WVU DC Zac Alley losing sleep, making changes to put defense back on track
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MORGANTOWN -- West Virginia football has its weekly press conferences on Tuesday around noon. Rich Rodriguez goes first for around 20 minutes, followed by defensive coordinator Zac Alley, and then select players. Usually, everyone looks forward to hearing what Rodriguez has to say, but for the second straight week, all eyes and ears were on Alley.
Alley walked to the stage with his hat on, shading his eyes. He usually keeps his facial hair well-groomed, but you could tell it wasn't tended to. It's been a rough two weeks.
"It's hard to sleep currently," Alley said. "I'm not doing a lot of it. Staying up here pretty late.”
Alley's defense is coming off another bad performance, allowing Iowa State to tally 45 points and 577 yards of offense. In two weeks, Alley's unit has given up 1,186 yards of offense and 86 points. Nationally, the WVU defense's 456.6 yards per game ranked 133rd out of 138 teams.
It makes it even worse when the offense scored 41 points and had the lead in Ames, just needing one defensive stop for the win, and the defense couldn't get it.
Alley knows his game plan needs to change.
"I think we're the worst defense in college football, so it's pretty simple to say it hasn't f***ing worked. I don’t plan to keep doing the same thing over and over again. It seems like insanity."
Alley is one of the young minds in college football at just 32, and is in his second season as a full-time play caller at the Power Four level. You can see the young-minded creativity. He blitzes, switches personnel groupings and uses a lot of emotion.
In the last two games, it's done more harm than good. The defense is pretty close to 11 new starters, and most are playing in a new system, so it's taking time to adapt. At this point, Alley's is making it less confusing and taking it back to basics.
Starting with stopping the run. The Mountaineers let a walk-on running back, Aiden Flora of Iowa State, rush for a career-high 212 yards and punch it in three times. Flora also threw two touchdown passes, which Alley said he knew the pop pass was coming and they just didn't execute. Flora is receiving Heisman Trophy attention after his big week.
Opposing defenses have averaged 168 yards on the ground against WVU's defense, which is the most in the Big 12.
Alley said the defense has been missing gaps, making mental mistakes, and not reading keys, which were fundamentals in camp, and they haven't translated over to the season.
"We got to stop the run first," Alley said. "If you let them run the ball on you, you have no shot at stopping anything else."
Alley doesn't believe the issues are talent-related. The talent on the defensive side was questioned because with the success of the offense, it felt like the money was spent more there. There's truth in that, but there's definitely more talent on defense this year than last. Even if it didn't look great at times last year, it was definitely better than it is now.
"We’re talented enough to be a lot better than we are," Alley said. "That’s on myself and the coaches. We’ve got to get these guys to play to their ability level. I don’t expect every guy to be an All-American every play, but to at least be the best version of themselves every day in every play they’re in. That’s what we need in order to maximize their ability level."
Alley, based on his body language, knows the unit he's responsible for isn't doing enough, and it's taken a toll on him. As a young coach in a competitive and high-profile sport like Power Four college football, it's easy to let it eat at you. Especially when fans and experts are waving over your head, your high assistant coach contract of $1.5 million, which at this point is warranted.
Luckily, Alley's best mentor is a coach who has seen it all in Rodriguez.
"Makes me fall back on coach Rodriguez and his experience," Alley said. "Some of the things that he knows from coaching for 30-plus years in this business and trying to get our guys to do the things, the little things, the right way. He’s big on that."
Rodriguez said he's going to be a bit more involved defensively, instead of being completely hands off, just to make sure the behind-the-scenes, like meetings and film, are up to the standard.
But Rodriguez has belief that Alley and his staff can get the defense right. The best way to prove all the doubters wrong is to stop Arizona this weekend, who has one of the better passing attacks in the conference.
"It is what it is," Alley said. "That's the job that I've been given. My job is to make sure that we put our guys in a position to win, to lead young men, to lead my staff and to give us a chance this coming Saturday."