Photo by Steve Chamberlain WVU safety Kekoura Tarnue brings down Utah’s JJ Buchanan Saturday at Mountaineer Field at Milan Puskar Stadium in Morgantown.

MORGANTOWN — West Virginia linebacker Chase Wilson was jogging off the field after a lopsided 48-14 loss to Utah Saturday night. He passed by some of his teammates who were walking with their heads down. He said to them to stop walking, start jogging and pick their heads up.

“We don’t need to hang our heads,” Wilson said. “We don’t need to be acting like well, it was me or receiving any sympathy. We’re gonna lose with pride, and we’re gonna win with pride. Hard edge is not something that only comes around when you win or when things are good. It’s a way of how we do things all the time. The same way you run on the field before the game with 00, we’re going to run off the field.”

In some ways, that’s what West Virginia needs to do. The Mountaineers looked lost and were embarrassed in their home stadium. In front of a crowd of 53,000. There wasn’t much positive. Last week, against Kansas, WVU was also embarrassed.

However, the season is still early. This is just Week 5 of the season, and WVU is just 2-3, one game shy of .500.

The issue is that this is the second blowout loss in a row. It’s easy to start snowballing losses. Once that happens and it gets deeper into the season, it’s harder to rebound. But there’s still time. Rich Rodriguez needs to remind himself of that.

“We’re not halfway through yet,” Rodriguez said. “You don’t want to sit back and say this is ‘OK.’ I’ve won big and lost big.”

There are definitely areas that need improvement. The quarterback is a constant question each week, the defense didn’t look hot, and the special teams even struggled. But there’ve been some highlights and good moments this season. There were a couple of drives where the offense looked competent, and wide receiver Cam Vaughn is a star. And, of course, WVU beat Pitt in overtime and can hold that over the Pitt fans’ heads until the series renews in 2029.

Even after two ugly losses, Rodriguez isn’t going to make drastic changes.

“I don’t gotta come up with a whole new offense or defense or different practice plan,” Rodriguez said. “But whatever we’re doing, we gotta do a little bit better.”

Rodriguez will look in the mirror to make sure this is the right process for the time, and if it’s not, adapt accordingly. That’ll happen after he watches tape on Sunday.

“You have to make sure your process and the things that you are doing are right,” Rodriguez said. “I study that every day. I’m looking at what I did now, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, what other people are doing. I don’t just sit back and say, ‘Well, I’m gonna do the same old thing,’ be stubborn and not adapt the way you gotta adapt. There are certain things in the process that are non-negotiable, and that’s the things that we got to get better at.”

The players need to improve, too. The coaches can coach the players only so much. The players produce the product on the field, and like Rodriguez said, the coaching wasn’t good; he said the playing wasn’t good either.

Luckily, there are a lot of veterans on the team to lead and help get the younger players on board. Redshirt senior center Carson Lee was approached by a younger player earlier this week looking for advice. He told him not to dwell on the losses because the season goes by fast. The more time you spend thinking about the loss, the more the season passes you by.

“This game goes so fast,” Lee said. “You look back, it seems like, shoot, two weeks ago, I was a freshman in college, and now I’m in my sixth year, halfway through the season. This thing’s almost done with.”

There are still seven more games this season. Sure, the Mountaineers have three losses, but everything is still mathematically right ahead of them. WVU is one game shy of being .500 en route to a bowl game, can still make the Big 12 Championship, and if it wins that, can make the College Football Playoff with the automatic bid.

Those might seem like a long shot with how the past two games have gone, but it’s possible. Like Wilson told his teammates, WVU has to pick its head up before it gets ugly and those possibilities jog by.

“I think if you just continue to have the right attitude, and it’s like I said, we fight till the very end every single game,” Lee said. “If you can just continue to have that attitude and know that you have to be 1-0 every single day and get better, things are going to fall into place. Whether that’s this year, next year, or whenever that may be. But I know I’ve got a lot of trust in these guys, in this program, and in coach Rod to get things going in the right direction.”