Quick Hits: Gallagher's Role Increasing, Defensive Troubles, Rushing Success + More

WVU head football coach Neal Brown met with the media to discuss this week's game against BYU.

What's wrong with the defense

"We got to be better in our run fits. The edge of our defense has got to be better. We got to get production out of our SPUR. And when I say production, just doing your job. The way our defense is built, the edges of our defense are the edge of our defense. We've got to maintain that edge and it's got to be a hard edge. We're not doing a good enough job and teams are picking on us in the boundary B gap, so we got to shore that up and we're missing too many tackles. And some of those missed tackles are because we're not fitting it right up front which leads to a bigger gap than it needs to be. And then we got to do better in our zone drops because we're giving up easy completions and what it comes down to is we're sinking further than we need to or we're not on our landmark. All of our zone drops in our zone coverage are based on landmarks - depth and location on the field. We may be off by a yard or two but that yard or two is giving up completions."

Rushing for 140+ in 11 straight games

"I think proud is the right word. Now we've got to keep it up. I don't know if we've been tracking 140 but we've known we've ran the ball and we've been one of the better rushing teams since we made a calculated decision with about three games to go last year that for us to be successful, we need to steer in that direction. We've had some injuries up front so there's been a moving bunch up there. We've had several different tight ends play over those eleven games. We've had a number of running backs be the leading rusher over that time. And we've played multiple quarterbacks, so I think that is a stat that sticks out and that we're proud of."

So many weapons in the rushing attack

"CJ (Donaldson), that's the best he's played since Pittsburgh. Jahiem (White), we saw that. That's who he was all week and I think he can do that. And then Justin (Johnson) didn't play as well this week but a week ago against Oklahoma State, his reads were really consistent and I thought he got downhill. So between those three guys, I think they give us an opportunity and we'll use Rodney (Gallagher) in the run game too. I think the challenge for us is to be different, not put the same stuff on tape all the time."

Rodney Gallagher getting more involved

"Rodney is getting better as a route runner but he's really good with the ball in his hands. And it's hard sometimes to dictate receivers throwing them the ball because there's a lot of variables there but you can hand them the ball and it's a little easier. He's been practicing better too."

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