Character Counts For Brown As He Builds His Mountaineer Program
April 05, 2024 01:39 PM | Football, Blog
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Neal Brown wants character, not characters on his West Virginia University football team.
Culture is a word we hear him use repeatedly to describe the positive locker room environment that he is striving to create here at WVU. It's taken him a while, but the fruits of his labor are beginning to show following last year's 9-4 record that included a last-second win at Baylor to end the regular season and a 30-10 triumph over North Carolina in the Duke's Mayo Bowl.
Third-year co-defensive coordinator ShaDon Brown has known Neal Brown for years and he brought up the subject again following yesterday's practice.
"Our culture is really strong because we've trimmed some fat, and we don't bring in guys that have been cancers at other places, no matter their talent," ShaDon admitted. "If a guy is not a fit for us … coach Brown, sometimes he makes me mad, and I've known him for a long time, and he's like, 'Nope.' I'm mad because I know the player is good, but he's looking at it from the 30,000-foot view of what is that guy, with his character or whatever, is he bringing to us? What is that going to do to our locker room?'
"If it isn't going to enhance the locker room, he's not going to take that guy, and that's why our program is so much better now. Kudos to him," he added.
Character is among the most important and least discussed attributes of any football program. Yet character can oftentimes be the difference between winning and losing.
Going back to the Rich Rodriguez days, the great character of his most successful Mountaineer football teams is rarely ever mentioned. It was those tremendous, explosive athletes and his creative, cutting-edge system that is what people mostly remember.
But do the Mountaineers win the way they did without guys like Scott Gyorko, Jay Henry and Mike Lorello, or punter Phil Brady in the 2006 Sugar Bowl?
How about Ryan Stanchek and Garin Justice, or Reed Williams and Owen Schmitt? And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Quarterback Pat White had many God-given abilities as a football player, but his least appreciated and recognized attribute was his toughness. Go back and watch the 2007 Gator Bowl victory over Georgia Tech and count how many times he carried the football in the fourth quarter.
Rich Rod's best teams were full of leaders who today are successes in life. This is what Neal Brown is presently attempting to establish.
"From a character standpoint, there is your personal character and there is your football character," he explained. "From a football character standpoint, how we've established how we're going to play is really important for guys to strain and to be tough people. If they show that on tape, and the talent is similar, well, we're going to take those tough people first."
Offensive line coach Matt Moore has been with Neal Brown for Brown's entire head coaching career, and he's experienced some of the trial and error that goes into evaluating football players and determining who fits best.
It's an inexact science and oftentimes good instincts acquired through years of experience is required. This year is going to be Neal Brown's 10th as a head football coach making the most important decisions and shouldering the consequences for them.
"I think that's what he's learned becoming a head coach and getting a little older is, 'Hey, maybe this guy is not quite as fast or as tall, but he's going to work harder and he's going to be part of the culture that we want. Let's go with that guy.' That's what we've got going right now," Moore explained.
"We've got we've got a really good culture of kids who get here early, do what they're supposed to do, handle their school, and we are not running around chasing people to get them to do what they're supposed to do," Moore continued. "You will win ball games just off that – even though you might not be quite as talented as you could be because they're going to do what they're supposed to do."
ShaDon Brown agrees.
"What coach Brown has done when everybody wanted to run us out of here is he was still trying to build the culture of the locker room. Man, our locker room is strong. Those guys like each other down there. They hang out with each other. Our culture and the character in our locker room is really good, and that's why when you get down at Baylor whatever we were down, and we come back and win the game, that's because our locker room is right.
"When you have poor locker rooms and you have adversity, people point fingers, and they fight, or they don't come together," he said. "When you have a strong culture or a strong locker room, they pull together and can pull out close games. You see teams that always win close games. Well, they probably have a great culture. That's where we've taken the next step and we've done that with the transfers as well."
Neal Brown said they have arrived at this point through some trial and error after recovering from some poor decisions.
"We've got a process and we really felt over the last two years, if you look at character, academics and athletics, there are really some non-talent things from an athletic perspective that we look at that have been good evaluation tools for us," he explained. "If we do our evaluation process, then you've got to be okay if that player goes somewhere else. And you've got to be okay if they're successful because you've got to believe in the process you are using."
"A lot of times in coaching, you learn that lesson the hard way," Moore pointed out. "You go in somewhere and you say, 'He's a really good player, but he's probably not what we're looking for as far as culture.' Then you keep them and a year later your like, 'Gosh, maybe we should not have kept him.'"
That's not to say that Brown won't take any risks. He said he looks at it from a position room perspective.
"There is going to be some risk involved in some players, but you don't want to have too much risk in a room," he explained. "It's no different than your financial portfolio. Some risk is good because there is a big reward that can come with it, but you don't want your whole portfolio to be risks. It's the same when you are looking at position rooms. The other thing you look at is when you are taking a player with some risk, do you have some really good leadership or good guys that he will fall in line behind?"
Outside of possibly the top eight or 10 teams in the country, Brown believes there is not a huge talent disparity among the rest so having teams with good character and the right intangibles can oftentimes be the separator.
It goes back to what ShaDon Brown said about the most successful teams being able to pull out close games at the end.
"Intangibles really matter," Neal Brown said. "The way they show up is kind of in the dark when you are in your winter and summer (programs), and they show up in the standards of your program when it goes to what are you allowing?
"If you get guys who are about the right things, who have integrity, discipline, accountability and those types of character traits, and on a football side it means something to them, they understand the game, they're tough, they strain and the majority of your team is that way, then you've got a chance," he said. "Those things are really going to make a difference, especially in the amount of close games that we play."
It is also revealed afterward when coaches can evaluate who is willing to compete no matter the circumstances.
"When you get live evaluations and you see live talent, can they bend? Do they use their hands and things like that?" Neal Brown said. "But you can also tell do they take coaching? When somebody is correcting them are they hungry for that correction, and do they look that coach in the eye? Are they B-C-D-E guys? Are they a blame, complain, defend or excuse guys? Are they palms up?
"Those are some things that we talk about in our staff room, 'These are the types of players that we want, and these are the types of players that will get our ass beat,'" he concluded.
West Virginia is scheduled to have a closed practice inside the stadium to conclude this week's work. Practice No. 7 is slated for Monday morning with assistant coaches Andrew Jackson and Bilal Marshall available to speak to the media afterward.
Culture is a word we hear him use repeatedly to describe the positive locker room environment that he is striving to create here at WVU. It's taken him a while, but the fruits of his labor are beginning to show following last year's 9-4 record that included a last-second win at Baylor to end the regular season and a 30-10 triumph over North Carolina in the Duke's Mayo Bowl.
Third-year co-defensive coordinator ShaDon Brown has known Neal Brown for years and he brought up the subject again following yesterday's practice.
"Our culture is really strong because we've trimmed some fat, and we don't bring in guys that have been cancers at other places, no matter their talent," ShaDon admitted. "If a guy is not a fit for us … coach Brown, sometimes he makes me mad, and I've known him for a long time, and he's like, 'Nope.' I'm mad because I know the player is good, but he's looking at it from the 30,000-foot view of what is that guy, with his character or whatever, is he bringing to us? What is that going to do to our locker room?'
"If it isn't going to enhance the locker room, he's not going to take that guy, and that's why our program is so much better now. Kudos to him," he added.
Character is among the most important and least discussed attributes of any football program. Yet character can oftentimes be the difference between winning and losing.
Going back to the Rich Rodriguez days, the great character of his most successful Mountaineer football teams is rarely ever mentioned. It was those tremendous, explosive athletes and his creative, cutting-edge system that is what people mostly remember.
But do the Mountaineers win the way they did without guys like Scott Gyorko, Jay Henry and Mike Lorello, or punter Phil Brady in the 2006 Sugar Bowl?
How about Ryan Stanchek and Garin Justice, or Reed Williams and Owen Schmitt? And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Quarterback Pat White had many God-given abilities as a football player, but his least appreciated and recognized attribute was his toughness. Go back and watch the 2007 Gator Bowl victory over Georgia Tech and count how many times he carried the football in the fourth quarter.
Rich Rod's best teams were full of leaders who today are successes in life. This is what Neal Brown is presently attempting to establish.
"From a character standpoint, there is your personal character and there is your football character," he explained. "From a football character standpoint, how we've established how we're going to play is really important for guys to strain and to be tough people. If they show that on tape, and the talent is similar, well, we're going to take those tough people first."
Offensive line coach Matt Moore has been with Neal Brown for Brown's entire head coaching career, and he's experienced some of the trial and error that goes into evaluating football players and determining who fits best.
It's an inexact science and oftentimes good instincts acquired through years of experience is required. This year is going to be Neal Brown's 10th as a head football coach making the most important decisions and shouldering the consequences for them.
"I think that's what he's learned becoming a head coach and getting a little older is, 'Hey, maybe this guy is not quite as fast or as tall, but he's going to work harder and he's going to be part of the culture that we want. Let's go with that guy.' That's what we've got going right now," Moore explained.
"We've got we've got a really good culture of kids who get here early, do what they're supposed to do, handle their school, and we are not running around chasing people to get them to do what they're supposed to do," Moore continued. "You will win ball games just off that – even though you might not be quite as talented as you could be because they're going to do what they're supposed to do."
ShaDon Brown agrees.
"What coach Brown has done when everybody wanted to run us out of here is he was still trying to build the culture of the locker room. Man, our locker room is strong. Those guys like each other down there. They hang out with each other. Our culture and the character in our locker room is really good, and that's why when you get down at Baylor whatever we were down, and we come back and win the game, that's because our locker room is right.
"When you have poor locker rooms and you have adversity, people point fingers, and they fight, or they don't come together," he said. "When you have a strong culture or a strong locker room, they pull together and can pull out close games. You see teams that always win close games. Well, they probably have a great culture. That's where we've taken the next step and we've done that with the transfers as well."
Neal Brown said they have arrived at this point through some trial and error after recovering from some poor decisions.
"We've got a process and we really felt over the last two years, if you look at character, academics and athletics, there are really some non-talent things from an athletic perspective that we look at that have been good evaluation tools for us," he explained. "If we do our evaluation process, then you've got to be okay if that player goes somewhere else. And you've got to be okay if they're successful because you've got to believe in the process you are using."
"A lot of times in coaching, you learn that lesson the hard way," Moore pointed out. "You go in somewhere and you say, 'He's a really good player, but he's probably not what we're looking for as far as culture.' Then you keep them and a year later your like, 'Gosh, maybe we should not have kept him.'"
That's not to say that Brown won't take any risks. He said he looks at it from a position room perspective.
"There is going to be some risk involved in some players, but you don't want to have too much risk in a room," he explained. "It's no different than your financial portfolio. Some risk is good because there is a big reward that can come with it, but you don't want your whole portfolio to be risks. It's the same when you are looking at position rooms. The other thing you look at is when you are taking a player with some risk, do you have some really good leadership or good guys that he will fall in line behind?"
Outside of possibly the top eight or 10 teams in the country, Brown believes there is not a huge talent disparity among the rest so having teams with good character and the right intangibles can oftentimes be the separator.
It goes back to what ShaDon Brown said about the most successful teams being able to pull out close games at the end.
"Intangibles really matter," Neal Brown said. "The way they show up is kind of in the dark when you are in your winter and summer (programs), and they show up in the standards of your program when it goes to what are you allowing?
"If you get guys who are about the right things, who have integrity, discipline, accountability and those types of character traits, and on a football side it means something to them, they understand the game, they're tough, they strain and the majority of your team is that way, then you've got a chance," he said. "Those things are really going to make a difference, especially in the amount of close games that we play."
It is also revealed afterward when coaches can evaluate who is willing to compete no matter the circumstances.
"When you get live evaluations and you see live talent, can they bend? Do they use their hands and things like that?" Neal Brown said. "But you can also tell do they take coaching? When somebody is correcting them are they hungry for that correction, and do they look that coach in the eye? Are they B-C-D-E guys? Are they a blame, complain, defend or excuse guys? Are they palms up?
"Those are some things that we talk about in our staff room, 'These are the types of players that we want, and these are the types of players that will get our ass beat,'" he concluded.
West Virginia is scheduled to have a closed practice inside the stadium to conclude this week's work. Practice No. 7 is slated for Monday morning with assistant coaches Andrew Jackson and Bilal Marshall available to speak to the media afterward.
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