{"id":21617,"date":"2019-05-27T12:12:17","date_gmt":"2019-05-27T16:12:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lwosoncfb.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/?p=21617"},"modified":"2019-05-27T12:12:17","modified_gmt":"2019-05-27T16:12:17","slug":"mountaineers-moving-forward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/2019\/05\/27\/mountaineers-moving-forward\/","title":{"rendered":"Mountaineers Moving Forward"},"content":{"rendered":"

Driving down Interstate 79 near Fairmont, motorists will see a prominent billboard showing new Head Coach<\/a> Neal Brown<\/a><\/strong> declaring the arrival of a \u201cNew Era\u201d for West Virginia football.\u00a0Indeed, the West Virginia University athletic department has made it clear that the Mountaineers are moving forward.\u00a0Nonetheless, over the past few weeks, various West Virginia media outlets have run a number of articles about former Head Coach<\/a> Dana Holgorsen<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Mountaineers Moving Forward<\/h3>\n

Those articles felt a little like the inner thoughts of a scorned past lover.\u00a0 Media hung on statements Holgorsen made in a Sports Illustrated article<\/a> that he wasn\u2019t \u201cgoing to get high school kids at West Virginia that we were going to win the Big 12 with.\u201d\u00a0 Several authors have also compared Brown to their former head man.\u00a0 And media renounced Holgorsen when they learned that Holgorsen and Houston had much of their deal worked out weeks before the hire was announced. \u00a0The tone was sour, and many expressed resentment openly.\u00a0 In the wake of this sentiment, fans and media seem to forget that the Mountaineers are moving forward.<\/p>\n

Who is Coach Brown?<\/h3>\n

By all accounts, Coach Brown is affable, intelligent, and a true up-and-comer.\u00a0 Details about Shane Lyons\u2019 recruitment of Brown have continued to emerge.\u00a0 It seems clear that West Virginia began negotiating with Brown days, if not weeks, before the hire was announced.\u00a0 And Brown started filling in recruiting gaps immediately.\u00a0 He saved a recruiting class<\/a> that was heavily in doubt upon Holgorsen\u2019s departure.\u00a0 And he has done and said everything right so far.\u00a0 No doubt there will be an adjustment period, but Brown and his staff have a plan.<\/p>\n

For fans who do not already know, Brown is one of only six FBS coaches to have won ten or more games in each of the last three seasons.\u00a0 That success does not happen by accident. During that span, the Troy football team went 3-0 in bowl games, took Clemson down to the wire and almost escaped with a win, and took down both LSU and Nebraska on the road.<\/p>\n

According to the 247Sports Team Talent Composite rankings<\/a>, Troy was supposed to win nineteen games over that three-year span. Instead, Brown\u2019s Trojans won 31.\u00a0 Brown\u2019s teams only lost a single game they were predicted to win.\u00a0And they won thirteen games they were expected to lose. Troy outperformed its talent composite ranking by an average of 58 spots when compared to Sports Reference\u2019s \u201cSimple Rating System.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

This will only be Brown\u2019s second stint as head coach.\u00a0 But he has prior power five experience at Texas Tech, where we was offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach between 2010 and 2012.\u00a0 Brown also served as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach between 2013 and 2014 at Kentucky.<\/p>\n

How Other Transition Seasons Look<\/h3>\n

For the Mountaineers<\/h3>\n

Transition seasons come in all shapes and sizes. That has been true in Morgantown for sure.\u00a0 Since 1970, West Virginia has introduced six new head coaches.\u00a0 Bobby Bowden<\/a><\/strong> took over the program from Jim Carlen<\/a><\/strong> in 1970.\u00a0 In that first season, the Mountaineers fell from ten wins to eight.\u00a0Frank Cignetti<\/a><\/strong> took over from Bowden in the 1976 season.\u00a0 The Mountaineers dropped from nine wins to five. Then, in 1980, Don Nehlen<\/a><\/strong> took over the program<\/a>. In his first season, the Mountaineers improved from five wins to six.<\/p>\n

Nehlen held the reins of the program until 2001 when Rich Rodriguez<\/a><\/strong> took over. In Rodriguez\u2019 first season, the Mountaineers only won three games, dropping from seven in Nehlen\u2019s final year. Bill Stewart<\/a><\/strong> took over in 2008, and the Mountaineers won nine games, dropping from eleven the prior season. Finally, in 2011, Holgorsen took over the program, winning ten games, when the team won nine in Stewart\u2019s final season.<\/p>\n

Each transition tells a different tale for the Mountaineers. Cignetti was the only coach during this span to take over a team without a returning starter at the quarterback position.\u00a0Rodriguez installed an entirely new offense and defense.\u00a0 Stewart brought the Mountaineers back to the conservative play style Nehlen favored, and then Holgorsen was brought in to inject excitement back into the offense.<\/p>\n

For the Field<\/h3>\n

Other teams have also had mixed success during transition seasons. Michigan, for example, saw immediate improvement in Brady Hoke\u2019s<\/a><\/strong> first season after taking over for Rodriguez. Michigan went from a seven win season to an eleven win season.\u00a0 The Wolverines, however, fell back down to five wins in Hoke\u2019s final season in 2014 before returning to the ten-win plateau in Jim Harbaugh\u2019s<\/a><\/strong> first season in 2015.<\/p>\n

Texas grew impatient with Mack Brown<\/a><\/strong> and replaced him with Charlie Strong<\/a><\/strong>.\u00a0 Strong\u2019s teams ripped off three losing seasons before Tom Herman<\/a> came in from Houston to right the ship. Dabo Swinney<\/a><\/strong> took over Clemson and won nine games in his first season, an improvement from Clemson\u2019s seven wins the season before.\u00a0 In his third season, Swinney\u2019s Tigers hit the ten-win plateau and have never looked back.\u00a0And then there\u2019s Nick Saban<\/a><\/strong>, who took over an Alabama program that was ailing under Mike Shula<\/a><\/strong>. After failing to climb above .500 in three of Shula\u2019s final four seasons, Alabama won seven games in Saban\u2019s transition season, then won twelve the next.<\/p>\n

The Mountaineer Scenario<\/h3>\n

It is difficult to predict what the coming season will look like. In Brown\u2019s first season with Troy, the Trojans won four games, after winning only three the prior season.\u00a0 Brown shifted the offensive and defensive philosophies of the program significantly. And Brown replaced two of Troy\u2019s three top rushers and two of its top three receivers. He also replaced seven of its top eleven defensive contributors from the prior year. Despite these hurdles, his team showed improvement from day one.<\/p>\n

This season, Brown has a tall order. He has to replace third-round draft pick Will Grier as the Mountaineers\u2019 signal caller. And he has to replace the top four receivers from last season. He also replaces several starting offensive linemen. On defense, however, Brown is only replacing four of the top eleven contributors. And the entire running back pool returns. As a result, Brown is walking into a mixed bag, which is why it is difficult to predict how well the Mountaineers can perform.<\/p>\n

For what it is worth, Coach Brown probably can\u2019t predict how good the Mountaineers will be either.\u00a0 He knows they will be, but he is not sure when.\u00a0As he told members of the media during a press conference held on March 26, \u201cI have no idea . . . when we\u2019re gonna be great, but we\u2019re gonna be great. It\u2019s not . . . an if to me, it\u2019s when. We\u2019re gonna be great; I\u2019m just not sure when.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mountaineers Moving Forward<\/h3>\n

What should be clear to fans is this: the Mountaineers are moving forward, without doubt and without reservation. Brown is moving things ahead, and the team is buying in. But, as Brown said, it is simply a matter of when. When the intricacies of Brown\u2019s offensive and defensive philosophies and when his disciplined mentality sinks in, then Brown\u2019s Mountaineers should see success. If this happens within the first few games, then watch out. Either way, it is definitely time to move on from our former staff and focus on what the team will do next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Driving down Interstate 79 near Fairmont, motorists will see a prominent billboard showing new Head Coach Neal Brown declaring the arrival of a \u201cNew Era\u201d for West Virginia football.\u00a0Indeed, the West Virginia University athletic department has made it clear that the Mountaineers are moving forward.\u00a0Nonetheless, over the past few weeks, various West Virginia media outlets […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2744,"featured_media":21622,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[4780,334,3826,1712,1948,237],"class_list":["post-21617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-big12","tag-big-12-football","tag-college-football-predictions","tag-don-nehlen","tag-neal-brown","tag-rich-rodriguez","tag-west-virginia-mountaineers"],"modified_by":"Tony Siracusa, CFB Managing Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2744"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21617\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}