PITTSBURGH, Pa. — Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi thought he had to beat West Virginia and the officials to win the Backyard Brawl. Mountaineers coach Neal Brown looked like a man who knew he had let opportunity slip through his fingers.
As for his future? Well, that seems tenuous, too. Brown is coaching for his job now as Big 12 play starts on Saturday against Kansas.
Coaching is a results-oriented profession. You’re measured by wins and losses. Certain things like national titles or conference titles can buy you time. But when you’re not winning, the clock is ticking.
And when you’re losing to your rivals, the clock starts running fast.
The Mountaineers (1-2) fell to Pitt, 38-34, on Saturday. It was a game, honestly, they should have won. Up 10 points with about five minutes left. The defense flat dominated the Panthers for 25 minutes. That unit took everything away.
And, then, well, it’s a rivalry game after all. Stuff happens. But it also exposed the Mountaineers’ biggest problem this year — defending the pass.
The unit gave up a long bomb to trim that 10-point lead to three with about three minutes left. WVU entered the game with one of the worst pass defenses in the country. That didn’t change.
And if you’re looking for answers, well, it’s not clear if Brown has one aside from coaching them up.
How can West Virginia Improve?
“Our personnel is our personnel,” Brown said. “You know, we’ve got to play better. We’ve got to play better, coach them better. I mean, it’s not like we’ve got people waiting in the bullpen.”
The thing is, the Mountaineers DID have an answer in the second half — the pass rush. WVU sacked Pitt quarterback Eli Holstein five times. He was bottled up. I mean, if he can’t throw the ball, then the pass defense downfield isn’t an issue, right?
Well, during those last two drives, the Mountaineers lost contain on Holstein. Suddenly he was running around like Arch Manning. He had six positive runs on the final two drives of the game. At 6-foot-4, 230 pounds, he’s not exactly fleet of foot. But he’s also hard to bring down, especially when Pitt’s offense was basically three things, as Brown described it:
Primary read, secondary read, scramble drill.
Holstien scramble drilled WVU to death in the final minutes and, with that, the Backyard Brawl slipped away.
Brown has the misfortune, one might say, of having the Backyard Brawl resurrected during his tenure. His Mountaineers are 1-2 after three meetings in the four-year contract. On a lesser scale, WVU is 0-2 against Penn State.
We’ve seen it time and time again. Win all the games you want. But lose to your rival enough and that’s it. Curtains.
Brown and the Mountaineers went 9-4 last year and won the Duke’s Mayo Bowl. But athletic director Wren Baker wasn’t sold, and it’s clear in the extension Brown received — a one-year add-on with a small pay reduction.
The message was clear from the AD that didn’t hire Brown — show me again.
The Mountaineers and the Panthers put on a show on Saturday. Winning the game wasn’t going to secure Brown’s job past this season.
But a loss will only make it that much harder to justify Baker keeping him.
