MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Neal Brown hardly had a choice.
A 32-yard touchdown run from Kansas’ Luke Grimm, who dashed down the sideline directly in front of West Virginia’s sixth-year head coach, left the Jayhawks with a 28-17 lead and 5:39 remaining last Saturday at Mountaineer Field.
Needing to make up that deficit in timely fashion, the Mountaineers were forced to go into 2-minute mode offensively to start their next series. That became a nine play, 75-yard drive that produced a touchdown, which combined with a successful two-point conversion, allowed WVU trail by three with 3:27 remaining. Following a defensive snap, the Mountaineers got the ball back, again operated at a quick pace, and scored a second touchdown in as many possessions with 26 seconds remaining to rally for a much-needed 32-28 victory.
Despite the abundance of success on the final two series, Brown believes the Mountaineers must continue to pick and choose when to go utilize their 2-minute offense.
“If you do that all the time, you make it really hard on your defense,” Brown said. “If you’re going to do that all the time, then people are working that all the time. When people are going to play us, that’s not the first thing they’re working on. They’re working on how they’re going to play our run game concepts, how they’re going to play quarterback run stuff and how do you stop shot plays. They probably get to the 2-minute stuff later in the week, but at the very start, they probably go, ‘how do we play the run game and keep the ball in front of us on shot plays?’ There’s some cat and mouse stuff that you can do that makes it really hard, and you’re putting your offensive line in a tough spot.”
The play of quarterback Garrett Greene was especially imperative to the success in the come-from-behind win against KU. One week earlier, Greene was in a tough spot when West Virginia got the ball back with 30 seconds left, no timeouts and a four-point deficit at Pitt. He threw three incomplete passes and then an interception on fourth down that sealed the Mountaineers’ fate.
“They did a good job covering it,” Greene said afterward, “and I couldn’t find the open guy.”
That was anything but the case late against Kansas. Greene finished the second-to-last scoring series 4-for-7 with 60 yards and a touchdown, while rushing twice for 7 yards.
On West Virginia’s final full possession, Greene completed both of his passes for 26 yards with a touchdown, had another throw that drew a pass interference penalty and rushed four times for 25 yards. Altogether, the senior signal-caller was 6-for-9 with 86 yards and two passing TDs to go with six carries for 32 yards on his team’s final two scoring drives.
“I felt like our best opportunity was to spread them out and use plays where it was basically one, two, run. That’s not always the best,” Brown said. “You allow him to be who he is. There’s some things he does that are really frustrating to me, but he also does some things that I can’t coach. I can’t coach him to break tackles. It’s give and take. I don’t get really frustrated outwardly. I know there’s going to be some latitude taken by him. I have to be OK with it.
“We got in that 2-minute mode the other day and I was like, ‘if you pull down and run, that’s fine. Get your eyes where they’re supposed to be.’ The kid makes plays. He’s a play maker that can continue to be better as a passer.”
While Greene has proven he can thrive operating a 2-minute offense on several occasions over his two seasons as a starter, his accuracy remains a work in progress.
Greene made it known significant improvement to last year’s 53 percent completion rate was one of his main priorities in his final college season, but thus far, he’s hit on 63-of-11 passes for slightly less than 57 percent.
In three games against FBS competition, Greene has completed 46-of-88 passes for slightly better than 52 percent.
Brown believes better fundamentals within the pocket are a clear starting point for Greene to complete more passes.
“If he would consistently do what he’s supposed to do with his feet, he’d have a higher completion percentage,” Brown said. “I’m good if he’s going to run around. I’m fine with all that. But when the play is in the pocket, let’s be fundamentally sound. That’s what he has to get better at. He throws the deep ball extremely well, and all kinds of different types of deep balls. But in rhythm throws, he has to make sure his base stays the way it should be.”
