Back to Basics for WVU During the Bye Week
Mountaineers look to keep Big 12 title hopes alive
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MORGANTOWN -- Coming off his unit's worst performance in 2018, offensive coordinator Jake Spavital and his assistants returned to the basics during No. 13 West Virginia's bye week.
"A lot of it is about just getting back to the basics and the fundamentals and technique," Spavital said. "It's a great opportunity to get back, and start working on some timing issues, working on little things that we thought about over the course of the past six or seven weeks.
"We fell off a little bit. This gave us more time to focus back there. We're getting back to continuity, and we'll get back to coaching that again. That's what bye weeks are for. You can get a lot of the younger guys reps, as well, and you have a couple extra days of preparation for Baylor. A lot of it was just about getting back to the basics and fundamentals. It lets us try to get back on track with things."
WVU's offense, which was cranking out more than 500 yards per game during the team's first five games, was stonewalled by an ISU defense which limited the Mountaineers to 154 total yards and recorded eight sacks -- the last one resulting in a safety -- of redshirt senior quarterback Will Grier.
"The conversations I had with Will after the game and after we watched the game multiple times together -- those were more about him," Spavital said. "He's such a competitor. He was trying to get a spark for us at times. Give Iowa State credit. They did a really good job with tackling, and you saw that Will extended it a little bit and tried to make a play downfield.
"Those guys were running and playing, I thought, a little harder than we were, and they were tackling well. They were tackling him at his legs a few times when we thought that we should have gotten rid of the ball. That just puts us in tough situations, especially with a team that emphasizes dropping eight. They're going to keep everything in front. The more you play behind the chains, the harder it's going to be to get those first downs. We had a lot of conversations about it, and I think he has a good feeling and understanding that, in certain situations, I have to get rid of the ball and live until the next play."
Enter a Baylor team which is allowing 31 points and 407.9 yards per game, but has also sacked opposing quarterbacks 15 times during the season for 119 yards in losses.
"There's not a whole lot you can do about it," WVU head coach Dana Holgorsen explained when asked what could be done to protect his Heisman hopeful quarterback. "To me, it's more of a mindset than it is anything. I'm convinced of that. You're going to get to a point where you really can't -- we aren't going to put full pads on and go tackle people. Now, you can go block people, and you need to do a good job of moving your feet and staying on blocks, or defensively, getting off blocks, which we didn't do a very good job of that and were stuck on blocks all day long.
"That's more of a mindset at this point of the year. You can't go scrimmage -- I guess I could've, but that wouldn't have gone over very well. You aren't doing a lot of that this time of year. They limit how much you can tackle anyway, so, to me, we know how to tackle. Our guys have been tackling pretty well all year long, so it's just about the mindset. That's why I said that I've got to do a better job of getting their mindset right."
If WVU fails to improve in both, then the team's chances for a Big 12 championship might come to an abrupt end tonight.