One minute, the guy you’re replacing tries to kneecap you out of the job. The next, your offense is scoring 70 points in a BCS bowl game.
One minute, you’re finishing off a victory over a top 10 team. The next, your athletic director declares there were “far too many disappointments” at the completion of the 2013 season.
The guy who can’t seem to get it right, who can’t seem to find a groove, finally found the sweet spot on a windy Saturday afternoon in Almost Heaven. And for the first time since he took over at West Virginia in 2011, Dana Holgorsen finally looks comfortable as a head coach.
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He didn’t panic with three early turnovers against No. 4 Baylor. His team didn’t get sucked into Baylor’s undisciplined, penalty-fueled performance.
And he finally realized that value of running the ball, chewing clock and playing smart and fast in a 41-27 upset.
This was Holgorsen’s breakout game. More than anything as a high-flying assistant coach; more than anything in the three previous seasons of highs and lows at WVU.
The man who knows offense better than anyone in the game, looks a whole lot like a complete coach.
His quarterback Clint Trickett completed his eighth straight game of throwing for at least 300 yards (a school record). His defense had four sacks, 11 hurries and five knockdowns of Baylor quarterback Bryce Petty.
His running backs ran for a tough and game-defining 134 yards, much of it in the late third and fourth quarter when the Mountaineers needed to control the line of scrimmage and dictate tempo.
His defense constantly harassed Petty, then played tight man coverage in the secondary — even while playing with significant in-game injuries at cornerback. Holgorsen praised his defense at the end of the game, the same unit that gave up an unthinkable 895 points (37.3 ppg.) over the last two seasons — when support for Holgorsen began eroding and eventually had to be reaffirmed last December by athletic director Oliver Luck.
“We have expectations for the 2014 football team, and I have shared those with coach Holgorsen,” Luck said last December.
So Holgorsen hired Tony Gibson, a former Rich Rodriguez assistant at WVU, to run the defense and promised to get more involved as a head coach overseeing the entire program.
Now we’re seven games into a crossroads season for Holgorsen, and his team controls its destiny in the Big 12 race. The team that looked significantly improved in a season-opening loss to Alabama, that melted down late in a loss to Oklahoma, put it all together against Baylor and gave Holgorsen the biggest win of his career.
The Mountaineers get both TCU and Kansas State in Morgantown in November, and the way the defense is playing, would it really be all that shocking if WVU is winning the Big 12 a year after Holgorsen was publicly placed on the hotseat by Luck?
Who knows what Luck’s “expectations” were for the 2014 team, but they couldn’t have had anything to do with keeping the Big 12 from the College Football Playoff.
Because that’s exactly what happens if WVU wins the Big 12.