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MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- It was high noon Tuesday -- or on this Tuesday, perhaps, it might be best to term it low noon, for it was the Tuesday after Texas Tech had humbled the Mountaineers as badly as they'd been humbled in the Neal Brown era.
Brown looked up from the "cheat sheet" he'd placed before, the one carrying the points he wanted to make in a press conference designed to stir through the ashes of Saturday's 48-10 defeat and preview a week that most likely will be dubbed "Mission: Impossible."
On deck is the unbeaten, seventh-ranked TCU team, an exciting, unexpected underdog that has battled its way into control of the Big 12 race. It is in town for WVU's Homecoming, and the fact that Brown is 3-0 against the Horned Frogs in his stay at WVU matters not a bit, for while TCU's players are mostly the same, the coaching staff, philosophy and playbook have changed dramatically.
As Brown began to talk about the Texas Tech game, he prefaced it with, "This will be pretty quick."
Almost non-existent, actually, if he was to hit upon the highlights only. When the best thing you can talk about is your special-teams play, you know it was a bad day at Black Rock.
"Certainly disappointed, frustrated, to say the least, at the inconsistency," he said.
The sound of his voice carried a message as loud as the words he would be uttering.
"We'll start with offense, and it's kind of what I said after the game if you were listening," he said. "If you weren't, trust me, I understand."
Brown laid it out quickly.
"I felt the keys to the game would be rushing, turnovers and touchdowns in the red zone. We turned it over four times. We struggled to run the ball consistently. You do that, you know it's going to be a struggle. Defensively, we just make life too easy on the quarterback. They had way over 100 yards on screens -- just catch and throws -- and we slow to fits on the run and our fits were inconsistent."
He went on to criticize the tackling, what little there was of it.
There was more, but you get the picture, and it's not Rembrandt, so we won't spend a lot of time on it.
It was now time for Brown to look forward. His voice rose an octave or so and I'm sure he will appreciate the fact that this is being put into capital letters.
"I REFUSE TO ACCEPT THAT'S WHO WE ARE AS A FOOTBALL TEAM," he said.
It certainly was who they WERE as a football team on Saturday, but there is nothing you can do about yesterdays, be they good or bad. They disintegrate from reality into memories, and all that is left is the next step forward.
Hope, they say, springs eternal.
"WE WILL BE BETTER," Brown stressed.
To win this one, they must be more than better.
See, WVU has to defeat not only Max Duggan, the quarterback, and an offense that seems to wipe out 10- and 14-point deficits the way Secretariat wiped out the opposition in the 1973 Belmont Stakes, but they have to defeat an attitude of negativity that is surging through the Mountaineer fan base.
In 2022, it is everywhere, spreading like the flu in winter, on radio, television and mostly on the internet, where Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and who knows what else are voicing displeasure and pressing for a coaching change, one that doesn't yet seem ready to happen.
But that's a subject for another day not too far off into the future.
Brown has voiced often that he would hope his players would separate themselves from such chatter, but also has admitted that with 20-, 21- and 22-year-old college students, you just can't ask them to stay off the internet and not watch television.
So, what is he faced with in trying to protect them from the volume being raised by those outside the program?
"That's a good question, and I'm not trying to avoid it," Brown said. "I try to put it in a real perspective. This is important because there is a tremendous investment of time and resources put into this. If you are looking at things that are critical in your life, this is easily fixable."
In other words, it is not the end of the world, but it must be addressed.
"For me, it's about how you play the game," Brown continued. "You take the outcomes and put those aside. It's how you played the game. What does your video look like? That's what we have to focus on as a team and as individuals.
"As a team, our video has to be better; as individuals, our videos have to be better. That's the challenge for them, and that doesn't say anything about what people say on social media or what they see on television or read in the newspaper.
"It has to do with an individual choice … you have to play better; you have to coach better. They hear it. I don't tell them to ignore it, but it doesn't help you to be a better player. It doesn't make you coach better. It is what it is."
And what it is, is noise.
It's no worse than boos in the stadium.
It is a reflection of what was, but getting ready for a new game is about assuring yourself the future won't be an extension of the past.
That luxury belongs to winners.
After Texas Tech, Brown wasn't sure about the effort put forth by his team, and that got under his skin. He assured he would check the film, and if he saw someone who wasn't putting forth effort, he would put their butt on the bench.
As it was, the effort wasn't what you wanted, but that was more from the circumstances than a character flaw.
Defensive coordinator Jordan Lesley described what happened on defense. He noted his defense was short handed due to injury going in and that Texas Tech was playing up-tempo running plays every 10 to 12 seconds. In the first half, there was a sure interception dropped and three fumbles the Mountaineers couldn't get to.
"Missed opportunities," he labeled them, but when they went in at halftime down only 17-3, he felt things were virtually where he expected them to be and that they had weathered what he called "the onslaught."
"We settled in, the kids were playing fast, they were playing confidently, we were getting off the field, we applied pressure when we thought we could and we affected the offense," Lesley said.
"I think we just ran out of juice," he said.
He noted that WVU had averaged facing just 66 snaps a game coming into the Texas Tech game but had played 55 snaps by halftime. In the end, Tech ran 103 plays.
They were banged up, yes, but he said that's not an excuse.
"You got to play how many snaps you play," he said. "But probably by the second series of the second quarter, we played as many snaps as we'd played any game this year.
"Those certain pieces started to dwindle off, it's still not going the way you want it to go. I just thought we lost a little juice, and when you lose that, you lose aggressiveness. When you lose aggressiveness and the fundamentals to play downhill and it all snowballs and the result is what it is."
They were beaten down physically, then mentally.
Now, they have to pump air back into their football, because this TCU team isn't going to overlook them.
"If you don't play well, you will get embarrassed by this group," the players have been told.
Last week was enough embarrassment to last the entire season.