That was kind of the motivation this week that’s what we talked about really two things is finishing and finishing well it really says a lot about who you are collectively but more importantly it speaks to who you are as a man. Anytime you have the opportunity to suit up and play it’s part of your resume. You should never waste one of those. Our guys definitely didn’t today. They played extremely hard, extremely physical and it was about as bad of conditions as you could play in. talk about streak busters it's been since 2014 since west Virginia has beaten Oklahoma state. Way too long. Think we broke a 14-game home winning streak. Been a lot of good football teams that have come in here and haven’t been able to get it done and sat in this media room and we were the team that got it done. So proud of our staff, proud of our players. Not only a lot about our players but our staff. Finishing. It hasn’t been the year we wanted. It’s not really the time to reflect, we’ll talk about it, we’ll do something post season to reflect and talk about that. Today is about this win and coming on the road to do it. thought we persevered. We were beat up coming in and I know they were too and we lost several good players during the game and they lost a couple.
Thought offensively we just found a way. We ran the ball, 250 yards rushing, Jaylen Anderson who we really like and we talked about him a lot the last two weeks, he’s come on and he’s got a bright future. He’s got to continue to mature but I think he showed some real signs. He’s got a patient running style but he was able to break two big ones. I thought our tight ends did a nice job of Polendey, he had a rough one on third and short but he bounced back. Him and Treylan Davis. And our offensive line we have a chance to be good. Worked to get those guys to come back and I think they will. Three guys that are playing first team all-league level in Wyatt Milum, Zach Frazier and Doug Nester. The other guys are coming along Tomas Rimac, who’s a redshirt freshman, right tackle by committee Hubbard and Yates got better as the year progressed and all of those guys have eligibility left. Then Nicco, he’s a guy we had a plan to play him. He was a little anxious is the best word. We were going to put him in the third drive of the game and we did that but he comes in the first drive once Garrett got knocked out of the game. Nicco comes in and he manages the game. If you look at this stats he ran the ball O.K., made a couple throws, he made a huge throw on third down versus zero blitz, I thought he showed his talent. But it is pouring down the rain, we played on national TV on the road in his first extensive action and he showed. He wasn’t ready early in the year, he really wasn’t, it wasn’t until the last three or four weeks that we felt like you can tell in practice and it’s a credit to what we do from a developmental standpoint with reps he’s getting. He’s getting 60-70 live reps a week where he has to make plays and he’s gotten better and he showed some real maturity coming in and winning the football game.
Defensively was just gritty. Secondary, we had guys down they’ve been maligned all year and some of that fairly. But here we go they made some nice plays on deep balls on that last drive. Three really nice plays on the ball. To get out of that game defending the pass. We’re no where near where we want to be and we’ll talk about that later. Thought we played the run very well. Kind of bent, they hit a few but we had a lot of no gains and TFLs. Thought our defensive line showed up today. Jordan Jefferson’s had a great year, an all-league year. Dante Stills in his last game, I don’t know if his record will ever be broken the most games played by a Mountaineer. Thought he showed up big today.
Special teams they came after us punting. And Ollie dropped the last one, good thing for him that will be forgotten because it didn’t have any effect on the game but he showed some athleticism and did a good job getting it out. If you look at what he did they pressured him all night and he averaged 44 yards per punt they have a really good punt returner and we didn’t allow him to get loose and we pinned them inside the 20 a couple times. I thought Casey Legg and our operation Brinkman, Legg they bounced back. Field goal was big and they made our PATs. It was tough sledding; water was standing on the field.
Good team win, happy for them will be a fun ride back.
Monday morning, I was driving in and was stopped at a stoplight and I checked the weather it will be 60 and sunny, that will be nice. Fast forward Tuesday morning same stop light checked the weather app 45 and rainy. Man, that’s a quick change. As the week went we knew it was going to. This is our third rain game so we’ve had some experience playing in it. We did some wet ball work in the week and we knew we were going to have to be somewhat conservative from a play calling standpoint if it did get wet.
Garrett Greene is in the protocol.
Here’s the thing it’s hard to call a game because you go in with a plan and our plan was to run the football. We felt that was our best matchup they have some d-linemen that were down and we felt we could run but the problem was we weren’t getting very many yards so we threw the ball more than we wanted to in the first half. Halftime we gathered, the stats say this it’s going to be a three, a three and maybe a big one. So we have to be persistent with it. And we did. We went tempo on the two big ones that Jaylen hit both of those were tempo plays and I think that helped us. QB run game helped us and that’s been a factor for us as we’ve ran the ball better the last three to four weeks.
We took a package in this week of all plays we were really confident he could do and we repped them. And really repped them for two weeks. He can run, he’s a different runner, Garrett is fast and more elusive but Nicco can run and he runs well and is strong. He is 225-pounds give or take. He is strong and has a really strong lower body. And you saw that today he was really close to breaking two. On the drive we hit the field goal he was really close.
I can’t explain that one. I know he made two nice plays on deep balls but I can’t explain the unexplainable on Malachi Ruffin’s play.
I felt pretty good about it. I wanted to get a couple more go-balls called in the second half because he throws a nice ball and they were sitting on everything and I felt like we could run by them. The thought process there was I knew they had another timeout but I also knew they were bringing double edge pressure and it didn’t matter what personnel we had it was going to be very hard to run the football. And the other thing was I didn’t want to have a quarterback read where you had to pull it because that’s what they did and that’s how they fumbled the ball earlier in the game. They had one timeout and we had all three we need to use them and put together a last drive we could have. If we’re going to hit it, we’re going to win it.
We didn’t know he was going to play. We put our plan together to play Sanders. It’s tough, and how many times did they drop back and try to throw it? 42. It’s pouring down the rain, we had good pass rush, we tried to mix up our coverages. I do think he’s talented. They had some drops and some just misses. He did a good job of figuring out where he had some one-on-one matchups and he threw to them even on that last drive. So, the kid is going to be a really good player, I don’t think in general people understand how hard it is to play as an 18-year-old kid against grown people and sophisticated looks that you’re not necessarily seeing in high school.
That’s the one I was talking about that shows you what he is capable of. He knew he was getting pressure, he knew he was getting a-gap, so he took his drop stepped up and delivered the football. I’m glad our fanbase got to see that. People are going to say why didn’t you play him earlier, but to me here’s the problem. If you play guys before they’re ready at that position and things don’t go well you may never get them back from a confidence standpoint. And he went out there in the second half fully confident. Not only in his ability but how to run his team. We motion and shifted a bunch. He could look at the defense, understood what they’re trying to do and in this weather he didn’t make any mistakes that affected our ability to win the game and I’m not sure that would have been the case earlier in the year. He’s matured, he’s worked and I’m proud of him. He’s patient, he’s been a great teammate and the future is bright for him.
Thought offensively we just found a way. We ran the ball, 250 yards rushing, Jaylen Anderson who we really like and we talked about him a lot the last two weeks, he’s come on and he’s got a bright future. He’s got to continue to mature but I think he showed some real signs. He’s got a patient running style but he was able to break two big ones. I thought our tight ends did a nice job of Polendey, he had a rough one on third and short but he bounced back. Him and Treylan Davis. And our offensive line we have a chance to be good. Worked to get those guys to come back and I think they will. Three guys that are playing first team all-league level in Wyatt Milum, Zach Frazier and Doug Nester. The other guys are coming along Tomas Rimac, who’s a redshirt freshman, right tackle by committee Hubbard and Yates got better as the year progressed and all of those guys have eligibility left. Then Nicco, he’s a guy we had a plan to play him. He was a little anxious is the best word. We were going to put him in the third drive of the game and we did that but he comes in the first drive once Garrett got knocked out of the game. Nicco comes in and he manages the game. If you look at this stats he ran the ball O.K., made a couple throws, he made a huge throw on third down versus zero blitz, I thought he showed his talent. But it is pouring down the rain, we played on national TV on the road in his first extensive action and he showed. He wasn’t ready early in the year, he really wasn’t, it wasn’t until the last three or four weeks that we felt like you can tell in practice and it’s a credit to what we do from a developmental standpoint with reps he’s getting. He’s getting 60-70 live reps a week where he has to make plays and he’s gotten better and he showed some real maturity coming in and winning the football game.
Defensively was just gritty. Secondary, we had guys down they’ve been maligned all year and some of that fairly. But here we go they made some nice plays on deep balls on that last drive. Three really nice plays on the ball. To get out of that game defending the pass. We’re no where near where we want to be and we’ll talk about that later. Thought we played the run very well. Kind of bent, they hit a few but we had a lot of no gains and TFLs. Thought our defensive line showed up today. Jordan Jefferson’s had a great year, an all-league year. Dante Stills in his last game, I don’t know if his record will ever be broken the most games played by a Mountaineer. Thought he showed up big today.
Special teams they came after us punting. And Ollie dropped the last one, good thing for him that will be forgotten because it didn’t have any effect on the game but he showed some athleticism and did a good job getting it out. If you look at what he did they pressured him all night and he averaged 44 yards per punt they have a really good punt returner and we didn’t allow him to get loose and we pinned them inside the 20 a couple times. I thought Casey Legg and our operation Brinkman, Legg they bounced back. Field goal was big and they made our PATs. It was tough sledding; water was standing on the field.
Good team win, happy for them will be a fun ride back.
Monday morning, I was driving in and was stopped at a stoplight and I checked the weather it will be 60 and sunny, that will be nice. Fast forward Tuesday morning same stop light checked the weather app 45 and rainy. Man, that’s a quick change. As the week went we knew it was going to. This is our third rain game so we’ve had some experience playing in it. We did some wet ball work in the week and we knew we were going to have to be somewhat conservative from a play calling standpoint if it did get wet.
Garrett Greene is in the protocol.
Here’s the thing it’s hard to call a game because you go in with a plan and our plan was to run the football. We felt that was our best matchup they have some d-linemen that were down and we felt we could run but the problem was we weren’t getting very many yards so we threw the ball more than we wanted to in the first half. Halftime we gathered, the stats say this it’s going to be a three, a three and maybe a big one. So we have to be persistent with it. And we did. We went tempo on the two big ones that Jaylen hit both of those were tempo plays and I think that helped us. QB run game helped us and that’s been a factor for us as we’ve ran the ball better the last three to four weeks.
We took a package in this week of all plays we were really confident he could do and we repped them. And really repped them for two weeks. He can run, he’s a different runner, Garrett is fast and more elusive but Nicco can run and he runs well and is strong. He is 225-pounds give or take. He is strong and has a really strong lower body. And you saw that today he was really close to breaking two. On the drive we hit the field goal he was really close.
I can’t explain that one. I know he made two nice plays on deep balls but I can’t explain the unexplainable on Malachi Ruffin’s play.
I felt pretty good about it. I wanted to get a couple more go-balls called in the second half because he throws a nice ball and they were sitting on everything and I felt like we could run by them. The thought process there was I knew they had another timeout but I also knew they were bringing double edge pressure and it didn’t matter what personnel we had it was going to be very hard to run the football. And the other thing was I didn’t want to have a quarterback read where you had to pull it because that’s what they did and that’s how they fumbled the ball earlier in the game. They had one timeout and we had all three we need to use them and put together a last drive we could have. If we’re going to hit it, we’re going to win it.
We didn’t know he was going to play. We put our plan together to play Sanders. It’s tough, and how many times did they drop back and try to throw it? 42. It’s pouring down the rain, we had good pass rush, we tried to mix up our coverages. I do think he’s talented. They had some drops and some just misses. He did a good job of figuring out where he had some one-on-one matchups and he threw to them even on that last drive. So, the kid is going to be a really good player, I don’t think in general people understand how hard it is to play as an 18-year-old kid against grown people and sophisticated looks that you’re not necessarily seeing in high school.
That’s the one I was talking about that shows you what he is capable of. He knew he was getting pressure, he knew he was getting a-gap, so he took his drop stepped up and delivered the football. I’m glad our fanbase got to see that. People are going to say why didn’t you play him earlier, but to me here’s the problem. If you play guys before they’re ready at that position and things don’t go well you may never get them back from a confidence standpoint. And he went out there in the second half fully confident. Not only in his ability but how to run his team. We motion and shifted a bunch. He could look at the defense, understood what they’re trying to do and in this weather he didn’t make any mistakes that affected our ability to win the game and I’m not sure that would have been the case earlier in the year. He’s matured, he’s worked and I’m proud of him. He’s patient, he’s been a great teammate and the future is bright for him.
