Neal Brown goes in-depth on decision to call plays, delegate work as head coach

Neal Brown led West Virginia to its best season of his five-year tenure, winning nine games and capping the season with a Duke’s Mayo Bowl victory over North Carolina 30-10.

The Mountaineers head coach joined On3’s Andy Staples to discuss what changed WVU from a five-win team in 2022, to a team that was one game back from tying for second place in the Big 12 Conference in 2023.

“I think quality leaders should always look inward first,” Brown told Staples, who asked how his coaching ideologies have shifted. “And I had a lot of things I had to do better and for me. We had a lot of success at Troy, and we had just been okay [at WVU] and definitely underachieved in 2022. What I kind of undervalued was that there’s there’s more to the job here than there was a Troy, but not like night and day like people think.

“College football had changed, so it added to your plate. Working in player retention year around, the NIL stuff, you’re working those two things every single day. There’s not a day goes by that I don’t deal with some kind of NIL or player retention.”

West Virginia finished the 2022 college football season 5-7 (3-6, Big 12) and missed qualifying for postseason contention for the second time in four seasons by one game. In 2020 and 2021, the Mountaineers barely emerged bowl-eligible, completing both seasons with six wins after the regular season. This past year’s nine-win season has fans excited for what is to come.

At the end of the 2022 season, Brown made a “conscious decision as a leader,” to focus on his strengths, and meant letting his staff in on the game plan. Brown cites this as a major reason for the shift in offensive dynamics between 2022 and 2023.

“I was really a collector of the information,” Brown continued. “I was really taking their ideas and putting them into a game plan and organizing it and then calling it on game day. And I had really good delp in the game and what it does for me as a head coach, is it helps me manage the game better. The offensive play-caller has the most influence of anybody in the game non-player-wise. … I’m not saying I’ll do it forever, but it’s definitely the right thing for us right now.

“We’ve made so many changes to what we do. We were Air Raid forever, that’s kind of my background and we decided probably in November of 2022 that that wasn’t who we were going to be moving forward. We’re gonna have a dual-threat quarterback, we’re going to run the football and concentrate on being explosive in the passing game.”

Brown’s Mountaineers will look to improve on their nine-win season from this past season and could be seen as a potential dark horse contender for the Big 12 Championship in 2024 if they can surpass the 10-win threshold.

That remains to be seen, but West Virginia will start that journey with a massive non-conference season opener on Aug. 31 against Penn State inside Milan Puskar Stadium.