(Graphic Illustration - Monday Morning Quarterback - WVU Football - Image rendered through the use of ChatGPT)

Observers who chose not to stay up until past 1:30 a.m. Saturday morning to watch West Virginia lose to BYU 38-24 might have looked at the final score Saturday morning and concluded that the Mountaineers had at least shown improvement and were competitive.

They would be sadly mistaken. Neither was true. Let us count the ways.

In the first half, BYU passed for 249 yards while the Mountaineers were hard pressed to even complete a pass. West Virginia running backs could barely gain a yard. There was virtually no pass rush and if the BYU offense was able to hang onto the football they were able to do whatever they wanted. Over the past two games, opponents had 20 consecutive possessions without having to punt even once. That streak was broken in the final minutes when BYU had to punt after stopping the Mountaineers on downs at the 1 yard line.

Two of the WVU touchdown scores were drives of 2 and 21 yards after gift turnovers by the Cougars deep in their own territory, and the final West Virginia score came in the waning minutes against backups.

Any success of the Mountaineer offense mainly consisted of runs by the quarterback, with starter Khalil Wilkins carrying the ball 23 times. Although he had some success, your quarterbacks are not going to be able to withstand the physical punishment of 23 carries. The running backs gained all of 37 yards on 21 attempts, often not even able to get to the line of scrimmage before first contact.

The West Virginia offense can’t run and can’t pass. The defense can’t stop anyone unless they force a turnover, which they were fortunately able to do three times Friday night or the result would have been much worse. Ironically, despite that WVU was never in the game, writeups from the BYU folks were critical of sloppy and inconsistent play by the Cougars. The Mountaineers are now so bad that opponents are unhappy with a 14-point win.

There does not appear to be any rescue for the sinking ship that the 2025 football season has become. A number of quality football teams which remain on the schedule, and the Mountaineers will be favored in none of those matchups.

West Virginia will have a much needed bye week which hopefully will afford an opportunity to get back some injured players. The Mountaineers will next face Central Florida in a road matchup on Oct. 18th.