West Virginia comes into their bye week having just lost to Texas, and having only beaten a lowly Virginia Tech squad and an FCS school in Towson. For head coach Neal Brown, the issues run deep, but the biggest issues remain the health up and down his roster as well as West Virginia’s secondary play over the second half of their season.
On Saturday night in the Mountaineers’ 38-20 loss against Texas, the biggest story of the game was the loss of freshman running back CJ Donaldson. Donaldson would get injured as he got tackled and a Texas defender’s knee appeared to hit his neck. Donaldson would be down on the ground and would be carted off the field before being transported to a local hospital.
Eventually, Donaldson would return home with the rest of the team, but Brown gave an update on him and praised both team’s medical staffs for their work at the game.
“[Donaldson’s] recovering, he’s in our concussion protocol,” Brown said. “Really want to credit our medical staff, but also Texas’ medical staff and their operations at the stadium.”
As far as the rest of the team is concerned though, Brown said his team got physically beat up in the game against Texas, adding there are multiple guys dealing with injuries.
“We got beat up pretty good in the game. I don’t want to comment on anybody else until later in the week,” Brown said. “I think we had four concussions in the game.”
Another key injury the Mountaineers sustained against the Longhorns was the loss of tight end Mike O’Laughlin. O’Laughlin would get hurt on West Virginia’s second drive of the game. Last season, O’Laughlin was sidelined with a torn ACL, and Brown said they are going to run more tests on him to determine his status going forward.
As for on the field, there were many areas where the Mountaineers struggled. For the first time all year West Virginia struggled to run the ball, as their offensive line struggled to contend with the amount of depth Texas had up front.
“We didn’t as good a job getting movement,” Brown said. “We didn’t do a good enough job getting movement on our double teams and getting off to the second level.”
Another key area the Mountaineers struggled were with drops. Brown said a lot of it comes down to hand placement and technique, as you watch the ball in with your eyes. Brown said he counted seven drops in the game, with six of those coming from wide receivers.
“The timing was fine, that really wasn’t an issue. It comes down to fundamental errors,” Brown said of the drops.
Brown added, the biggest thing is getting your eyes in a straight line behind the ball.
“A big thing when you’re catching the ball is you want to catch the ball in front of your face. Anytime you catch the ball [in front of your face], that’s an easy track,” Brown said. “When you start trying to catch the ball [at the side of your head], now you have to track that ball all the way behind and it’s a really hard track.”
On defense, it was more of the same for West Virginia with the secondary continuing to be an issue. Brown said the goal is to get as many guys playing as possible.
“We’ve got to figure out who are best pieces are back there. Are there other people that can play that we haven’t given the opportunity to play, are there guys that played in the second half who maybe deserve to play more,” Brown said.
Two of those possible pieces include Andrew Wilson-Lamp and Mumu Bin-Wahad. Brown said he will take a hard look at both of them this week during scrimmages for the younger players and that will help determine the amount of playing time they get moving forward.
“Both of them did some positive things for their first action against power five level talent,” Brown said. “They also did some things that hurt us. They did play and I think they both showed signs of potentially being able to help us there. Those are two guys who are going to get long looks today and tomorrow.”
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