Neal Brown Wasn't Fired Up About WVU's Second Scrimmage

Some reasons to be concerned? Or perhaps just one bad day on the field for WVU?

Schuyler Callihan | Aug 19, 2024

Christopher Hall - West Virginia on SI

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West Virginia Mountaineers

The West Virginia football team held a very important second scrimmage on Saturday, the team's final true intrasquad scrimmage before opening up the 2024 season against Penn State. Unfortunately, the afternoon didn't go as smoothly as head coach Neal Brown would have liked.

"We went a little over 100 plays. We hit all four core special teams. Had a Big 12 officiating crew. A lot of really good video. We worked goal line. We worked a backed-up situation. [We] did an opening drive of each half. Got some good red zone stuff in. Did a third and fourth down period. A lot of good work. I wasn’t real fired up about some of it. I thought some individuals really showed up and I thought there was some disappointing things in it as well. Really the last three practices we’ve kind of been trending upward and just not at our best today, and I could make excuses for them but I’m not… we have to be better than we were today."

As Brown mentioned, the Mountaineers have had some good practices lately and you can tell throughout the course of fall camp that he feels really good about this year's team. Having one not so good day doesn't mean fans should be overly concerned about where this group is that.

Brown provided more insight on the scrimmage, giving a quick breakdown of both sides of the ball.

OFFENSE

"Got off to a slow start – picked it up later – some explosive plays. Again, not clean enough. I thought the run game got going during the second part but just not clean enough for a veteran group.

"We held (senior starting quarterback) Garrett (Greene) after two series, he played two series and then (redshirt sophomore quarterback) Nicco (Marchiol) came in and got a lot of quality reps with the ones which we wanted to do so that was good. Preston Fox had a really nice day. He made a couple really big plays and he’s probably been as consistent as anybody we have offensively."

DEFENSE

"We started off very good. I thought we fell off as the scrimmage went – some guys got tired. We played some of those guys a bunch of snaps against the one and two. I think its really important for us, especially at the safety position, to find out who are the guys that are going to step up there.

"We need to play cleaner. We missed some tackles in space and that’s a combination – we got some good offensive skill guys but also, we’re not using great technique. I thought our d-line was effective today, I thought we did a good job of using our hands. Created some TFLs."

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