COMMENTARY
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — All you need to know to be reminded that we essentially know nothing is this storyline preview for next week’s game at Mountaineer Field: Iowa State is aiming to stay atop the Big 12 standings, while West Virginia is aiming to become bowl-eligible.
Such is the jumbled order of things these days, in which the Cyclones are riding euphoric with a make-shift quarterback, and West Virginia, blessed with a spectacular one, can’t figure out how to beat anyone good.
Will Grier, of course, hit pause on his spectacular season Saturday by repeatedly hitting Oklahoma State defenders with errant throws. Four interceptions in the span of 27 passes after throwing five in the previous 267. A performance so offbeat that a forgotten fact re-emerged: Grier may be a redshirt junior with obvious NFL skills, yet he has played the equivalent of only one full college season. Oklahoma State marked his 12th start and it was, by miles, his worse.
Grier might have described the hardships in his own words, if not for head coach Dana Holgorsen making a curious decision to shut off players from postgame media. Who knows the merits of that reaction, but should it flip the page from a 50-39 loss, you couldn’t entirely roast Holgorsen for trying it.
Riled at the repeat experience of an offensive engine — undoubtedly the strength of this team — failing to crank in a do-or-die situation, Holgorsen let fly that things are “about to get really uncomfortable around here.” He bristled at West Virginia’s typically overmatched defense actually forcing three fumbles only to see Grier and the vaunted offense capitalize to the tune of zero points.
All three Oklahoma State running backs coughed up the football Saturday, and each dicey scenario that ensued simply rolled off OSU’s defense like rain off the ponchos in the bleachers. The net result of these sudden-change opportunities afforded WVU? Two Grier interceptions and his first attempt at pooch punting.
“We caught breaks and we could do nothing with those breaks,” Holgorsen said. “Our defense gets out there, gets us the ball and we can’t even get a first down. We give it right back to them. It’s just bad.”
When the defense forced a fourth turnover, safety-turned-cornerback-turned-safety Kenny Robinson raced 39 yards with the pick-six and the offense was, for the moment, off the hook. The 20-point deficit had been trimmed to 30-24, the game was manageable again, and the roughly 20,000 fans who prematurely exited somber and soaked were now dripping with second thoughts.
Too bad the Mountaineers’ offense couldn’t complete the mission.
Three losses constitutes a trend. Those 24 points against Virginia Tech weren’t enough, nor were the 24 at TCU. Deduct a punt-block TD and Robinson’s return from Saturday, and the offense’s 25 points against OSU weren’t sufficient either.
On 10 possessions, West Virginia failed to gain a first down.
“I thought there were struggles at everything,” said offensive coordinator Jake Spavital. “Like we always had one guy who wasn’t on the same page. We take a sack because it’s a miscommunication with an offensive lineman, or we drop a ball, or Will’s high on a throw. And I thought our physicality was missing.”
With no gimmies left on the schedule, and no recent success running the ball, and Grier’s cloak of wizardry removed, Spavital’s first year back faces a challenging conclusion.
“I don’t want to make it where Will has to play a perfect game every single time he walks out there on the field,” he said. “Some of these other guys have got to step up and make a play. I kept trying to emphasize that in the second and third quarter, to quit waiting around for Will to make a play to get us out of this jam.”
Holgorsen recognizes what his offense is capable of, and what his defense isn’t, and this season those calculations intersect at high-scoring games which are the Big 12’s DNA. West Virginia has won three such games already, albeit against the trio of Kansas, Baylor and Texas Tech and their 1-14 aggregate league record.
Oklahoma State presented a missed opportunity to earn credibility, to beat someone memorable. Amazingly, conference front-runner Iowa State presents the same opportunity, something no one outside of Matt Campbell’s immediate family could have predicted.
Calling this a once-in-a-century Cyclonic event isn’t fully accurate, considering it has in fact been more than a century since Iowa State last won a conference title. That was 1912, the year Titanic sank.
That ship never saw the iceberg coming, unlike West Virginia’s offense, which sees only too clearly the obstacles out in front.