WVU coaches, players share the blame

As my post-game analysis, I respectfully submit my column in today’s DA, written after wrapping up this blog and after that disaster of a football game. Apparently nothing can go right lately, so that link cuts off the last few paragraphs of the column, so I’ll present it here so the thing actually makes sense.

While everyone will look to one person or one reason to point a clear finger at for these early struggles, it just isn’t that simple.

Part of the problem is the new coaching staff. 

Part of it is the loss of last year’s key players. 

And another part falls on this year’s players and an inability to execute the fundamentals at critical times.

As former coach Rich Rodriguez often reminded us, the children’s movie “The Lion King” teaches us that what’s in the past no longer matters.

That’s one lesson this year’s team would be well-served to learn if it hopes to find its stride quickly enough to even be competitive in a weak Big East Conference.

In the end, a situation this bad can’t be blamed on just Bill Stewart and the coaching staff. As the column points out, players made plenty of mistakes that a coach can’t do anything about. That surely will only compound the misery for Mountaineer fans, who just are looking for someone, anyone to blame right now. 

The rest of the season looks bleak right now, but the good news is that the Big East has been so weak early this season, anything is possible. No one will want to look at the good news today, but the defense held Colorado scoreless for the final 55 minutes of regulation. It wasn’t a great performance by that unit either, but it was good enough to win a lot of games with even a competent effort on offense.

There are a lot of questions about the offense at this point, but I’m going to save a lot of those to be addressed in the coming days (hey, I’ve got to have some content, right?).

I do have to say, that 9-3 prediction I gloated about making last week is now looking far too optimistic. This team might not convert a single third-down against Auburn. Marshall has been battle tested early and could very well compete with this team. Ditto for essentially every Big East team not named “Syracuse”. I would have to say 8-4 or 7-5 is looking more likely every day.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Comments (1) : Sep 19th, 2008 by Patrick Southern
Filed under College Football : Tagged under , , , , , , ,

One Response to “WVU coaches, players share the blame”

  1. fat loss 4 idiots Says:
    October 8th, 2008 at 10:08 pm

    Hey more pics please, you must balance the text and the pictures :D

Leave a Reply