West Virginia’s defense shows some major red flags in UT-Martin win

If there is any team on your schedule that you should dominate defensively as a Power 4 program, it’s the annual “cupcake” game against an FCS program. And if you look at the score of West Virginia’swin over UT-Martinon Saturday, you might be inclined to believe that West Virginia did just that – as they allowed the Skyhawks to score just seven points.

But when looking closer at the statistics, it becomes clear that the concerns fans had about the West Virginia defense in Week 1 were not only reasonable – they may have been understated. Because the Mountaineers allowed UT-Martin to rack up 318 offensive yards and 18 first downs, despite walking away with a comfortable 45-point win.

West Virginia allows too many chunk plays against UT-Martin

The biggest culprit for the Mountaineers were chunk plays – plays of 10-or-more yards in the run game, or 15-or-more yards in the passing game. These are the types of explosive plays that exhaust defenses and crush momentum and morale, and in the first half in particular, the Mountaineers were giving up chunk play after chunk play. In total, the Mountaineers allowed nine such plays.

"If we give up those types of chunks next week, it isn't going to be pretty," Rodriguez said.

Simply put, playing such lackluster defense is just not going to cut it for the Mountaineers in Big 12 play, or against Virginia in non-conference Power 4 action next week. If defensive coordinator Zac Alley doesn’t find a solution to his defensive woes soon, it could be a long season for the Mountaineers on that side of the ball. And they will need their improved offense to score as much as possible weekly to get some wins.

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