MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — West Virginia’s first chance to play under the guidance of new defensive coordinator Jeff Koonz comes Saturday at noon when the Mountaineers try to limit a Cincinnati offense that’s been among the most productive and balanced units in the Big 12.
Koonz assumed the role of Mountaineer defensive coordinator exactly one week ago when WVU head coach Neal Brown elected to fire Jordan Lesley in a staff shakeup eight games into the 2024 season.
“We just haven’t been consistent. We have to be consistent, we have to get some takeaways and minimize explosives,” Brown said. “From a personnel standpoint, it’s going to be the same people. We’re not like the NFL. We’re not making trades or anything. Who we have is who we have.
“We have to do a better job of getting lined up. Making the change during the bye week will allow us to make some tweaks, but the structure of our defense is what it is. We have to do some things less predictable and the self scout was good for us. We have to be able to mix up looks.”
The last time Koonz called defense was at Cincinnati in 2016 while he was co-defensive coordinator and linebackers coach. Since that season, Koonz spent two years at North Texas and one at Ole Miss before joining the West Virginia staff in 2020.
Koonz has served as linebackers coach/special teams coordinator for the Mountaineers before replacing Lesley.
“We have to get lined up as fast as possible and make sure all 11 guys on the field understand what the call is, how to execute the call and what success they should expect after that call,” Koonz said. “The confidence that comes with understanding what we’re trying to accomplish with each call is paramount right now. We have to make sure of that on every play — not when we’re up by 10 or down by 10. There’s a standard of defense we have got to put on tape on every single play and making sure that they do that.”
Koonz has previously coached defensive backs and linebackers during his career, part of what led to Brown settling on him as defensive coordinator for at least the final four regular season contests this season. He’s also been instrumental to West Virginia’s solid special teams play the last few seasons and the head coach believes Koonz is ready for his opportunity in a more featured role.
“Jeff’s done a really good job anytime he’s been in a leadership role,” Brown said. “He’s been in front of our guys a bunch as a special teams coordinator. He has the front and back end experience to tie it together and he’s called defense before. When the decision was made last week, that’s why.”
The biggest issue plaguing the Mountaineer defense throughout Brown’s sixth season in Morgantown has been an inability to limit explosive pass plays, while the unit has also struggled to generate takeaways.
Among Big 12 teams, West Virginia allows the second most passing yards on average at 261 per game, and the Mountaineers have surrendered the second most touchdowns through the air (17).
Making matters worse is that WVU has intercepted only three of 225 passes attempted the Mountaineers — a figure that trails every Big 12 team besides Cincinnati, which has also picked off three passes.
Oddly enough, fewer passes have been attempted against West Virginia than every other conference team to this point, though eight of the remaining 15 have played one more game than the Mountaineers to this point. The 15.02 yards per completion allowed by WVU is the worst among all FBS teams.
Too often, the Mountaineers have been plagued by miscommunication and subsequent alignment issues that lead to coverage busts and easy completions leading to long gains from the opposition.
Disguising looks and coverages is part of where Koonz hopes to help.
“The structure is the structure. We can’t give them answers to the test,” Brown said. “We have to do a better job disguising whether it’s our movements up front, coverages in the secondary.”
Koonz says it’s imperative players learn from past mistakes, though that hasn’t turoccurred at an acceptable rate over the first eight games.
“Pre-snap, the proof is in the film. You can show guys the film and see this is the look, this is what the quarterback saw and why he went here with the read,” Koonz said. “You’re continuing to educate and whether it’s a freshman, senior, it doesn’t matter. They’re all still learning.
“They’re going to see plays on that Saturday that they weren’t prepared for. In this conference, at this level of football, they’re all going to play based off of their instincts and based off of what the base fundamental teachings are. It’s not going to be cookie cutter or look exactly the way it looked in practice. As much as we’re going to try as coaches to make it like that, that’s not going to happen. So educating them and letting them learn from their experiences so that now we can put them in a position to understand that and hopefully be two steps ahead the next time it happens.”
For Koonz, reinventing the wheel at this point in the season isn’t realistic.
Instead, he’s hoping to find what works for the Mountaineers, do his part to ensure players can sustain it and prove that a system he has belief in can spark a defensive resurgence over four November games.
“We have a resume of eight games right now — some really good, some not as good as we want and some not very good,” Koonz said. “How can we eliminate the negative, accentuate the positive, make sure we’re getting the strengths out of our best player and make sure we’re building a system that gives them an opportunity do that?
“With that being said, I have full confidence in this system. This system of defense I would put against any out there because of multiple ways we can attack offenses, multiple ways we can show different pictures pre-snap, multiple ways that we can attack different run schemes and take away different receiving threat, and different route patterns without completely uncovering what we’re doing to a quarterback or coordinator.
“Also, against tempo offenses, I believe in this system to be able to get lined up quickly to execute a call no matter what the defense might be. It’s about picking and choosing the right defense. We can’t run this entire system in a game week. It’s impossible. Every week, we’re trying to pick the best things that we can do against that offense and be really good at them.”