After moving like a machine through its first five games, the West Virginia offense looked like a moped struggling to climb up a mountain against Iowa State, gaining 152 yards and scoring one touchdown.
“I just thought our timing was a little off last week, which was weird,” said coach Dana Holgorsen.
The key to that weirdness wasn’t resolved, even after Holgorsen and offensive coordinator Jake Spavital dug deeper into video.
“Jake and I sat and watched previous games, and our timing wasn’t messed up in those. Why was it off at Iowa State? I have some theories on it, but I don’t think it will be a hard fix.”
In order to get things motoring once again, a return to the basics was necessary as the Mountaineers prepared for Baylor. That meant working on blocking, passing and route-running.
“For receivers, they’re making sure that they’re spatially aware of what’s going on and making sure that they’re hitting their depths,” said Spavital, in his second season as West Virginia’s play-caller. “Some of the issues we had versus Iowa State were in that we weren’t hitting the depths where we needed to be with our route running, and I thought that kind of threw the timing off on stuff.
“So, we went back to more of the basics of making sure we’re doing the little things right, making sure we get to the right depths and making sure that we are going through our progressions and that the timing matches up correctly.”
Despite the depressing stats — one offensive touchdown, 1-of-10 on third downs — quarterback Will Grier believes the Mountaineers weren’t as far off as they looked against Iowa State. Apparently being a hair too early or late ended up making all the difference on multiple plays that failed to come together as designed.
“It’s not something that anybody needs to freak out about, but it’s something we need to sharpen up. And we have,” Grier said. “That should result in moving the chains and scoring points. There weren’t any crazy, huge problems this past weekend.”
That may sound like an understated description of West Virginia’s worst single-game offensive output in two decades, but Grier’s argument is that the plays were there to be made.
The mystery of how the Mountaineers’ timing went from good to bad won’t necessarily be solved until they play again, but Spavital thinks it may just be that they reached the point of the season where a break was needed.
“There’s a fine line you get into with how much you’re running these kids and with what you are practicing,” Spavital said.
“It was good just to re-evaluate everything and get back to the basics of what we do and make sure that we’re crisp moving forward.”
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