MORGANTOWN — The focus of the season opener against Robert Morris was on Rich Rodriguez’s return and who the starting quarterback was going to be, but it was Zac Alley’s defense that went under the radar and completely dominated, aside from a few plays.

Although Robert Morris is an FCS school, Alley’s defense still held the Colonials to an impressive 123 yards of offense, forced two fumbles and allowed only three points.

“I thought we did well,” linebacker Chase Wilson said. “We forced two turnovers today, gave up one explosive in the first half that shouldn’t have happened, but for the first time being out there together with a bunch of new guys, I thought we did well.”

Most of the time, Alley’s defense was put in difficult situations. The offense fumbled the ball four times, and a couple of times, set up Robert Morris with solid field position.

Wilson, who started at Mike linebacker, said the defense didn’t get on the offense for putting them back on the field in an unfavorable spot.

“I think just trusting each other and trusting the guys,” Wilson said. “Nobody wants to fumble the ball. Those guys aren’t doing that intentionally, and it’s the first game. We’re working out some kinks right now. We’re getting comfortable there. There’s no panic. We just got to go out there and do our job. And know that those guys are going to come back on offense and do theirs.”

Alley’s defense was one of the question marks coming into the season. He had some success at Oklahoma, but it’s a complex defense to learn with a lot of moving parts. A majority of the roster hadn’t played under his defense, so it would be interesting to see how the players handled it.

Wilson said everyone out there felt comfortable in the system. He said Alley is super detail-oriented and adjusted the defense to play towards his players’ strengths, so all the players have to do is just go out there and play.

“I think that was the theme for most of the guys,” Wilson said. “Coach Alley did a great job preparing us this week.”

From a physicality standpoint, the defense definitely brought the hard-edge mentality. There wasn’t only one hat towards the ball. The defense swarmed, and they actually sacked the quarterback four times. Sacks were an area Alley wanted to improve on for 2025.

“I thought we played very physical,” Wilson said. “I thought we had guys training to the ball, being physical at the point of contact. I’ll have to look back on film. But from just being out there, I thought we did a great job with that.”

Even after a dominant performance, there are still pieces to work on. There were a couple of chunk plays WVU gave up, and against a tougher opponent, those will definitely hurt.

After Week 1, even with all the new pieces, Alley’s defense looked as good as advertised.

“I think we only gave them two third and 10s, which was uncharacteristic for us,” Rodriguez said. “But they couldn’t run the ball, and our front did a good job of getting the guy on the ground. We tackled pretty well. They’re not a high-explosive team, but at the same time, I felt the whole time during the game that the defense was going to be okay.”