Did WVU Football HOLD BACK in First 2 Games? | Mountaineer Q&A

The first question comes from Sam, and these are over on X.

Actually, you know what? First, let's hit the YouTube questions first because there wasn't as many of them.

The first question on YouTube comes from Michael Simmons.

Michael Simmons says, was Zach Alley holding back on the defensive playbook those first two weeks, or was it merely changing up the defensive scheme a bit? Besides the last drive that had four or five flags caught on them, that led to the touchdown, the defense looked really good.

I'm sure, here's my thoughts on that.

I don't think Zach Alley, do I think he showed his entire playbook the first two weeks? I do not.

But I don't think Zach Alley ever shows his entire playbook.

I think Zach Alley is a very diverse playbook as far as his defensive scheme goes.

He can attack you in so many different ways.

He can put them in so many different looks.

He can be very versatile in the way he schemes up a defense.

And I'm confident he probably kept it more vanilla in the first two weeks than he's going to the rest of the season.

That I do believe.

However, I don't necessarily think that was the reason the defense played as good as they did.

Maybe it was a part of it.

But I also think the West Virginia defense, they were communicating much better on the back end and really all over the defense.

They had a lot less missed assignments throughout the course of the game, especially in the second and third quarter.

They were gap sound.

They were flying to the football.

They just played a really good game.

And I do think Zach schemed some things up really well.

And it seemed like everything he called in that second and third quarter was the right call and it was working.

So to answer your question, I don't think he was holding back necessarily, but I also don't think he was going to open up the whole playbook for two teams that they thought they should beat anyway.

But I think it was more or less – I think better execution was really a better answer for why they played as good as they did in that game, more so than Zach's scheme.