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West Virginia set to hire Neal Brown from Troy

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LTtxfan

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Tennessee DL Transfers to West Virginia 

Late last night, the West Virginia Mountaineers got a big boost to their defensive line when Tennessee Volunteers grad transfer Darel Middleton announced he has committed to the Mountaineers. Middleton will be a redshirt senior and will have one year of eligibility remaining. He is expected to arrive on campus next week.

 

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Missed this announcement last spring...

West Virginia's hiring of Kirk Ciarrocca is a late-March steal

By  CHRIS HUMMER Mar 24, 2021

Penn State hired Kirk Ciarrocca away from Minnesota almost 16 months ago to the day. The move drew national acclaim at the time and was considered to be the most important coordinator hire of the offseason. Minnesota’s offense had just jumped from 67th to 23rd nationally in yards per play, sparking the first 11-win season for the Gophers since 1904. Few offensive coordinators had Ciarrocca’s cache, and he chose to go home and work at Pennsylvania’s flagship university.

One year later, Ciarrocca is on the move again. His hiring at West Virginia as an offensive analyst drew far less fanfare this time. Ciarrocca was fired in January after Penn State’s offense slipped to 83rd nationally in yards per play, down from 49th the year prior, and was promptly replaced by Mike Yurcich in Happy Valley.

Yet one year of poor results in a season in which the pandemic made things difficult on everyone, but especially first-year coordinators, should not take the shine away from what is again one of the offseason’s most intriguing hires.

Ciarrocca won’t be on the field for West Virginia. But his experience and game-planning acumen will be invaluable for the Mountaineers.

West Virginia head coach Neal Brown and Ciarrocca worked together at Delaware in 2005 and Brown tried to hire Ciarrocca as his initial offensive coordinator in Morgantown. He did so for good reason. History indicates Ciarrocca makes offenses better when given time. Let’s take a look at how Ciarrocca’s initial offense performed at each of his last three starts versus his final offense.

Western Michigan: 112th (2013) | 16th (2016)
Minnesota: 118th (2017) | 23rd (2019)
Penn State: 83rd (2020) | NA (2021)

The situations at Western Michigan and Minnesota were different than Penn State. There was an immediate expectation of success with the Nittany Lions compared to rebuilding jobs at Ciarrocca's prior two stops. But that statistical rise with the Broncos and Gophers indicates Ciarrocca-led offenses tend to thrive when given runway. 

West Virginia won’t undergo an offensive overhaul with Ciarrocca coming in as an analyst. The role of an analyst is to accent and augment the system that’s in place, aiding the offensive staff in anything that's needed. This is a Nick Saban-like hire by Brown. He’s bringing in a highly-respected coach for a gap year (or two) before said coach rebounds for another job. It’s a deal that works out for both parties, but it’s especially favorable for the Mountaineers.

With a great defense and the second-most production returning of any team in the Big 12, the Mountaineers are positioned as a Big 12 sleeper entering 2021. The offense, which finished 85th nationally a season ago in yards per play, just needs to improve to make a jump like that possible.

Brown is West Virginia’s play-caller. He’s done so throughout his career to much success. But there were times last season in which Brown was openly critical of himself and an offense that often failed to produce explosive plays: “I didn’t do a good enough job,” Brown said after last year’s game with Baylor.

One thing head coach play-callers often say about the task is that split focus can cause them to fall short in other duties. It can cause situations in which they lose sight of the big picture or, conversely, the down-to-down play-calling situation. Gerald Parker and Chad Scott were Brown’s co-OCs last year. Both are highly-respected coaches, yet neither have play-calling experience in their careers. Ciarrocca helps fill that hole on West Virginia’s staff. He’s an injection of experience into the room and someone Brown can lean on from a game-planning perspective.

There’s no guarantee the Mountaineers make a huge jump offensively. There are pieces in place for success, yet questions remain about the offense’s ability to create explosive plays due to limitations of both quarterback Jarret Doege and the wide receiver group.

Regardless, this is a no-lose situation for the Mountaineers. Adding Ciarrocca to the staff only helps elevate the offense’s ceiling in 2021. 

 

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WVU Football Transfer Tracker

A full list of which players are leaving the program and who is entering the program via the transfer portal.

JAN 5, 2022

In transfer portal

K Kaulin Parris (entered 8/24)

LB James Thomas (entered 10/6)

DE Eddie Watkins (entered 10/7)

RB A'Varius Sparrow (entered 10/29)

WR Sam Brown (entered 11/11)

WR Isaiah Esdale (entered 12/6)

LS JP Hadley (entered 12/30)

WR Winston Wright Jr. (entered 12/31)

QB Jarret Doege (entered 12/31)

CB Jackie Matthews (entered 1/2)

WR Sean Ryan (entered 1/5)

Transferred to a new school

LB VanDarius Cowan ----> Maryland

OT Parker Moorer ----> East Carolina

S Kerry Martin Jr. ----> Akron

TE T.J. Banks ----> Akron

LB Devell Washington ----> Northern Iowa

DL Darel Middleton ----> Alabama A&M

Transferred to WVU

RB Lyn-J Dixon (Clemson)

DE Zeiqui Lawton (Cincinnati)

TE Brian Polendey (Colorado State)

CB Marcis Floyd (Murray State)

https://www.si.com/college/westvirginia/football/wvu-football-transfer-tracker-2021

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West Virginia AD gives Neal Brown the vote of confidence after 0-2 start

“Everyone involved knows that the on-field results have not met expectations and absolutely no one is satisfied," WVU AD Shane Lyons said.

ZACH BARNETT         SEP 12, 2022

With 7:15 to play in their season opener, Neal Brown's West Virginia had the ball -- a 3rd-and-3 at midfield -- and a 31-24 lead in their long-departed rival's house in front of a national, opening night audience. Sixty-seven minutes (plus an overtime session) later, WVU is 0-2 and Brown's AD has to give statements to the media about his job security.

“I know and deeply care that our fans are frustrated with the start of the football season, but so are our coaches and student-athletes, who have busted their tails getting ready for the year,” Lyons said in a statement Monday to The Associated Press. “As athletics director, I am as disappointed as the fans, but I see how much our coaches and players care and want to win and make our fans proud.

“Everyone involved knows that the on-field results have not met expectations and absolutely no one is satisfied. There are 10 games left in the season and the focus is still on getting the results that we all expect.”

West Virginia lost that game to Pittsburgh, then lost at home to Kansas on Saturday. 

The Mountaineers built a 28-14 lead late in the second quarter, but then surrendered a 28-3 run to the Jayhawks and had to scramble to force overtime, needing an 85-yard drive, a touchdown and a two-point conversion in the game's final two minutes.

Kansas opened the extra session with an overtime, then won the game with an 86-yard pick six.

While it may prove to be true that Lance Leipold's Kansas is not Charlie Weis's, David Beaty's or Les Miles's Kansas, that is no longer WVU's concern. West Virginia should get in the win column against Towson on Saturday, but the Mountaineers may not be favored again this season. Their non-conference schedule concludes at former Big East rival Virginia Tech on Sept. 22 (another Thursday night game) before re-opening conference play with a trip to No. 21 Texas and a home date with defending champion No. 17 Baylor.

As it stands, Brown is 17-20 at West Virginia, with an 11-17 mark in Big 12 play. Following a 5-7 debut in 2019, West Virginia went 6-4 and won the Liberty Bowl in 2020. WVU went 6-7 and lost the Guaranteed Rate Bowl in 2021. 

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Still on the Hot Seat next yr -- no extension.

Neal Brown to return to West Virginia in 2024

"Coach Brown is going to be our football coach," AD Wren Baker said Friday.

ZACH BARNETT        12 HOURS AGO

Neal Brown's return to West Virginia was one of those things that, until now, went without saying, given that: A) WVU massively over-performed preseason expectations, and B) It's Dec. 1 and the school hasn't announced a change. 

But, when asked by WV MetroNews on Friday, AD Wren Baker went ahead and said it anyway. Neal Brown will be West Virginia's coach in 2024.

“I have never said anything to speculate differently. I know other people speculate but Coach Brown is going to be our football coach. We are excited about what the future holds and we’re excited about building on what was a really good year,” Baker told the site.

West Virginia was picked to finish last in the 14-team Big 12, and instead tied for fourth. 

“I was very pleased with the way the team performed and the way our coaches and staff performed. I thought they did a really good job. You are picked 14th [in the Big 12 preseason media poll]. I think the over/under on the win total was 4, 4-and-a-half, something like that. To finish fourth and double that win total and still have a chance to win a game in the bowl, I think our coaches did a really good job.”

WVU went 6-3 in conference play and 8-4 overall. The Mountaineers will learn their bowl destination on Sunday.  The eight wins are the most in Brown's five seasons on the job.

While 8-4 is undoubtedly a good season, Baker is not in a rush to extend Brown's contract, either. 

“He still has three years left, which I think is a good amount of time. It is not like you are down to a year or two," Baker said. "Three is still a fairly significant amount of time. More than the years, what speaks to stability is the guaranteed portion of the contract.  😂The years aren’t as important as how much you have involved in if you were to make a change."

 

 

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Interesting story on young Wvu assistant...

Pay to play? Meet Tyler Allen, the guy who paid to coach and never looked back

JOHN BRICE        5 HOURS AGO

Allen absorbed more than $25,000 as a regular undergraduate student at LSU, all in search of his coaching dream

Quote

The crossroad moment beckons -- every coach, every level. Indiscriminate.

Fortunate coaches might encounter it just once, but a doubt-injecting, self-introspecting juncture point finds the hole in a coach’s path same as a linebacker in the gap on fourth-and-goal.

Tyler Allen, 27-year-old former junior college nomad quarterback already a part of two staffs being ushered into nebulous uncertainty despite vastly different circumstances, leans into these moments.

Absorbs them; metabolizes them into plucky resilience.

Fired at LSU, despite being an unpaid – volunteer – student-assistant coach who came from nothing to carve roles under former Tigers offensive coordinators Cam Cameron and Matt Canada, but not good enough to stick around for free?

No big deal. This is the kid who, diagnosed with mononucleosis during his junior high school campaign at St. Stanislaus (Mississippi), coaches remember having to enlist the help of Allen’s parents to keep him from playing.

On a winless team, mind you.

“We were already 0-6, 0-7, when he got mono that year and the doctor told him, ‘You can’t play in the game with mono, your spleen is enlarged and you could die,’” says Gabe Fertitta, current senior offensive analyst at Florida State and Allen’s former head coach at St. Stan. “He said, ‘Coach, I don’t care, I’m playing in the game. I’ll die out there.’ We had to literally call his dad and his dad came to school and took his pads and helmets out of locker so he wouldn’t play in the game.

“There was never a question in my mind if he decided that he wanted to be a football coach, he was going to be exceptional.”

Country roads? Sunday driving for West Virginia’s new wunderkind quarterbacks coach after collecting more than $25,000 in undergraduate loans at LSU and later being shown the door as part of the Jacksonville State staff of John Grass that beat Florida State in 2021.

“I’m very blessed to be a Power 4 (conference) quarterback coach, just honestly blessed and humbled,” Allen tells FootballScoop of his recent anointment to tutor the signal-callers for Neal Brown’s Big 12 West Virginia Mountaineers. “I went $25,000 into debt to coach. I made $7,500 a year at Troy to be a GA with no housing, no meals. You come off the huge high as a 23-year-old D1 quarterback coach at Jacksonville State and the week after they fired you they give you your conference championship rings from the spring (2021 COVID season) before.

“But my approach has been if you work really hard around really good people, and you do everything you can do and learn to make it to where there’s no job you can’t do, and learn and listen, you have a chance.”

Screenshot_20240222-172910_kindlephoto-2431861.thumb.png.d3ccfae2726071172971b260372dfe5d.png

Jason Phillips remembers Allen leaving very little to chance. Then Allen’s position coach and offensive coordinator at tiny Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College, Phillips not quite a decade later remembers this scrawny, 170-pounder refusing to give up; a guy hearing the word “no” for the first time in his life, every time.

“Tyler was one of those players who came in and you knew immediately, ‘This guy is going to be a coach one day,’” Phillips, now offensive coordinator at Norfolk State, tells FootballScoop from the NCAA-NFL Coaches Academy. “He was with us there at Gulf the same time as A.J. Erdley, who’s now an offensive analyst at Georgia Tech.

“We had a rare quarterback room for a JuCo with that level of football intelligence. Where Tyler is, he’s gotten there with hard work, and A.J. is going there, too. Hopefully they’ll remember their old junior college coach.”

Allen remembers perhaps the most miserable two-and-a-half months of his life, those agonizing 70 to 80 days following the staff change at Jacksonville State when there was no coaching.

Along the climb, there’s an offer to be a high school offensive coordinator. A G.A. position at Rice pulls him to Texas.

After initially calling Allen and bringing him to West Virginia for the first time, shortly after Brown departs Troy to take over the Mountaineers on the heels of Dana Holgorsen’s departure to Houston, Brown calls to bring him back from Rice in a quality control position assisting the offense.

Two years later, Brown is turning over the quarterbacks room to Allen following Sean Reagan’s return to Troy to serve as offensive coordinator for first-year head coach Gerad Parker.

Now, Allen figures he knows what to expect from detractors.

“You have to set the standard from Day 1,” he says. “The whole deal, what I think is the best thing about people saying, ‘Oh, he’s 27, he’s too young.’ One of the things I’ve taken advantage of is being young. I can relate to guys and think maybe I can get to them in ways some other people can’t. I am within 10 years of these guys, and I’m going to tell you how I’m going to develop you and the why to it all.

“Even when I was at LSU, Danny Etling was the quarterback and older than me, but my whole thing from the beginning was he wanted to be good, so how can I help make him better and how can I help these guys crave the things I know in coaching so that they want to come learn from me.”

Fertitta’s lasting belief in Allen derives fuel from all the memories.

That winless junior year of high school? Allen & Co. deliver an unbeaten regular season the next fall, Fertitta wants you to know.

The closest game in-season comes against Poplarville High School (Mississippi), and Fertitta, Allen and the Rock-a-Chaws win by a touchdown.

Late in the game, punting deep in his own territory, Allen unilaterally calls a fake-punt pass on a go-route. The logic remains unassailable to this day.

“Coach, they had a 5-8 corner on our gunner and he’s 6-4,” Fertitta remembers Allen explaining. “I wasn’t going to let them get away with that.”

No, that would have been the easy path. To that, Allen doesn’t relate.

 

 

 

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LTtxfan

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Neal Brown takes pay cut with new extension

ZACH BARNETT        10 HOURS AGO

West Virginia and Neal Brown on Tuesday agreed to terms on a 1-year extension that keeps the Mountaineers head coach through 2027, the school announced.

However, not part of that announcement but reported by Hoppy Kercheval of WV Metro News, is that Brown took a $400,000 pay cut as part of the deal. He also agreed to reduce his buyout from 100 percent of the remaining salary to 75 percent.

"My first priority was retaining and rewarding our assistant coaches and support staff who have played such a critical role in our success," Brown said as part of WVU's announcement. "I appreciate Wren's support on that front as well as his continued commitment to me and what we are building. We share a common vision for this program and that alignment is critical to our continued success. There are great things ahead, and I can't wait to see our incredible fans back in Milan Puskar Stadium on August 31."

Brown made $4.1 million in 2023 and was set to earn $4.2 million this year. 

Following two straight sub-.500 seasons and picked 14th of 14 in the Big 12 to start last season, WVU rebounded by going 9-4 with a win in the Duke's Mayo Bowl in 2023.

 

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