MORGANTOWN — For most of the afternoon, Colorado true freshman quarterback Julian Lewis dropped back and was immediately running out of the pocket, trying to escape the pursuit of West Virginia’s pass rushers.
Most of the time, Lewis was tackled behind the line of scrimmage for a sack. The young quarterback was on the ground a lot and was even pulled down by his hair at one point. WVU had a season-high seven sacks against Colorado’s injured offensive line and a young quarterback.
Linebacker Reid Carrico and Ben Bogle led the game with two sacks each.
“We got to the quarterback today, for sure,” Carrico said. “That was a big part of our game plan. We knew a young guy was out there in his first start. We had to give him a lot of different looks. Show him one thing, take it away, show pressure on one side, bring it from the other. Just basically play mind games out there, and I thought we did a good job of that today.”
WVU’s defense started out hot. The Mountaineers held Colorado to just nine points in the first half and allowed 190 yards of offense. Most of that was through the air. The Buffaloes’ first five drives consisted of four punts and a turnover on downs.
Playing well out of the gates was hard at the beginning of Big 12 play, with multiple teams getting the opening possession and scoring a touchdown.
“I think we jumped out the gate really well,” Carrico said. “We had a couple of three-and-outs. We kind of slowed down in the second quarter, and Coach [Zac] Alley was just like we got to stay locked in on our keys, stay fighting with aggression.”
The defense has slowly improved since three games ago against TCU. Before TCU, WVU’s defense allowed 38-plus points in Big 12 play.
Carrico said before the TCU game, WVU made changes. The defense spent more time working together as a team, rather than working individually in separate rooms.
“Putting more time getting the defense together as a whole,” Carrico said. “Getting DBs and everything all in the same room, watching the same tape, and communicating the calls and everything like that. I’d say everybody as a whole is really starting to pick up.”
The defense has shown improvement. It wasn’t perfect, though. The secondary still needs some work. There were multiple times when Lewis just took a shot downfield, essentially throwing a 50/50 ball, and most of the time, the defensive backs lost.
Colorado wide receiver Omarion Miller had six catches for 131 yards and a touchdown, averaging almost 22 yards per grab. Lewis also threw for 299 yards and two touchdowns.
“We knew they were going to throw the ball to No. 4,” Rich Rodriguez said. “They kept throwing to him. We were covering him, but he was still making plays. Some great throws and some great effort by that.”
The secondary still needs to be cleaned up, especially this week against Arizona State, who has some of the best receivers in the country. The Sun Devils’ Jordyn Tyson is projected to be the top receiver picked in this year’s NFL Draft. The secondary has its work cut out for it.
Luckily, Arizona State doesn’t have quarterback Sam Leavitt for the remainder of the season. However, backup Jeff Sims is more of a runner, which is what WVU struggles with.
Lewis was a tough quarterback to defend, and WVU succeeded. It’s just a matter of carrying over to next week.
“I thought our defense fought and was really resilient,” Carrico said. “I thought we did good.”
