West Virginia faces Pitt at home on Saturday in the Backyard Brawl.
Head coach Neal Brown spoke in his weekly press conference on Monday, recapping WVU’s game against Duquesne, welcomed Pitt, and gave injury updates ahead of this week’s matchup.
Duquesne Recap
The story was still the same from Brown who was happy with how the Mountaineers faced the adversity of the rain delay.
“We took care of business on Saturday night,” Brown said. “Slow start, responded well after the delay and got a convincing win as we should have. It was a fun night post the delay.”
Special Teams: “Special teams, the positives are our operation times both field goal and punt are really good. It was great to see kickoff-we, touchbacks and really g good hang time for touchbacks. And then we continue to get pressure on opposing teams extra points and field goals.
“We got to improve our punt coverage. Our expectation, out standard is to be elite there and we weren’t. Then obviously the miscue. Disappointing start, defense gets a three and out, Duquesne actually goes backwards on their first series and then we don’t do a good job,” Brown said.
Defense: “Defensively, I thought we played really physical. played great against the run,” Brown said. “Third down deficiency was good, we had two interceptions. Obviously where we got to improve is on pass coverage. It’s really a few guys are playing with bad fundamentals.”
Offense: Offensively, we had 600-plus yards. 300-plus rushing, 300-plus passing. I thought we ran really efficient third and fourth downs. We were really good in the red zone, we’ve been good in the red zone two weeks in a row. Then we had a bunch of explosive plays.”
Secondary’s Second Chance
Saturday was the second chance for Brown and the defensive staff to see the secondary in action, and it was still ugly. Brown said they are going to implement some scheme changes and playing time will also be adjusted starting this week.
“We were pretty vanilla the other night. We’ve made some adjustments since Penn State and hoping that because we were better, we may not give up some pass plays,” Brown said. “They’re not getting fired, some snaps are just going to get decreased… I really feel like our personnel while it’s not perfect, our personnel is better than what we’ve performed. Schematically there’s a couple things that we can do that we knew after the Penn State game, we just didn’t make those changes in the Duquesne game because we didn’t want to put them on film.”
Brawling
WVU welcomes Pitt in the Backyard Brawl this week, a game and a stage that Brown is excited for.
“I would say, this is the biggest rivalry from a football standpoint that I’ve been apart of,” Brown said of the rivalry. “I hope it’s electric. I know this is one that’s been circled for a long time, it’s been sold out for a long time. A lot of people coming into town for this.”
Brown added this is the first true home night game on a Saturday that WVU has hosted since 2016, and hopes his team will redeem themselves from two weeks ago when they lost to Penn State on national television.
“It’’s an exciting week,” Brown said. “We won’t have any problem getting our guys ready. Exciting time, ABC, primetime. Looking to redeem ourselves form the past time we had that “
Injuries
The list of injuries from Saturday seems to be in an optimistic trend for WVU.
Devin Carter – Practiced on Monday, expected to play if everything stays the same with him
EJ Horton – WVU hopes Horton can make his season debut, he practiced Monday
Asani Redwood – Redwood has been out and recovering from his injury, but he’s fully participating in practice, according to Brown
Justin Johnson – Johnson will play Saturday. He could’ve played against Duquesne but was held out for precautionary reasons
Oliver Straw – Straw’s outlook is the bleakest as they are in wait and see mode with his ankle
Traylon Ray – He was limited today, but Brown is hopeful he can play Saturday
