MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Much like West Virginia’s season opener as a whole, the play of the Mountaineers’ wide receivers was up-and-down last Thursday in a 38-31 loss at Pitt.
Of quarterback JT Daniels’ 23 completions, 18 were hauled in by wideouts. Half of those went to Bryce Ford-Wheaton, whose nine receptions for 97 yards and two touchdowns led all players.
Yet the play likely to be most remembered from the 105th edition of the Backyard Brawl was a pass from Daniels to Ford-Wheaton that the veteran was unable to hang on to. The drop led to an interception, which M.J. Devonshire returned 56 yards for a touchdown for what proved to be the game-winning score.
“There were a couple balls he had opportunities to make plays on and I hate it for him the play that people remember, but he played at a high level,” WVU head coach Neal Brown said. “You take a couple plays out, that’s the best he’s played here. That’s the way he’s worked going back to January until now. He’s been a different guy as far as work ethic and his level of play has increased.“
There was a catchable second-quarter pass from Daniels to Ford-Wheaton that could’ve produced a long gain, but instead fell incomplete. Three plays later, the Mountaineers were punting inside their 20-yard line.
Although Brown didn’t see drops as an issue during his postgame press conference, his stance changed Tuesday.
“We didn’t catch the ball well enough,” he said. “I minimized that and I was wrong. We dropped six balls in the game.”
In his first game as West Virginia’s offensive coordinator, Graham Harrell was impressed with both of Ford-Wheaton’s touchdown grabs, which covered 10 and 16 yards, respectively, and came in 1-on-1 situations.
“The interception play is all a lot of people remember, but Bryce did a lot of good things and made some tough, contested catches,” Harrell said. “To have the ability to get into the red zone and trust a guy to win 1-on-1, that helps the calls quite a bit. When you get in the red zone, everything gets a little bit tighter and a lot of times you get 1-on-1 matchups. If they can win 1-on-1 matchups consistently, that either makes the run box lighter or puts teams in a bind because they have to cover people 1-on-1 against a guy that’s proven he can win down there. He did a lot of good things and played extremely hard.”
Yet Harrell viewed the performance of the wideouts in similar fashion to Brown, understanding the group left plays on the field that proved costly.
What frustrated Harrell as much as anything was his belief that at least several drops, as well as wideout Kaden Prather’s second-quarter fumble, were in part due to a lack of detail.
“Some of the drops that we had were basically pat-and-go drops,” Harrell said. “That’s something we do every single day. That’s going to be a key for us — understand what you do out here shows up on game day. The reason we do pat-and-go is so that we throw and catch the ball better than anyone else. We’re going to do it more often than anyone else so we get really good at it.”
Prather’s lost fumble allowed Pitt to start on the Mountaineers’ 35, and directly led to the Panthers’ lone touchdown of the first half. It occurred in a sudden change situation — two plays after Lee Kpogba’s recovery of a Bubba Means fumble, which was the only turnover WVU forced.
“The other thing we have to do a better job of is ball security,” Harrell said. “We put one on the ground and every day, we do a ball security circuit. Coach Brown always says, ‘the ball is the program’, and he calls that the program period. Sometimes when you do something every single day, you’re like, ‘why are we still doing this?’ You don’t lock in as much. But those things win and lose football games and that’s the message — when we practice, it’s game reps.”
Moving forward, West Virginia is hopeful a pair of junior college products that joined the program in the offseason — Cortez Braham and Jeremiah Aaron — can become factors. Braham did not catch the only pass thrown his way last Thursday, while Aaron did not play.
“We have plenty of guys in the rotation,” Brown said. “Jeremiah missed some camp time with an injury. He’s a guy we want to get in the rotation that we didn’t play the other night. Cortez can give us some more.”
In addition to the strong output from Ford-Wheaton, Sam James caught five passes for 50 yards. Prather added two catches for 21 yards and Reese Smith finished with a pair of receptions for 10 yards.
“We have to get more opportunities for Sam and KP [Prather], and they can do a better job getting open as well,” Brown said. “We have enough guys. We’re talented enough in that room. We have to be more consistent making plays, which we believe we will.”