MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Here at The Lunch, we treasure our time with West Virginia center Tyler Orlosky, who isn’t afraid to needle coach Dana Holgorsen about switching the team’s charter flights from Delta to JetBlue. (The new seatback TVs are nice, but big-boned linemen no longer enjoy first-class legroom.)
Orlosky also ribbed Holgorsen about the late-game playcalling in last year’s matchup against TCU, a come-from-ahead 31-30 loss in which West Virginia went too conservative—and went three-and-out—on its final three possessions. The infamous final series, which began at WVU’s 43-yard line with 3 minutes to play, resulted in three handoffs to reserve running back Andrew Buie and minus-2 yards.
TCU got the ball back and used the final 2:07 to drive for Jaden Oberkrom’s 37-yard walkoff field goal.
“I kind of wished we had passed maybe once, but I’m not the one that makes those kind of calls. It’s way above my payroll,” Orlosky joked Monday. “I think we ran power two out of three times, which isn’t too good when you have six or seven guys in the box who can move.
“We probably should’ve won that game. All we had to do was get a first down with 3 minutes left and we couldn’t accomplish that. We tried three run plays in a row and I think we gained maybe 3 yards.”
Again, it actually was minus-2 yards, but the point stands.
Orlosky said “it’s human nature to question things,” especially after a gut-churning loss, and outsiders took plenty of shots at Holgorsen for not taking shots when WVU had its chance to knock off the eventual Big 12 co-champs. Yours truly devoted a column to it. (As a postscript to that failed series, Holgorsen appeared to bark at quarterback Clint Trickett over play signals, leading to an animated sideline exchange.)
A few steps away was big No. 65, knowing West Virginia missed an opportunity to bury TCU.
“When you run three plays and you only get 3 damn yards, you’re saying ‘What the hell’s going on here?’ But you’ve got to realize the coaches call plays for a certain reason,” Orlosky said. “They get paid their salaries for a certain reason—obviously they know what they’re doing.”
The center, who wasn’t about to blame the loss on a few coaching decisions, made sure to point out his own failings, including a premature third-quarter snap that led to a turnover and a TCU score.
“You can’t have five turnovers and expect to win the game,” he said. “One was on me snapping the ball when I shouldn’t. It comes down to execution and we didn’t execute.”