MORGANTOWN — There was a lot of excitement after West Virginia’s win over No. 22 Houston. It was a big ranked win on the road, and the offense looked competent again. More importantly, it kept WVU’s bowl game hopes alive, especially with the “easier” road ahead.
The thought was that Colorado is falling apart, and Arizona State was without quarterback Sam Leavitt for the remainder of the season, so the only real threat was a top 10-ranked Texas Tech team standing in the way of WVU and going bowling.
Then, the Mountaineers beat the Buffaloes 29-22, so up next was beating the Sun Devils without their starting quarterback, which should be easier.
“Should be” is for those who aren’t too familiar with Arizona State’s backup quarterback. The Sun Devils backup quarterback might pose a more difficult matchup for defensive coordinator Zac Alley’s unit.
In place of Leavitt is veteran quarterback Jeff Sims, who’s played for three different schools in six years. He was at Georgia Tech and then transferred to play for Scott Frost at Nebraska before spending the past two years with Arizona State.
“Jeff, he’s an experienced guy who’s been around five or six years, playing in a lot of big games,” Rich Rodriguez said. “I’m sure they feel confident that whatever they want to do, he can handle it.”
Sims has looked comfortable in his first game as the starter since Leavitt went down. The veteran led the Sun Devils to a 24-19 win at Iowa State, who is no mediocre squad at 6-4.
Sims is a bit different quarterback than Leavitt. Leavitt was more of a pocket passer with the ability to run, whereas Sims is more of a mobile quarterback with the ability to pass. They are two different quarterbacks, but Arizona State head coach Kenny Dillingham has adjusted the offense accordingly.
“They’ve done a good job of adjusting the offense to fit who he is and to use his skill set and ability,” Alley said. “I’ll be curious to see how they come out using him this week.”
Against the Cyclones, Sims threw for 177 yards and a touchdown. More impressively, he rushed for a lucrative 228 yards and two scores.
“He’s a good player, though,” Alley said. “He’s hard to get down. He’s big. He looks like four or five inches taller than everybody else out there when he’s taking the snap. We’ve got to do a good job of corralling him.”
Alley’s unit has faced plenty of mobile quarterbacks this year. WVU’s played against Ohio’s Parker Navarro, Kansas’ Jalon Daniels and Utah’s Devon Dampier. Even Colorado’s Julian Lewis took off quite a bit in WVU’s last game.
Alley will use some old notes on those quarterbacks and see if anything could work against Sims.
“I think things come to mind always like, OK, we did this against this guy,” Alley said. “We did this against that guy. Oh, he was a great runner. What did we use that for? This is similar to what we did against Auburn in 2016 when we were on the road down there on third-and-5. We should probably look at that. You do some of those things. I think they come naturally to you as you’re watching tape, and you can see patterns and things emerge. It’s a little bit of this, a little bit of that. And then just what do we feel like this week works the best for this guy?”
Alley’s unit has played a bit better over the past three weeks. Against TCU, WVU held the Horned Frogs to just 23 points, then allowed a little too much against Houston, but created multiple takeaways, and then held Colorado to just 22 points.
The three quarterbacks WVU has faced recently, Alley’s figured out a way to make them uncomfortable, and he’ll have to do that again for Sims. There’s a lot of information on him, since he’s played so much, so it makes it a bit easier.
“We look at everything,” Alley said. “I’m trying to peep back, find what he’s uncomfortable with, find things that you know he doesn’t like. Try and imitate or mimic those. As a whole, obviously, they’re going to use him in ways they feel like fits in their offense and fits his ability. I think they do a tremendous job of game planning and creating matchups for positive yards on their side.”
