Great run down. Can you highlight returning starters and 2-deep? Are some of these players new or transfers?
Football Penn State Opponent Preview: West Virginia
- Thread starter Richie O
- Start date
It was a night game last year. Should be a night game this year, but Fox.
Thank you for posting. Do you think your O-Line is as good as last year? I know you lost a couple guys I think and one of them was highly drafted.
How weak are your CBs? You picked up some portal CBs. You think they are solid?
Should be a great game in a great environment.
Offense (* denotes returning starter):
QB: Garrett Greene*
RB: Jahiem White* or CJ Donaldson*
TE: Kole Taylor*
LT: Wyatt Milum* (preseason All Big 12)
LG: Tomas Rimac*
C: Brandon Yates*
RG: JaQuay Hubbard (did not start last year, but did start in 2022)
RT: Nick Malone
WR - X: Traylon Ray*
WR -Y: Hudson Clement*
Slot: Rodney Gallagher* or Preston Fox.
Notes on O:
- Jahiem White did not play vs. Penn State last year as a true freshman. He came on as the season wore on and as he continued to grow within the offense. He ended the year as WVU's leading rusher and arguably best offensive player not named Garrett Greene - he finished the year with 842 yards rushing at 7.7 ypc, with a 21 carry, 204, 1 TD effort vs. Cincinnati where he also caught a 75-yard TD pass on a wheel route.
- WVU did lose Zach Frazier to the NFL (Steelers), but his replacement Brandon Yates was our starting LG the last two years and played center for the bowl game win over UNC after Frazier went down with injury. All five of WVU's starting OL have started games over the past couple of years.
- Traylon Ray or Huddy Clement both are deep threat guys at WR for Garrett Greene. Kole Taylor is a security blanket at TE - and at 6'7" is a huge target with great hands who is deceptively fast. WVU has a true freshman 4-star recruit WR named RicDarius Farmer who is making a lot of buzz in fall camp. He is going to play.
- Garrett Greene is the straw that stirs the drink. With 772 rushing yards last year & 13 TDs, he is clearly a dual threat guy. But, he wants to beat you through the air. He really isn't a run first guy, and Neal Brown is very aware that WVU needs Greene to be healthy in November, so you're not going to see WVU running a lot of QB draw, QB zone read stuff. Greene will take off if a play breaks down, and will do a lot of RPO in the red zone. But, he loves the deep ball. He wants to bomb away, and Neal Brown lets him do it -- Brown took the reigns off of Greene after the TCU game last year (game 5). The offense is a completely different style than what WVU showed in game 1 last year in Happy Valley.
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DEFENSE:
DE - Sean Martin*
DT - Fatormah Mulbah*
DT - Edward Vesterinen*
Bandit - Tyrin Bradley*
MLB - Josiah Trotter (former four-star recruit)
WLB - Trey Lathan*
Spear - Aubrey Burks* (Preseason All Big 12)
FS - Anthony Wilson*
SS - Kekoura Tarnue (Jacksonville St. transfer)
CB - Garnett Hollis (Northwestern transfer)
CB - Ayden Garnes (Duquesne transfer)
Notes on D:
- WVU is really, really high on MLB Josiah Trotter, a redshirt freshman who only redshirted last season because he got injured in preseason camp. He is a former four-star recruit who is big, powerful and fast. A throwback to a Don Nehlen type of LB for WVU.
- Yes, we are projecting to start a Duquesne transfer at corner - Ayden Garnes. Yes, we are very concerned. However, WVU played Duquesne last year, and Garnes blanketed WVU's speed WR, EJ Horton, throughout the game. WVU's coaches were so impressed that they pursued him aggressively in the Portal (tampered?) and snagged him. Our coaches have been raving about him in camp. We'll see.
- WVU brought in a pass rushing specialist from Gardner Webb named Ty French, a 6'3" 250lb speed merchant who Bruce Feldman listed in his Top 100 "Freaks" of College Football heading into this season. He is going to be WVU's designated rush guy. If #47 is in the game, then WVU is blitzing.
- WVU has a 2nd string MLB named Reid Carrico, who transferred in from Ohio State. A former four-star recruit, he is having a great camp, will start on special teams, and is going to play a lot in red zone situations.
- WVU's overall best defensive player is probably Trey Lathan, who is projected to start at WLB, although he may start at MLB (and they'd move Trotter to WLB). Lathan was injured in WVU's 5th game at TCU and lost for the season, but is back to full speed. He is a difference maker, and had a great game last year vs. Penn State, as he had two open field solo tackles on Nick Singleton.
- Penn State folks are probably familiar with Fatormah Mulbah, who transferred to Morgantown from Happy Valley. WVU thought he'd simply be a piece to the puzzle last year, but he really came on late in the season and is now a projected starter. He's been a pleasant surprise. At 6'3" and 305 lbs, he is run stopper in the middle and has a high motor for a big dude.
- Defensively, WVU mixes man and zone looks in the secondary, but WVU DC Jordan Lesley blitzes a lot. Expect Lesley to try to heat up Allar more as the game wears on August 31, but my guess is that WVU will start pretty vanilla to ease the new secondary in, and lean on WVU's run stoppers in the front 7.
- Aubrey Burks is WVU's play maker on defense. He forces turnovers, is extremely fast, and loves to come downhill and hit. He'll be NFL bound after this season, and WVU will play him at safety, "spear" - a safety/LB Hybrid, and even at corner in Nickel packages.
Look, you don't lose a Center like Zach Frazier to the NFL and not feel it. His replacement is Brandon Yates, who was actually a starting OG last year, and he's very capable, but he's not anywhere near the player Zach Frazier is or was.
However, WVU does return preseason All-Big 12 LT Wyatt Milum (some publications have him preseason All American) who will protect Garrett Greene's blind side, and WVU's road grader is returning starter LG Tomas Rimac, who is just a mean dude. If it is 4th and 1, this season, we run right over No. 55 Rimac. The right side of our line will feature JaQuay Hubbard, who did not start last year, but started in 2022, and Nick Malone who is a Morgantown native and a heck of a story -hometown kid does good.
Long story short (too late), I expect WVU's OL to be good. However, I do not know if they'll be able to replicate last year's success where Garrett Greene was only sacked 5 times on the season, and WVU led the P5 in rushing.
I can see why you guys have some confidence coming into the year. I feel a bit mislead about what returns particularly on defense for your team. I think we have ourselves a ballgame here fellas. I'd be happy with any W but particularly if we pull away at the end.
Edit: I would add that I think the weak defenses of the Big 12 are a big part of the offensive success for WVU #28 scoring offense in 2023. I do think you have a good offense, but I see the following offensive outputs in last year's results against the following ranked scoring defenses:
PSU #3 defense 15 points LOSS
Duquesne not rated 56 points
Pitt #76 defense 17 points
Texas Tech #73 defense 20 points
TCU #81 defense 24 points
Houston #108 defense 39 points LOSS
Ok St #93 defense 34 points LOSS
UCF #61 defense 41 points
BYU #100 defense 37 points
Oklahoma #41 defense 20 points LOSS
Cincinatti #102 defense 42 points
Baylor #114 defense 34 points
UNC #74 defense 30 points
WVU was the #78 scoring defense last year. You faced the following ranked offenses and their output.
PSU #55 38 points LOSS
Duquesne not rated 17 points
Pitt #116 offense 6 points
Texas Tech #66 offense 13 points
TCU #10 offense 21 points
Houston #86 offense 41 points LOSS
Ok St #30 offense 48 points LOSS
UCF #8 offense 28 points
BYU #121 offense 7 points
Oklahoma #3 offense 59 points LOSS
Cincinatti #33 offense 21 points
Baylor #73 offense 31 points
UNC #7 offense 10 points but missing Drake Maye
The defense baffles me though because you held a few top offenses (albeit against poor B12 defenses) to lower/reasonable outputs (TCU, UCF, Cincinatti, UNC minus Maye). But then you gave up a lot against some weaker offenses (PSU although we did play 3 of the top 4 scoring defenses and we were the other one of the top 4, Baylor, Houston).
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- If we would have run for 200 we probably wouldn't have passed for 350.
- Yes we torched their secondary. Hopefully we can do so again.
For the first time in the Neal Brown era, the team has some serious momentum and swagger.
However, man for man, Penn State is the better team. It's going to take a monumental effort from WVU, and some breaks to go our way, to pull off the upset at home.
But, this WVU team is very capable and can win this game if PSU underestimates them, or is a bit off. Some interesting intangibles in this one do favor WVU - whereas WVU has a ton of experience returning with all coaches in the same system, Penn State is breaking in new systems and new coordinators on both sides of the ball. That's not the be all, end-all, but noteworthy.
We left a lot of yardage on the table. If Singleton breaks one big run, that's probably enough to have the rush yards up near 200.
My point was we had a very solid game, but didn't approach spectacular and we still nearly had 500 yards of offense.
Much appreciate you coming over. Love the talk and hopefully we keep it up for the next 3 weeks.
On a note, new coordinators, but the systems aren't being overhauled. I don't have every detail, but it sounds like Kotelnicki adapted the terminology of his playbook to what we labeled things (example given is Trips and Trey for 3 WR on the same side of the field, we kept our name instead of his).
Allen supposedly did the same.
The hope is that AK opens things up better with what he adds. Expecting more wide zone. Lots of shifts and motion. I believe Allar is going to be more of a run threat while having more quick passes to the RBs compared to rarely keeping on reads and having few check downs built in.
I think Allen is going to be tasked with adding his own style to what Diaz developed. I don't think Allen will gap jump his DL as much as Manny did and will run the defense through the LBs more. Mike LB Kobe King is expected to have a monster year and Will Tony Rojas has the ability to be our best LB since Parsons. Abdul Carter is now a Edge player / part time LB. I think they are taking away a lot of his box run play reads and just letting him play downhill.
The big thing for us will be how our Corners do. I'd expect us to play 4 vs you guys, perhaps 6. I don't know the starting rotation yet, but expect it to be AJ Harris and either Cam Miller/Jalen Kimber.
