CBS Sports analyst believes recent WVU staff change could indicate Neal Brown return in 2024
By Joseph Smith
On Tuesday, West Virginia football coach Neal Brown decided to part ways with his defensive coordinator Jordan Lesley. And while a large number of fans are expressing their discontentment with Brown as a head coach, there is at least some potential that the Lesley firing isn't a precursor to Brown losing his job, but getting one more shot at the reigns in 2025.
On the Cover 3 Podcast by CBS Sports on Wednesday, CBS Sports college football analyst Bud Elliott discussed how a coordinator change this late in the regular season often points to the administration and head coach auditioning a replacement for the current staff rather than being indicative of an upcoming pink slip for the current head man.
"I think it's possible the Mountaineer job could open, but I don't think it's probable," Elliott said. "Generally, if you're firing coordinators now, you're probably doing so with the eye towards figuring out if a different guy on staff is better to run it, or if you need to go out of house."
Elliott also laid out the two scenarios for which this type of change is often made at this point in the season. Given both the performance of Lesley's defense and Brown's proclivity to promote loyal assistants to coordinator roles -- such as he did with Lesley in 2020 -- the current situation in Morgantown checks both boxes.
"There's either a real problem you have to get rid of, or you want to be able to audition someone else on staff, to see how they call it," Elliot said. "So maybe that's what Neal Brown wants to do."
Elliott also proposed that with all of the backlash towards Brown in Morgantown, it could be a situation where cutting an assistant can potentially stave off the calls to fire Brown and give him one more opportunity to right the ship.
"It also, like -- sometimes, it just quenches boosters' thirst for blood," Elliott said. "It might show, I know I need to make changes, I know I can't just run this back. We talk often times about, changing coaches -- smart AD's know, like to save their own skin, sometimes they got to change coaches, because that's how boosters get fired up again."
It's no secret looking at Brown's contract that it would be quite expensive to fire him, especially when weighing in the fact that you need to pay an entire new staff to come in and begin rebuilding. And whether or not Athletic Director Wren Baker or the administration above him have yet fully soured on Brown like a number of fans have remains to be seen.
With that in mind, combined with the timing of the entire scenario -- the Lesley firing did come one day after the controversial "Fire Neal Brown" billboard campaign launched -- it is possible that this was a step in resetting the board once more for Brown to get his WVU tenure back on track.