Key to West Virginia's 2021 Offense Is More Explosive Plays

ARLINGTON, Tx – The West Virginia Mountaineers are projected preseason to finish sixth in the Big 12. That was one of the questions head coach Neal Brown was asked about on Wednesday morning, to which he replied with about the only answer you’ll hear from a head coach, preseason polls don’t matter.

However, something we did hear about were the necessary steps Neal Brown and his program are trying to take to have extended success in 2021.

“You can’t control where you’re at in the preseason; I’m sure there’s reasons why we’re there,” said coach Brown. “I’ll tell you like I tell our players, you either prove them right or you prove them wrong. Our goal this season is to prove them wrong. To do that, [we’ve] got to play better; play better and practice better. Our theme for this year is ‘Be Better’ and that’s the objective in every phase is to be better.”

The biggest step, however, is taking a “significant step” forward in completing explosive plays down the field. Brown returns starting quarterback Jarret Doege, who completed 239 of 374 passes for 2,587 yards and 14 touchdowns with just four interceptions. In the ‘run game’ aspect, Doege recorded -101 rushing yards.

“Two things with Jarret [Doege] is pocket awareness and pocket movement and the second thing is accuracy with the deep ball,” said Brown. “That’s something that, we as an offense, we’ve got to be more explosive. We missed too many shots down the field, had people open a lot of times and didn’t connect. We had some drops that were a factor in that, but we’ve got to be more explosive in this league. If you look at the teams that have played offense at an elite level, and there’s several of those over the last 10-12 years, they’re not grinding out drives. They’re explosive plays and with those, you’ve got to be able to break tackles, you’ve got to be elite run-after-the-catchers and you’ve got to get shots down the field. We think we’ve got some guys in Leddie Brown and others that can break tackle. We got some guys in Winston Wright, Sam James that have shown the ability to run after the catch, but we’ve got to make a significant step is having more explosive plays.”

The Mountaineers kick the 2021 season off with a road game at Maryland on Sept. 4.