MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — West Virginia head coach Neal Brown and defensive coordinator Jordan Lesley share belief that effort and physicality weren’t the cause of most problems the Mountaineer defense endured during Saturday’s 34-12 season-opening loss to No. 8 Penn State.
But as the team looks to move forward ahead of Saturday’s 6 p.m. contest against Albany, both Brown and Lesley made it clear the unit was nowhere near good enough in what was largely an all-around forgettable Week 1 showing.
“Defensively, our issues were not because they knocked us off the ball. That wasn’t the case,” Brown said. “We did not do a good enough job in any of our run games. We did a really poor job in our pass lanes, because we were too fast. When we were running d-line games on passing downs, we were too fast and left big gaps. I haven’t calculated the scramble yards, but it’s quite a bit — probably 50 or more. We over-pursued the ball in outside zone.
“It’s about simplifying what we’re trying to do in the run game and making sure our cutback lanes are in better spots. I didn’t have an issue with our physicality, but our execution was not very good. They out-gapped us on a couple of unbalanced plays.”
Brown singled out linebacker Josiah Trotter and safeties Anthony Wilson and Jaheem Joseph for strong individual efforts in the setback. West Virginia forced an early turnover when defensive lineman TJ Jackson recovered a Drew Allar fumble. That was the Nittany Lions’ only turnover and about all that went wrong for Allar, who was otherwise efficient and completed 11-of-17 passes for 216 yards with three touchdowns.
“We weren’t consistent enough,” Joseph said. “We had spurts in the game when we executed and spurts when we didn’t, and it showed with a lot of explosive plays.”
Allar guided a unit that finished with 457 total yards and 409 over the final three quarters when it amassed all of its point production. The Mountaineers did not record a sack or quarterback hurry.
“His completion percentage was not very good with pressure. Now they know that, too, and there’s a lot of seven-man protection,” Brown said. “Pick your poison. If they are going to seven-man protect, you have to bring a lot of people, and if you do, you’re leaving yourself in man coverage. You have to pick and choose. He played very well, but he had space. There was never a time in the game where he was uncomfortable and that’s on us.”
PSU’s success on first down was pivotal as the Nittany Lions totaled 224 yards on 28 first down plays. Each of Penn State’s first four touchdowns, which covered a total of 128 yards, came on first down.
“The easy answer is pressure. The hard part of pressure against what we know they like to do and what that guy has always done is that’s when he’s always making you adjust,” Lesley said. “You can pressure yourself into a touchdown play on first downs if you’re not careful. We had a couple on first downs where we sent pressure and we were very effective at it.
“We saw two personnels we guessed we would see and as you’re adjusting through that, you’re staying pretty basic to figure out where are they going with this and what are they trying to do. Some of those first down yardage plays came in that scenario. When we settled in, I thought we were fine.”
All but 49 of PSU’s 22 rushing yards came over the final two quarters following a 2 hour and 19 minute weather delay at halftime. The Nittany Lions also scored in the final seconds of the first half and on the opening possession of the second half to turn what had been a competitive 13-6 game into a three touchdown margin.
“We talk about effort, aggression and toughness and I didn’t see a lack of any of those things. That aggression sometimes can bite you and against good football teams, when you make those mistakes, they find them,” Lesley said. “They’re mistakes that are very fixable. I hate that we have to fix them in that kind of atmosphere and team in Week 1, but it is what it is. The last thing I told them before we left the hotel is we don’t need to do anybody to do anything special. We just need you to do your job. That’s tough in that kind of environment.”
Ultimately, being out of position on several key plays and allowing Allar to settle in and develop rhythm proved problematic for a defense that surrendered nearly 20 yards per completion and 7.6 yards per play.
“From a team perspective, sometimes stats don’t tell the story but in this game, they do,” Brown said. “Rushing, we averaged 2.7 and they were 5.3. They rushed for 222 and we rushed for 85. The big reason why is negative plays — something you can’t versus those guys and snaps caused ours. Turnover margin is 3-1. The middle 8 [minutes] really is where the game was decided — 14-3 them.
“Our rush defense was not good. We gave up explosive runs and a lot of quarterback scrambles. The explosives killed us and the quarterback run game. We generated zero pressure. He’s struggled with pressure and we didn’t generate any. That was disappointing. We struggled when they went unbalanced and tempo’d us, so I’m sure we’ll see that again.”
