Neal Brown addresses West Virginia's secondary depth

While at Big 12 media days, West Virginia head coach Neal Brown was asked about the Mountaineers’ secondary depth, especially given the fact that having a talented secondary has helped make winning the conference possible for teams like Baylor and Kansas State.

As Brown explained, he feels that defenses in the Big 12 have gotten a lot better and the best teams have had excellent secondary play.

“Well, I think each year is different, right,” Neal Brown said. “I think being fortunate enough to be in this league, this is going to be my ninth season either as a coordinator or as a head coach in this league, and to see the evolution.”

As Brown explained, he knows the Big 12 is known for its offensive shootouts. However, he thinks it’s time for that reputation to change. He also thinks that being able to defend the pass is vital in the Big 12.

“One of those is this used to be you just outscore everybody and you win. Well, I think it’s changed. The defense — the level of defensive coaching, the level of defensive players, the emphasis on special teams has definitely changed, and as that has changed, the style of football has changed,” Brown said.

“You’ve got to be able to defend the pass. If you go back and look at us, we played really good defense for three years. In 2020 we played great defense, but we played really good defense, and what we did a good job of is we gave up some completions but we kept the ball in front of us. We were able to tackle, and we didn’t give up the home run shots. So, I think when you look back to whether it was Baylor or Kansas State, what they did a really good job of is eliminating those deep pass plays, and their secondaries both tackled at a high level.”

Knowing this, Neal Brown has done his best to address the secondary.

“One of the things after you reflect back is we knew we needed to get some veterans, so we went out and added Montre Miller from Kent State who started double-digit games at corner, was an All-MAC player; we added Anthony Wilson who’s started over 30 games, was a three-time All-Sun Belt player at Georgia Southern; we added Beanie Bishop who played at two previous institutions with double-digit starts,” Brown said.

“The question you’re asking is do you have to play at a high level in the secondary to win this league? Yes. Do you have to have multiple draft picks? I’m not sure.”

Neal Brown expects West Virginia to be better in 2023

Neal Brown enters the 2023 season on the hot seat after finishing ninth in the Big 12 last year and being predicted to finish dead last in 2023. All of this has made Brown feel disrespected as he expects West Virginia to be better in 2023.

“Well, I think starting on defense, that’s where we had our most issues is, we had to simplify. We need to do a better job of getting lined up. We need to do a better job of minimizing explosive plays. And so what we’ve done is we’ve gone back and we have simplified,” Brown said.

“We’ve really stressed fundamentals. I think we’ll be a much better tackling team this year. And from a coverage standpoint, we’ve gone back and really started from scratch. We’ve added some key pieces in the secondary that have played a lot of football. We’ve added three all-conference players as transfers, so we’re excited about that.”