Y’all. Y’ALL.
I’m writing this a day after Charlotte, and my voice is still a little rough from Saturday night.
My wife and I made the trip down for the Duke’s Mayo Classic, and this was our first major college football game together in person. I’m not even going to lie—I was nervous.
Virginia would score, and then we’d answer. Then they’d answer again. At one point I kept looking over at my wife like, “We good? We still good?”
But that’s what I walked away from this game thinking about.
This team has
some fight.
We’re 3-0. We just beat a ranked Virginia team on a neutral field, and now we’re getting ready for Big 12 play. We should be ranked in the top 25, but that’s another story.
So let’s go through it position by position, like we always do.
QUARTERBACK: A
I’ve been saying this since before the season started, and I know some people thought I was being overly optimistic.
Michael Hawkins Jr. is a problem.
10-of-17 passing. 190 yards. Two touchdown passes.
And then he turns around and runs for 123 yards and three more touchdowns.
Five total touchdowns.
He accounted for every touchdown we scored.
That’s the part that really stands out to me. Every time Virginia looked like they had finally figured something out, Hawkins found another way to hurt them.
I don’t care what anybody said about him before he got here. He’s a Mountaineer now. And Saturday night, he looked special.
RUNNING BACK: A-
Cam Cook deserves some credit too.
123 yards on 30 carries.
No touchdowns, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a huge part of this game. He kept pounding away at that defense and making them tackle him over and over again.
That kind of work wears a defense down.
Sometimes you look at the stat sheet and miss what actually happened on the field. Cook’s fingerprints were all over this win.
WIDE RECEIVERS/TIGHT ENDS: A
DJ Epps.
Three catches.
92 yards.
Two touchdowns.
Three catches.
That’s it.
But every time he touched the ball, something happened.
Both touchdowns came when we needed somebody to make a play, and Epps made the plays.
That’s what you want from your guys. You don’t necessarily need 10 catches. You need somebody who can make the catch when the moment gets big.
OFFENSIVE LINE: B+
The offensive line helped pave the way for 246 rushing yards between Hawkins and Cook.
That doesn’t happen without some work up front.
Was it perfect? No.
There was a stretch where Virginia’s front got pressure, and that illegal formation penalty turned a manageable third down into a much tougher situation.
But considering the stage, the opponent and the physicality of the game, I thought this group held up pretty well.
DEFENSIVE LINE: B-
I want to give credit where it’s due.
Ashton Woods came up with a sack on a huge third down that helped force Virginia into a missed field goal.
That may end up being one of those plays people forget about when they look back at the final score, but those are the plays that matter.
At the same time, I wasn’t completely comfortable with some of the running room Jekail Middlebrook found.
There’s talent here. I just want to see more consistency.
LINEBACKERS: C+
I’m not going to put this game on the linebackers.
They weren’t the reason the game got as tight as it did.
But if we’re talking about where this defense needs to grow before we get deeper into Big 12 play, this group is on the list.
There’s still some figuring out happening here.
I believe they’ll get there. But we need to start seeing that improvement show up on Saturdays.
SECONDARY: B-
I actually want to correct something here.
My first reaction was to look at Pribula throwing for nearly 200 yards and two touchdowns and think our secondary had a rough night.
But then I went back and looked at the numbers.
Twenty-three of his pass attempts were for 10 yards or less.
That tells me something different.
They weren’t giving up a bunch of explosive plays. They were making Virginia work underneath.
Now, the two touchdowns still bother me, especially the red-zone execution. There’s work to do there.
But there’s a difference between giving up underneath completions and getting completely torched over the top.
I thought this group was more disciplined than the first impression suggested.
SPECIAL TEAMS: D
This is the one where I’m not going to sugarcoat it.
Jack Cassidy did his job. He hit his field goal and handled the kickoffs.
But the punting was a problem Saturday night.
There were multiple times where the field-position battle went against us, and when you’re playing a game this tight, you can’t keep handing the other team short fields.
Your defense can only bail you out so many times.
This needs to get cleaned up before conference play.
COACHING: A
Rich Rodriguez had these guys ready.
Night game. Neutral site. Ranked opponent.
Virginia wasn’t going to just roll over.
They kept answering us, and we kept answering them.
That matters.
There’s a toughness starting to show with this team. There’s a belief there that I don’t think we’ve seen consistently enough in recent years.
And maybe that’s what I’m most encouraged about.
We’re 3-0, y’all.
Oklahoma State is coming to Morgantown.
Big 12 play is here.
Let’s go get it.
LET’S GO MOUNTAINEERS!
