Neal Brown knows he must 'win now,' but can West Virginia's head coach fix all the Mountaineers' problems?

Neal Brown has $17 million reasons he could stick his head in the sand and refuse to call a spade a spade, but instead, West Virginia’s embattled head coach candidly addressed the fact he faces a make-or-break season in Morgantown come the fall.

“I don’t stand in front of you in a delusional state, like, ‘Oh, yeah, we’re going to keep doing it that way,'” Brown said in an offseason press conference Monday.

“I’m keenly aware that we need to win. Every decision that we’ve made within the last six to eight weeks has been that, ‘Hey, we need to win.’ Time will tell, but every decision that we’ve made or that I’ve made has been for us to have better results in 2023.”

The Mountaineers went 5-7 in 2022 — the program’s third losing season during Brown’s four-year tenure. They won two of their final three games, but they had an inconsistent offense and one of the worst defenses in the entire nation (No. 116 in scoring, No. 108 in yards per play allowed). West Virginia fired athletic director Shane Lyons — the man responsible for hiring the former Troy coach and handing him a balloon buyout — in November, leading many to speculate that Brown was next out the door. 

Neal Brown is still owed $13 million by the end of next season, but that’s a more palatable figure for WVU to swallow, which is why Brown is fully-aware the Mountaineers must show legitimate progress in 2023 with a schedule that includes an opener at Penn State and a rematch in the Backyard Brawl at home.  

“We weren’t good enough,” Brown said, taking ownership for his team’s struggles last season. 

“And that’s on me. I accept it.”

What went wrong for West Virginia in 2022

West Virginia upset Oklahoma and Oklahoma State, but it squandered away potential victories against archival Pitt and Kansas. The Mountaineers were non-competitive against the likes of Texas Tech (48-10) and Iowa State (31-14). It all culminated into a frustrating season without a bowl appearance. 

First-year offensive coordinator Graham Harrell left for the same job at Purdue in January, so Neal Brown reshuffled the rest of WVU’s offensive staff, including hiring a pair of young coaches (Bilal Marshall and Blaine Stewart) who he considers hungry recruiters and good teachers. Last season was the first year Brown didn’t call plays, but that’s likely to change in 2023. 

“We underachieved on offense,” Brown said of last season’s unit.

Notably, Brown retained all five defensive assistants despite the group’s poor showing in 2022.  

“A lot of times you see this across the football landscape, but the easiest thing is to say, ‘Let’s start firing people,'” Brown explained. 

“I’m not saying that’s the wrong reaction all the time, but I don’t think that’s the right answer in a lot of cases. You see a lot of mass firings, but did they get better or not? A lot of things go into that.”

Most of WVU’s defensive metrics regressed last season —  namely takeaways, yards per play allowed, third down defense, tackles for loss and red zone touchdown defense — but the Mountaineers have actually played solidly on that side of the ball since Brown took over in 2019. 

They led the Big 12 in yards per play allowed (4.65) in 2020, and in 2021, WVU ranked first in the conference in red zone defense and it allowed just 23.3 points per game. 

Part of the team’s problems last fall was the depth chart had been gutted by the transfer portal. WVU is already among the hardest Power 5 jobs to recruit to, but in a new one-time transfer rule world, Brown found out quickly the difficultly of roster retention, too. 

More than 20 players entered the portal after the 2021 season, with WVU losing impact starters like defensive lineman Akeem Mesidor, who had 10.5 tackles for loss for Miami this year, linebacker Josh Chandler, who led Colorado with 100 tackles and 11.5 TFLs, and safety Jackie Matthews, who started at Mississippi State. 

“The transfer portal hurt us last year on defense more than I expected,” Brown said.

The portal hasn’t been kind to WVU this offseason, either, with 17 players leaving the program. Still, the losses haven’t been quite as significant as only four departures have ended up at Power 5 schools to date (defensive end Lanell Carr (Indiana), wideout Kaden Prather (Maryland), defensive lineman Jordan Jefferson (LSU) and edge rusher Taijh Alston (Colorado). At the same time, Brown grabbed a couple plug-and-play pieces from Penn State, NC State, LSU and Kent State, and saw guys like tailback CJ Donaldson and wideout Sam James stick around. 

“Deposits and withdraws,” Brown said. “We hope we are bringing in more than we are losing.”

As he said previously, time will tell. 

Neal Brown identifies three Es that WVU must address this offseason

For now, WVU will spend “the next nine months” trying to shore up three deficiencies — what Brown dubbed the three Es: Errors, Efficiency and Explosive Plays — that plagued both sides of the ball last season. 

Can West Virginia eliminate all the dumb penalties (last in the Big 12) and turnovers? Can it be better on 1st down? Can it get off the field on third down? Can he dial up more chunk plays (last in the Big 12 in plays over 10+ yards)?

Brown knows what went wrong in 2022. He knows he better have some answers for those issues come September, too. 

Or else. 

“We need to win now,” he said. 

“It is what it is. I think that’s fair. We need to have a winning season. How do we make improvements within a nine-month period to get to where we need to be within the fall, which is a winning football team playing an extremely difficult schedule?”