WVU coaches not panicking over pass defense but say improvements needed
Trending
MORGANTOWN -- In an odd transposition of word definitions, West Virginia's primary concern is its secondary as it goes into its final preparations for Saturday's 107th renewal of the Backyard Brawl against Pitt.
The game will kick off at 3:30 p.m. at the Panthers' Acrisure Stadium home with coverage of it on ESPN2 but that is not the kind of coverage that is troubling WVU as they look to win their third straight and fifth in the last six games dating back to 2009.
Pitt is unbeaten in two games and WVU is 1-1, having lost at No. 8 Penn State and having won over UAlbany. A victory indicated WVU was moving forward in all areas except for pass coverage, allowing the FCS rival Danes 305 passing yards, including a number of big gainers in third-down and long situations.
"We didn't play the downfield pass as well as we needed to," Coach Neal Brown admitted. "They had 300 yards passing. I mentioned last week that sometimes statistics don't tell the story. Well, sometimes they do. Three-hundred yards passing does tell the story."
Myles Burkett of UAbany's 305 yards grew out of 18 completions from 39 attempts with a touchdown. It came after Penn State's Drew Allar shredded the WVU defense deep with 11 completions on 17 attempts for 235 yards and four touchdowns.
"I didn't think we played really fast back there," Brown said of his secondary after the UAlbany victory. "We got to figure out why that is. We did a much better job of getting aligned and we did a much better job of handling their formations, but we didn't play the ball in the air very well."
It isn't a defect that should be downplayed, but defensive coordinator Jordan Lesley isn't ready to throw in the towel.
"Here's the thing," he said. "We're not down on our guys. We don't feel any differently about them. We're just not executing very, very simple things."
With two new cornerbacks via transfer and some position juggling, something that in his transfer portal era is becoming a yearly ritual, it comes with the territory.
"I think a little bit of it is trying to do too much," Lesley said. "A lot of times you go into a game like this and they feel like they have to have three picks. They get all these different things published about them, whether it's PFF grades or what."
The approach, he says, isn't to try to be Superman.
"Just do what your coaches ask you to do. It's simple fixes, whether it's playing the ball in the air, the depth/width, execution of your drop," Lesley said. "It's Game 2. The sky's not falling. It's not panic time. We've repped a bunch of guys. It's simple little fixes and we'll get it fixed. We're not just going to shut it down after two games, although that would make my fall a little easier."
WVU will be going off a high-tempo, explosive offense in Pitt which works through Alabama transfer Eli Holstein at quarterback and shifty running back transfer Desmond Reid, a 5-8, 175-pound stick of dynamite that leads the nation in 244 all-purpose yards per game.
Holstein threw for 302 yards in a 28-27 comeback victory over Cincinnati last week with 3 touchdowns and is expected to be lighting the fuse against the WVU offense this week.
WVU obviously spent a lot of time this week working on its pass defense but expect it to also try to find a way to get a pass rush that has been lacking to date. With starting defensive tackle Eddie Vesteranin out for the next few weeks, at least, with a leg injury, WVU will probably have to devise some blitzing from a talented linebacking corps that is young and eager and from safies Aubrey Burks or Anthony Wilson to take stress off the secondary's coverage.