NEAL BROWN

MORGANTOWN – As the West Virginia football team gathered Monday morning for the final week of preparations for the opening game of the 2024 season against Penn State, they hoped that perhaps the football gods had sent them a message of hope over the weekend.

In the college football season opener, Georgia Tech surprised the number 10 team in the USA, Florida State, 24-21 with a walk-off field goal in a game in Dublin.

By the way, that means Dublin, Ireland, not Dublin, Ohio, although it is hard to stomach the thought that these two teams had to travel to Europe for a truly great American tradition: college football’s opening day.

While unranked Georgia Tech could of course have flown home without a plane, Florida State’s team must have felt that the trip home couldn’t have been worse even if they had been forced to swim across the Atlantic.

And you wonder what impact this will have on WVU?

Well, like Georgia Tech, the Mountaineers are unranked. Like Georgia Tech, they are going up against a top-10 team, namely Penn State (No. 9). Like Georgia Tech, they are expected across America to go down at the end of the day, although Georgia Tech has indeed proven to be Ramblin’ Wrecks.

But WVU took one message from this game: They are on track to make a similar dent in the preseason rankings, especially since they will be riding a wave of noise on their home field.

Listening to Georgia Tech coach Brent Key, it became clear pretty quickly that what he is establishing in his second year in Atlanta is similar to what Neal Brown built at WVU, both philosophically and in style of play.

His words could well have come from Brown in a similar situation.

“More than anything, it’s seeing or knowing that so many people now watch Georgia Tech and the brand of football we play and it’s not gimmicky football,” Key said in his on-field interview with ESPN. “It’s real. It’s tough. We’re going to build at the line of scrimmage. That’s where games are won.”

That’s exactly what Brown has established at WVU. His offense is based around the linebacker position, a run-oriented, physical approach to the game with strong running backs Jahiem White and CJ Donaldson and a dual-threat quarterback in Garrett Greene.

This was no accident in West Virginia, as Brown went from being an air raid coach to a coach who now relies heavily on the new style of football that is taking hold in the NFL.

Keys said he didn’t think it was an accident either.

“We have built this program very deliberately,” Key said. “We are laying a strong foundation to ensure it lasts for a long time.”

This is a song Brown sang as his program took hold starting in the middle of last season, winning its final three games and finishing so well that Brown said Monday he wished they could have started right there after the season ended, with this opener for Penn State a week after beating North Carolina in Duke’s Mayo Bowl.

The similarities between WVU’s offense and Georgia Tech’s seemed obvious on the television screen on Saturday.

.

A big part of that for WVU is Greene’s quarterback play, who can pass the ball but also has the ability to break free on long ground gains. Haynes King offers a similar style, although Greene is faster and has a stronger arm.

But you could almost hear Brown talking about Greene when Key talked about King, who ran 15 times and passed 16 times.

“Hayes is hands down the best quarterback in this league and I think he has a chance to be the best quarterback in the country this year,” Key said. “The cool thing about him is it doesn’t necessarily have to be about throwing the ball. It doesn’t necessarily have to be about running. He can do both and he’s such a selfless kid – and such a selfless player that he puts the team first and does whatever it takes to win.”

Brown has been saying the exact same thing about Greene all offseason.

If Georgia Tech can fly all the way to Ireland to beat Florida State with the same vision and style of play as WVU, isn’t that a message to the Mountaineer team about what could be in store for them on Saturday at noon at Milan Puskar Stadium?

“I don’t know how to respond to that other than to say we feel like now that if we play our game, we have a chance to win against anybody,” Brown said during his press conference on Monday. “We have a lot of respect for Penn State, but we’re going to play our style of football.”

Brown believes Greene is now able to handle the situation against Penn State after they lost last year.

“I really feel like Garrett was ready to make a move last year in the offseason before he came in, but you don’t know until he’s the starter. He’s been playing and going all season,” Brown said. “We definitely have a better feel for how he’s going to play and a lot of confidence in him. I’ve said this several times, if he’s not the most underrated player in college football, he’s one of them.”