MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Based on what you read and hear about defensive coordinator Zac Alley, it appears Rich Rodriguez has gotten himself the perfect complementary defensive coach.

West Virginia sideline reporter Jed Drenning has studied Alley's defenses going back to his time with Rodriguez at Jacksonville State, as well as the year prior at Louisiana-Monroe, and what Drenning has concluded is pretty telling.

"He limits big plays, forces tons of third downs and then confuses teams with pressure packages and coverage wrinkles," Drenning said. "That's what makes his defense so good, and it is also a great complement to what Rich does offensively because it's built to face high snap counts."

When West Virginia was enjoying success in the mid-2000s during Rodriguez's first go-around, the general impression was that it was a result of his high-powered offenses and explosive playmakers.

And, yes, the Mountaineers had an impressive array of offensive talent – stars such as Pat White, Steve Slaton, Chris Henry and Noel Devine, which led to more stars such as Geno Smith, Tavon Austin, Stedman Bailey and Kevin White afterward.

The defensive part of it was probably underappreciated, however.

Once Bill Stewart was let go following the 2010 season, the allure of having high-scoring offenses to try and sell more tickets is what steered West Virginia toward the Air Raid for its next two coaches, Dana Holgorsen and Neal Brown.

Holgorsen, benefitting from players left by Stewart and Jeff Casteel's opportunistic defense, won the Big East during his first season in Morgantown and routed Clemson in the 2012 Orange Bowl. 

Since then, unfortunately, it's been mostly .500 or slightly better seasons, middling bowl games and lots of what ifs?

It's been six years since West Virginia cracked the Associated Press Top 25 back on Dec. 2, 2018, the longest such drought in that poll since the late 1960s.

Even Frank Cignetti's team got into the top 20 briefly in 1977 during four years of losing seasons from 1976-79. 

It's been nine years since the Mountaineers last won 10 games, in 2016, which was also the only time WVU has ever won seven Big 12 contests in one year. West Virginia finished tied for second in the conference standings that season.

The Mountaineers have had seven-loss seasons in 2019, 2021, 2022 and 2024 and their overall Big 12 record since joining the league is 53-54.

A big part of the problem for West Virginia has been stopping other teams when it has needed to. Last year, coming off a nine-win season and a Duke's Mayo Bowl win over North Carolina, this became painfully obvious.

West Virginia had a two-score lead at Pitt with four minutes remaining and couldn't finish off the Panthers. 

Kansas State mauled the Mountaineers 45-18, requiring some of the team's key players to be evacuated from their own field at halftime.

Baylor put up 49 points a month later, and WVU fans everywhere became nauseous watching Texas Tech go up and down the field on the Mountaineer defense in the regular season finale.

Memphis did likewise in its bowl victory on Dec. 17.

For the first time in school history, an in-season course correction was attempted to try and turn things around. Not surprisingly, most of the guys on the field last year are no longer in the program.

Oklahoma beat writer John E. Hoover pointed out some of these issues in a column last December trying to make sense of Alley leaving OU for WVU.

"(It is) not a lateral move," Hoover wrote.

From purely a talent perspective, it's certainly going to be a challenge here initially for Alley.

The one thing I commonly heard from knowledgeable people observing West Virginia over the last six years was the Mountaineers needing better players, particularly on defense.

So far this decade, West Virginia has produced only two defensive players taken in the NFL Draft – Arizona linebacker transfer Tony Fields II in 2021 and Fairmont Senior standout tackle Dante Stills in 2023.

Fields was the 153^rd player picked, and Stills was selection number 213 two years later.

No Mountaineer defenders are expected to be selected in this year's draft.

West Virginia's defense last year finished 15^th in the 16-team Big 12 in fumbles forced, 15^th in interceptions, 14^th in scoring defense, 14^th in pass defense, 14^th in total defense and 12^th in sacks.

The Oklahoma defense Alley was involved with last season led the SEC with 12 fumble recoveries, while producing 21 total turnovers. 

It took West Virginia two full seasons in 2023 and 2024 and 26 total games to recover 11 fumbles. Alley mentioned this glaring deficiency following the team's Gold-Blue Showcase earlier this month.

"We forced a fumble down the field, I think, on the second or third series and eight of us were around the ball and nobody got it," he pointed out. 

Alley said his focus is on creating more turnovers, something he talks about daily with his guys. His goal is to generate at least three turnovers each practice.

"We drill it. We talk about it, and we emphasize it," Alley said. "The more we emphasize it the better it will be."

Another area of emphasis is pressure. Alley is not going to sit back and react to what teams are doing to him. He's going to force the issue.

"He focuses heavily on team's third-down tendencies and then forces them into more third downs than they are accustomed to, which is a tough road for offenses," Drenning observed. "At Jacksonville State in 2023, his defense ranked in the top five forcing the most third-down situations. At OU last year, the Sooners were in the top 10.

"One of the many issues West Virginia had last year was its inability to get opposing offenses into enough third downs. We faced the 24^th fewest in the country last year," Drenning noted.

Right now, Alley is rebuilding West Virginia's defense from the ground up. As of today, he is inheriting just five players with starting experience from last year – defensive tackles Edward Vesterinen and Asani Redwood, linebackers Reid Carrico and Ben Cutter, and defensive back Kekoura Tarnue, who played in Alley's Jacksonville State defense in 2023.

More players are expected to be added through the transfer portal before the final roster becomes resolved sometime in the summer.

Alley said his focus is always on players, not plays.

"You put guys in position to be successful based on who's on the team and what they do well," he explained. "If a guy doesn't do something well, then don't ask him to do that. I think we've done a great job of that historically in this defense of putting guys in positions to win.

"So, once we've kind of settled the roster down after the end of the portal window and get into the summer, we'll start making those decisions," he added.

Alley said his No. 1 objective during the spring was to see which players were going to play hard and physical for the entirety of a practice or game.

"Some of it was good, and for some guys, it wasn't," he admitted.

Overall, Alley indicated there is a lot of work that needs to be done before the ball kicks off against Robert Morris on Saturday, Aug. 30.

"Just teaching the game and understanding situational football," he said. "Football intelligence is what I call it. Why are we calling what we're calling? When it's happening, what's going on within the situations of the game that create anticipation from the preparation on the field."

Mountaineer fans are confident Rich Rodriguez is going to move the football and score points this season.

The reason Rodriguez put so much effort into hiring Zac Alley away from Oklahoma was to keep opposing teams from scoring more points than the Mountaineers, something recent WVU defenses have consistently struggled to do to.