The first game of the Rich Rod Era 2.0 is in the books and it was…OK?? There was certainly plenty of good things in the 45-3 win, but the coaches will have a lot of points of improvement to talk about during film study this week.
First the good: mainly – the defense. Yes, Robert Morris is an FCS team, but we’ve seen WVU defenses look much less dominant against other FCS teams in the past. The Mountaineers stifled the RMU offense. The Colonials were held to just 123 yards (53 rushing, 70 passing). They had to punt 11 times, and WVU forced two turnovers. The only points they scored were after a turnover in WVU territory.
Special teams were solid. Robert Morris never returned a kickoff past the 25 yard line, and they did not have any punt returns. WVU made of their kicks, and their return game looked pretty good.
And when the offense wasn’t shooting itself in the foot, they moved the ball pretty well.
But there is that “shooting itself in the foot” part. WVU’s ball security wasn’t good at all. They had four fumbles in the first half, and lost three (one of those led directly to the only Robert Morris points, as mentioned). The fourth was recovered by WVU, but it created a big loss on the play and led to WVU’s first punt.
West Virginia probably passed more than Rich Rodriguez would have wanted to – 23 times, which was about a third of the 73 plays. It was successful: there were 18 completions for 232 yards, one TD, and zero interceptions. It also should help keep future opponents from loading up too much to stop the run. But they also passed a lot out of necessity. The offensive line was not really controlling the line of scrimmage during the first half like you would want to see against an FCS team. In the second half, WVU wore them down, and started having more success (they had more yards rushing in the fourth quarter than the first three quarters combined).
So to sum up, defense and special teams: good so far. Offense: still a work in progress, but still reason to be optimistic.
Things get tougher now, as WVU will travel to Athens, Ohio to take on the Ohio U Bobcats. They threw a pretty big scare at Rutgers in their opener: the game was tied 31-31 after three quarters, but Rutgers won 34-31. Ohio’s offense was led by quarterback Parker Navarro, who had 239 yards passing with three touchdowns, along with 93 yards rushing with a TD. The other running threat was Sieh Bangura (86 yards on 16 carries), and wideout Chase Hendricks was by far the leading receiver (9 catches for 115 yards). The Bobcat defense wasn’t as strong, and hopefully WVU will be able to exploit that.
This could be an interesting test. Can WVU shut down or contain a stronger offense? Can the offense shake off its turnover issues, and do well against a better defense than RMU’s? It is also the first road game. In some cases, this could be a trap game, with WVU looking ahead to Pitt, but I think that with the need to clean up mistakes, plus the good performance against Rutgers, WVU will not overlook Ohio, and pull out a double digit victory.
Notes: Kickoff for the Ohio U game is 4:00, and it will be on ESPNU…The women’s soccer team is back on track with a pair of shutout wins over Duquesne (3-0) and at Dayton (2-0)…The men’s soccer team traveled to #16 Akron, and the result was a 0-0 tie.
