Mountaineers Now

Neal Brown Explains How WVU Can Get in Position to Win the Big 12

The West Virginia head coach believes his team has a chance to do something special in 2024.

Schuyler Callihan

Christopher Hall - West Virginia on SI
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For the first time since Will Grier, David Sills, Gary Jennings, David Long Jr., and co. donned the Old Gold and Blue, there's a real buzz around the West Virginia football program heading into the season. The Mountaineers are coming off an impressive nine-win campaign which includes a convincing win over North Carolina in the Duke's Mayo Bowl.

Nearly every college football analyst is drawn to Utah, Oklahoma State, Kansas State, and Kansas, while not enough people are paying attention to West Virginia, who returns a ton of production on all three sides of the football.

During a guest appearance on ESPN's Marty & McGee, WVU head football coach Neal Brown talked about what needs to happen in order for the Mountaineers to be in the conversation for the conference crown at season's end.

“For us, if you look back on our year last year, we got beat on a Hail Mary on a Thursday night in a game that we didn’t play very well. To me, that wasn’t bad luck we didn’t play well enough to deserve to win the game. And then we get beat here at home versus Oklahoma State - we’re up by three and one of our punt gunners runs into one of our punt returners. They score the next play and we ended up losing late. Well, if we win either one of those games, we’re in the Big 12 Conference championship game last year. But we weren’t ready. You win games when you’re ready to win them and we weren’t ready.

“We’ve gone out and solidified our pass coverage which was our weakness last year. We got two top level corners and we’re going to be better in coverage than we ever have been in the six years I’ve been here. And then offensively, we’ve got a chance to be one of the best offenses in the country and it starts with Garrett Greene, who I think’s electric. He’s much improved as a passer. He’s under the radar and I’m not sure why. We played three freshmen receivers last year and we’re going to be significantly better there. We’re still a run first offense. We were really explosive with the pass game, but we’ve got to be more efficient. We’ve got to be more efficient on third down, throwing the ball, and we’ve got to be able to throw the ball in the red zone for touchdowns. We did neither of those things last year at a high level. Defensively, we’ve got to stop the run and create more takeaways. If we can do those things then we’re going to positon ourselves with an opportunity to win our league.”

MORE STORIES FROM WEST VIRGINIA ON SI

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Garrett Greene Showing 'Significant Improvement' in Key Area

WVU WR Hudson Clement was at 'Another Level' This Summer

Ranking the Top 10 Offensive Players in the Big 12

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Schuyler Callihan
SCHUYLER CALLIHAN

Publisher of Mountaineers Now on FanNation/Sports Illustrated. Lead recruiting expert and co-host of Between the Eers, Walk Thru GameDay Show, Mountaineers Now Postgame Show, and In the Gun Podcast.

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