Over what is now nearly a six-year tenure, West Virginia football head coach Neal Brown has had to make a lot of decisions.
It is possible that yesterday, October 29th, 2024, he made the best decision for his program yet. He just has to hope that it isn't too late.
The news broke Tuesday morning that Brown had made the choice to terminate defensive coordinator Jordan Lesley and move inside linebackers coach and special teams coordinator Jeff Koonz into the role of running the defense.
Lesley started his tenure with WVU off strong as a defensive line coach in 2019, and stepped into the role of co-defensive coordinator in 2020 before inheriting the main defensive coordinator title in 2021 and holding it since -- in 2020 and 2021, he was a nominee for the Broyles Award, annually given to the best assistant coach in college football.
But sadly, those days are Lesley being considered a top assistant are far behind us, and a look at his most recent numbers tell you all that needs to be known about the state of West Virginia's defense and what it has become under Jordan Lesley.
The Mountaineers enter a bye week during Week 10 of the season sitting at the following ranks nationally in defensive categories: 84th in total defense (382.5 yards allowed per game), 95th in scoring defense (28.4 points per game), 113th in passing yards allowed (261 per game), 117th in opponents’ fourth down conversions, 124th in opponents’ third-down conversions, and 127th in opponents' passing efficiency.
Those are the types of numbers that spell disaster for an FBS team, especially one attempting to compete in the Big 12 Conference against some of the elite college football programs nationally -- the team is last amongst 16 teams in the league in opponents' third-down conversions and passing efficiency and next-to-last in passing yards allowed. In those six statistical categories, they rank 13th in the league at the highest (opponents' fourth-down conversions and total defense).
Looking at those types of numbers, it's hard to imagine that being a defense that competes against even mediocre offenses, nonetheless good ones. And it is surprising that a team with such poor defense is even still in the hunt for an eight-win season and outside shot at the conference championship.
So if WVU wants to correct it's 4-4 start to the season and finish strong against a winnable schedule, the defense is clearly the first thing that needs some work. And the pressure on Neal Brown is heavier than ever before after a slow start to his sixth-season at the helm -- when billboards pop up across town calling for your job to change hands, you know that your job security is tenuous at best.
So it's hard to look at the situation objectively and say that Brown didn't make a good decision in letting Lesley go. In fact, you can look at the relative lack of good decisions this season as a whole -- other than the fake field goal touchdown against Arizona -- and argue it is the best coaching decision made this season so far. Very few decisions Brown has made this year as the leader of this program give WVU a better chance at success to close the season than this one. Though how much of a difference that change can end up making is yet to be seen.
But it's never a great sign when firing an assistant can be pointed to as your best coaching decision -- you never want to get to such a dire point that choice needs to be made. So while we can point to this change as the best choice yet in 2024, a question does need to be posed: did this "best choice" come a bit too late to matter?
Neal Brown is in the business of building WVU into a winning program. And with Brown just 35-33 overall in Morgantown with no AP Top 25 or College Football Playoff rankings to his name yet, the majority of the fanbase have soured on Brown to the point that the aforementioned billboard campaign took off. And the season which many had pegged to be 'the season' for success is now at best going to end with an 8-4 finish to the regular season slate -- and that require a 4-0 record in November.
Now, it's hard to fire a coach after back-to-back 8 win seasons unless you're a program at the tier of an Alabama or Ohio State, which it's hard to argue West Virginia is at. So the end of Brown's tenure isn't necessarily a foregone conclusion. This decisions could go a long way in building good will and shoring up the team's weaknesses for a crucial November.
But we've also discussed before Brown's stubborn streak and his unwillingness to make changes. And while he made the right choice here, one does wonder if these are types of choice he should have been willing to make sooner in the season, or even during his tenure, and where the team would be if he had. For now, Brown just has top hope this change helps solve a glaring problem, and that it's not too late to be meaningful.