.
Defensively, he predicts his unit is going to be among the most improved in the conference, if not the country.
"We have all-league players at each level. Sean Martin at defensive end, Lee Kpogba, who will be one of the leading tacklers in the conference this year at Mike linebacker, and then Aubrey Burks at safety," he said. "All three guys are talented and we added experience in our secondary through the transfer portal."
Brown also believes his special teams will be an asset this season with punter Oliver Straw and long snapper Austin Brinkman returning.
"The good thing is that the media has not been successful in recent years as far as predicting the Big 12, so I think that bodes well for us," he said.
The coach does have a point, but it will be interesting to see if his team can make the jump that Baylor made in 2019 when it was picked sixth and finished in a tie with Oklahoma atop the league standings, or the Bears again in 2021, when they ended seven spots better than they were picked to finish first. Then, there was last year when TCU was predicted to finish seventh and wound up reaching the national championship game.
"We're looking forward to proving everybody wrong. We won't finish there," Brown concluded.
The team is slated to begin practicing for the 2023 season on Wednesday, Aug. 2.
