Morgantown, West Virginia – While West Virginia’s offense has sputtered along for three seasons since Neal Brown has been the head coach of the Mountaineers, Brown has been reluctant to change his offense or hire an offensive coordinator with a proven track record.
Brown had the opportunity to hire Travis Trickett, a WVU graduate with real ties to the program, who has been an offensive coordinator at Samford, Florida Atlantic and Georgia State, but it now looks like he is headed to USF as their new offensive coordinator.
Instead, Brown promoted Gerad Parker, who had no previous experience as an offensive coordinator in his career, to run his offense.
Parker has been around the block. He started his collegiate coaching experience as a graduate assistant at Kentucky in 2007. He then went to UT Martin as the wide receivers coach, to Marshall to coach wide receivers, to Purdue as the tight ends/wide receivers coach/recruiting coordinator, to Cincinnati to coach running backs, to Duke to serve as the Football Operations Assistant, to Penn State as the wide receivers/passing coordinator, to finally end up at West Virginia.
The point is that he didn’t have any experience as an offensive coordinator during his relatively long career, yet Neal Brown inexplicably named him his offensive coordinator at West Virginia. Typically, schools – particularly Power 5 Conference schools – hire coordinators with at least some experience at that position.
This past season, West Virginia finished 87th in the nation in total offense, averaging 371.3 yards per game. Although West Virginia had senior running back Leddie Brown, the Mountaineers’ were 103rd in the country in total rushing, averaging a mere 123.4 yards per game and finished last place in the Big 12 Conference.
Despite this, Neal Brown doesn’t appear to be in any hurry to make changes to his offensive staff or scheme. The most obvious, glaring issue for the West Virginia football program has been the offensive side of the football. The defense has played exceptionally well over the past three seasons, but the offense has just never fully clicked.
Blame can fall on the offensive line or Jarret Doege or COVID or the bare cupboard that Dana Holgorsen left Brown, but of all the decisions he’s made since arriving in Morgantown, his decision to promote Gerad Parker as the offensive coordinator is the most befuddling.
Keeping him as the offensive coordinator is maddening and truly unbelievable.
