Over the past four games, West Virginia’s offense has been clicking, a stark turnaround from the first month of the season.
In the first five weeks of the season (not counting West Virginia’s win over FCS opponent Duquesne), the Mountaineers averaged 19 points per game. Over the last four games, West Virginia is putting up just under 38 points per game. While the offensive outbursts are a welcomed site, they are not happening by accident.
Part of the reason can be simply due to the fact of who is at quarterback. In those four games mentioned, Garrett Greene played a total of two of them, and appeared in one series in another. Playing with a backup quarterback, West Virginia’s mentality turned to survive and advance.
“We’ve probably played pretty good since the bye week and it’s as much health as anything,” West Virginia head coach Neal Brown said.
“If you go through the order of our season, Penn State is one of the top defenses in the country and we just had some missed opportunities… that’s as good a defense as we’re going to play all year. Duquesne, got going there, then at Pitt I felt like we were really going to take off. We had a great week of practice offensively. I felt like that was going to be kind of Garrett’s coming out party, then he gets hurt there on play four or five.”
Brown said because Greene is in his first year as the starting quarterback, it meant backup quarterback Nicco Marchiol was not getting as many reps in practice at the time to help Greene become better acquainted with the offense.
“Nicco came in and kind of managed the game and we did what we needed to do because they (Pitt) were really struggling offensively. And then we get into Texas Tech game where Nicco is the starter but we don’t have much behind him. We don’t have nobody that’s ever played in a game behind him and so you take out a lot of your read game because you don’t want to put the quarterback in jeopardy of getting hurt,” Brown said.
Next was the TCU game where Marchiol was supposed to start before spraining his ankle mid-week. That led to Greene playing and not being 100 percent, but since then, Brown says the offense has been playing at a high level.
“He (Greene) ended up playing better than I thought but then we get that win go to the bye,” Brown said. “We’ve really played at a high level since then. And we’ve been more reading the run game. We’ve been more perimeter oriented as far as getting some receivers involved in that, and we’re throwing the ball downfield better which helps.”
Another thing Brown has done for Greene is design more downfield throws. Greene’s completion percentage ranks last in the Big 12 (53 percent), but he has the sixth-best efficiency rating out of qualifying Big 12 quarterbacks.
“We’re throwing the ball down the field quite a bit more,” Brown said. “I just felt like why throw it underneath if our completion percentage is about the same. Let’s throw it further down the field. With that, we are calling more downfield. We should be closer to 55-60 percent and that’s the next step for Garrett. He’s playing really well.”
Brown’s assertion that West Virginia is throwing the ball down the field more is true. What’s also true is they are completing more passes down the field, but not directly due to a higher volume of throws.
According to Pro Football Focus, West Virginia attempted 22 percent of their passes 20 yards or more down the field over the last four games. This was only a 4.4 percent increase from the percentage of passes attempted at that depth level in weeks 1-5.
At the same time, West Virginia’s completion percentage on throws 20 yards or more downfield is 41 percent over the past four games, which is over a 16 percent increase from the first five games. The Mountaineers are completing more passes down the field, while only attempting less than five percent more of their throws there.
Similar trends can be seen throughout where the Mountaineers are no longer throwing towards certain areas.
On passes that are 0-9 yards down the field, West Virginia has thrown them 3.5 percent less weeks 6-10 compared to weeks 1-5. However, they are completing 73.5 percent of these passes over the past four games, which is over a nine percent increase from the start of the season.
In addition to the changes they Mountaineers have had throwing the ball, they also have ran the ball a lot more, and have had a lot more success.
In the same two stretches being compared, West Virginia is running the ball for 5.4 yards per carry compared to 3.7 in the previous period. At the same time, freshman Jahiem White has come on strong for West Virginia. White has 28 snaps over the first four games, rushing for 52 yards on six carries. In the last four games he has played 71 snaps, rushing 32 times for 254 yards.
West Virginia has run the ball for more yardage, they are doing it a fewer number of times. While the total number of attempts is up by 10 attempts, the number of rushing plays out of total plays called is 61 percent, compared to 68 percent in the first month of the season.
While pinpointing the direct reason for West Virginia’s offensive, a combination of getting healthy, schematic changes, and the arrival of certain players has led to WVU playing their best stretch of offense under Brown.
