Neal Brown Stands by Fourth Down Decision

West Virginia head coach Neal Brown defended his decision to punt on fourth and short

PITTSBURGH - The West Virginia Mountaineers came up shy of upsetting the 17th-ranked Pitt Panthers Thursday night. The game seemingly came down to a few plays, but a decision by Neal Brown just over the midpoint of the fourth quarter, sprung controversy among Mountaineer fans, and the media.

Of course, it’s easy to second guess a decision when it doesn’t produce a positive outcome but for Neal Brown and his staff, the decision to go for it on fourth down comes with analytics before the ball is even kicked into the air.

Neal Brown had a choice with a little over six minutes left to play in the game. The Mountaineers were up seven and facing a fourth and about a foot just inside of Pitt territory at the 48. Brown opted to pin the Panthers back.

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“(With) A little over six minutes to go in the game, it was fourth and about a foot - we’re up seven. So, you can pin them, and we did,” said Brown before he mistakenly said the Panthers had to go “98” yards to tie the game but it was 92. Still, his point is valid. “If you go for it there and you don’t get it, then they’ve got a short field and they had three timeouts. So, best answer I can give you, if I had to do it again, I would make the same decision,” said Brown.

“If you look at what they’ve done traditionally, they’ve been really, really, really good in short-yardage situations,” later added Brown. “And so, if you go back and look at it, it was ¾ of a yard probably and so I felt like, if you take the whole scope of the game, their drive before that we got two sacks and we got them into third and forever and we played really well defensively on back-to-back drives, so I felt good about it.”

Prior to the fourth and short, West Virginia faced three third and short yardage situations – twice they ran the ball. Mathis broke off a 23-yard run to the Pitt one-yard line earlier in the fourth quarter on a third and one and he picked up a third and two in the third quarter.

Again, it’s easy to say to go for it but it’s a bitter pill for fans to swallow considering freshman CJ Donaldson just picked up two yards the previous play and he made several big plays throughout the night, finishing with 125 yards on seven carries, and never once not gained at least a yard. 

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