West Virginia Football: 5 bold predictions for October 2019
By Phil Poling
West Virginia football finished the first quarter of the season 3-1, but what’s in store for the Mountaineers in October? We’ve got five bold predictions.
Neal Brown’s first couple games as the head coach of the West Virginia football program had more Up & Downs than the Vengaboys’ song that goes by the same name. But he escaped a tough non-conference schedule against two Power Five teams and won his first Big 12 road contest to finish with a 3-1 mark. What’s next for the Mountaineers in the coming weeks?
Prior to the season, questions swirled about who would be the starting quarterback; Brown settled on Oklahoma-transfer Austin Kendall. And while there’s no question whether or not Brown made the right decision, the former Sooner has, at times, looked like a quarterback who hasn’t played a meaningful college football game in a while.
With four returning running backs from last year’s team, the ground game was supposed to carry the offense through 2019. Instead, a shuffling offensive line has struggled, causing the running backs to look mediocre at best.
The defensive line has impressed through four games, led by legacy Mountaineers Dante and Darius Stills. The Fairmont duo lives in opponent’s backfields and seems to get better week after week. Do they even have a ceiling?
The youth movement in Morgantown has been fun to watch, with Brown being forced to use a handful of young players in key situations. The recent redshirt rule has allowed Brown to experiment a bit, but I foresee this trend of underclassmen continuing throughout October.
And last but not least, what happens in the win-loss column? Can Brown reach November with a .500 record? Or will matchups with Texas and Oklahoma be too much to overcome?