The West Virginia Mountaineers gave it their all, and looked a lot more competitive than they have recently during a Homecoming showdown with TCU on Saturday. But the Mountaineers weren't able to put enough together to get the job done, and they dropped their sixth game of the season as the Horned Frogs left Milan Puskar Stadium with a 23-17 win. Here are some immediate observations from the loss.
The Offense Finally Has Some Life
After watching game after game of the WVU football offense looking relatively lifeless in recent weeks, things looked better against TCU. Far from perfect, but better.
Scotty Fox Jr. threw for over 300 yards with a completion percentage of over 68 percent and two touchdowns in his second start. The Mountaineers saw two new offensive lineman start their first game and there was noticeably more push in the trenches. Cam Vaughn established himself as a deep threat, even when he wasn’t able to haul in every catch thrown to him deep. The Mountaineers put together sustained drives multiple times in the second half.
Let’s not pretend everything is fixed offensively. There were some drive-killing bobbled snaps, and the offense still stalled out numerous times. But this is an offense that gives a foundation for something to be built upon.
The Defense Seems To Have Found It’s Groove Again
In the first few weeks of the season, the WVU defense looked strong despite the team’s offensive struggles. That all changed once the Mountaineers hit Big 12 play, and they gave up 38-or-more points in all four Big 12 games before the TCU game. The Horned Frogs only managed 23 points in the game against WVU, and West Virginia had six tackles for a loss and recorded their first quarterback sack in over a month. Once again, things were far from perfect, but better than they have been – and while fans want to win now, improvement from week-to-week during this rebuild is still optimistic.
There’s Still Work To Be Done
The two prior observations come with a major caveat – the Mountaineers still lost, and they never were really in the game, even when it wasn’t out of hand. And while we just mentioned that the improvement on both sides of the ball from previous weeks is a good sign not to lose hope in the Rich Rodriguez experiment, another tough loss that moves WVU to 2-6 shows that things still aren’t quite where they need to be.
Will they get where they need to be before the end of the season? Its hard to be that optimistic at this point. A lot of the work that needs to be done is building that foundation for future seasons. But at least something was on display on Saturday night which might allow that.