Neal Brown predicts running game will be West Virginia's offensive strength

West Virginia head coach Neal Brown is confident in his team’s running game. The 43-year-old head coach recently pulled back the curtain on his offensive predictions.

“Running the football is going to be the strength of our offensive team, but one emphasis on that is, we’ve got to be more explosive in our pass game, and I think that’s where we got to show some growth offensively, is we ran the football at times very successfully last year. What we didn’t do as good a job of is taking advantage of that run game with some explosive pass plays,” Brown said.

Brown is correct. The Mountaineers rushed for 2,245 yards last season, amassing 172.7 rushing yards per game. That figure was good for 52nd-best in the country. On the other hand, West Virginia averaged 227.5 passing yards per outing in 2022, ranking 72nd nationwide.

It’s no surprise Brown believes West Virginia’s rushing number will only improve this season. In January, the program named Chad Scott the new offensive coordinator. Before taking over, Scott was the running backs coach for four years.

Additionally, Scott was the co-offensive coordinator for his first three years at West Virginia before serving as the run game coordinator in 2022. While Brown is happy with the staffing decision, he still believes Scott must change a few things on WVU’s offense.

“As far as tempo, we want to be able to present ourselves playing fast all the time, then let the game dictate the tempo. But we practice at a really fast pace. We’re going to have the ability to go as fast as anybody in the country, but also, the game and the style of game we need to play that day will dictate how fast we play,” Brown said.

West Virginia has the experience to make any changes it needs. The Mountaineers return all five starting offensive linemen: Zach Frazier, Doug Nester, Wyatt Milum, Ja’Quay Hubbard and Tomas Rimac. Moreover, WVU brings back three pivotal running backs: CJ Donaldson Jr., Justin Johnson Jr. and Jaylen Anderson.

If West Virginia sticks to a ground game, its games will go by as fast as running backs go by opposing defenses. Nonetheless, that certainly wasn’t the case last season. West Virginia didn’t even rank in the top 50 in plays per contest.

Brown will have the opportunity to show off his sped-up offense on Sept. 2, when the Mountaineers kick off their season against Penn State.