Oct 4, 2022 5 min read

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – All week, before flying to Austin to face Texas in what would turn into a disastrous Saturday night defeat, West Virginia football coach Neal Brown had stressed four points.

If his team were to win this road matchup against a talented football team that had played No. 1 Alabama down to the wire and that had two losses on its resume, each of which turned on a single play, those four areas of emphasis must be won, he told them.

In the aftermath of the 38-20 defeat, which really ended early as Texas rushed to a 35-7 lead, Brown admitted his team won none of those battles.

The four keys were:

• Explosive plays.
• The rushing game
• Turnover margin
• Field position

There should have been a fifth area, apparently.

Toughness.

“We were beat up in the game,” Brown admitted. “We had some significant injuries, four concussions (including the one to running back CJ Donaldson that Brown says will keep him out of the Baylor game on Oct. 13).”

Brown wanted to wait until his next media session, when he has more information, to address the concussions and injuries and availability of players.

Brown looked at those four areas in his postgame media analysis and again during Tuesday’s news conference.

We start with explosive plays, because that is where the game really was lost.

“Explosive plays wasn’t close,” Brown admitted after the game. “I don’t know what the number was, but everyone knows that was a lot to a little.”

On Tuesday, he put the number at 11 to 6. We went back and looked at the numbers on the play-by-play sheet. Here is how it broke down:

Texas had 18 plays of 10 or more yards, WVU had half as many. Texas had six plays of 20 or more yards. WVU had half as many.

WVU had one running play, a 14-yard run by Justin Johnson Jr. of more than 10 yards. Texas had five runs of more than 10 yards.

And how do explosive plays occur? Often this is played out best in yards after catch, an area where Texas had a whopping 167 yards after catching the ball and WVU had 105.

What’s more, Texas missed two passes to wide receivers so open they could have run all the way to Houston without getting touched by a WVU defender.

Next came the rushing game. This was an area hyped all week, each team with a “three-headed monster.”

WVU’s never got going.

“They outrushed us. They mixed up their front. It was strength on strength and their guys won,” Brown said.

The Longhorns had 110 rushing yards, WVU 61. That’s less than half the rushing yards the Mountaineers totaled against Virginia Tech.

Texas’ Bijan Robinson outrushed the Mountaineers himself, 101-61.

While Brown felt his defense was strong against the run until late in the game, a case can be made that Texas didn’t run a lot because it was so successful in the passing game.

WVU didn’t run because it couldn’t.

In fact, the only offense WVU could muster came in the second half when it needed some quick scores to get back into contention but the only way they could move the ball was with short passes, eating up the clock.

WVU had only one fourth-quarter possession and just three in the entire second half. Its third-quarter score came after an 18-play, 65-yard drive that used up 7:51. WVU’s last four possessions netted three TDs, but it took 52 plays and 18:16 off the clock to do it.

That was all they could do and most of it was done with Texas more than happy to let them do it with a big lead.

Next was field position through special teams. Brown noted that came out about even.

But did it?

WVU won the toss and elected to receive, not your normal decision, but they were hoping to get some field position and use their ball-control game.

Instead, they failed to return the opening kickoff to their 20-yard line.

On their second possession, faced with fourth-and-2 at the Texas 48, Brown opted to go for it rather than to punt, pin Texas deep and keep field possession in his favor. The pass from JT Daniels to Bryce Ford-Wheaton failed, Texas had the ball at midfield and drove in and scored for a 7-0 lead that it would never relinquish.

And finally, there was the turnover margin.

“I don’t think either of us turned the ball over,” Brown said.

That was true, but, in a way, WVU was a minus-2 in this regard. Brown noted there was a fumbled snap and a potential interception they failed to make.

Put it all together and that’s how WVU lost to Texas.

“We didn’t force any takeaways, they ran the ball better than we did and they made a bunch of explosive plays,” Brown said, wrapping it up. “They came out and played better than we did.”

And tougher.