Cover Photo: Ben Queen/USA Today
MORGANTOWN, West Virginia — A lot of West Virginia fans are calling for defensive coordinator Zac Alley’s job after what happened against Oklahoma State, and I understand the frustration. You simply cannot give up 609 yards of total offense and expect people to be happy about it. The Mountaineers missed tackles, gave up far too many explosive plays and allowed Oklahoma State to move the football almost at will for stretches of the game. It was ugly. But firing Zac Alley isn’t the answer.
We have to separate two different things here: coaching and personnel. Alley didn’t suddenly forget how to coach defense overnight. This is a guy who has built a reputation as one of the better young defensive minds in college football, and there is a reason Rich Rodriguez personally wanted him running his defense at West Virginia. Rodriguez didn’t handpick Alley and WVU didn’t agree to pay him $1.5 million per year because they thought he was an average defensive coordinator.
We saw what this defense is capable of against Virginia. West Virginia went into Charlotte as a sizable underdog against a ranked Virginia team and held the Cavaliers to 21 points in a 38-27 win. The defense struggled early, made adjustments and got better as the game went along. That looked like a well-coached defensive football team. One week later, after an awful performance against Oklahoma State, suddenly Alley can’t coach anymore? I don’t buy it.
The bigger issue, in my opinion, goes back to how this roster was constructed during the offseason. West Virginia spent heavily on the offensive side of the football. The Mountaineers went out and built an offense capable of winning games, and we have already seen flashes of what that offense can become. But when you look at what WVU did defensively in the transfer portal, where were the major additions? Where were the proven, big-name defensive linemen, linebackers and defensive backs who were going to immediately change this defense? They simply weren’t there.
That’s the real problem. You can have the best defensive scheme in America, but eventually players have to win one-on-one matchups. They have to get off blocks. They have to create pressure without constantly having to manufacture it. They have to cover receivers in space, and most importantly, they have to tackle. There isn’t a defensive coordinator in America who has a magic play call that fixes missed tackles.
That doesn’t mean Alley is above criticism. When you give up 609 yards, everybody involved deserves some of the blame. The players have to be better, the defensive staff has to be better and Alley has to be better. He is making $1.5 million per year, so obviously expectations should be extremely high. There are undoubtedly things schematically that need to be cleaned up, and it is Alley’s responsibility to figure those things out. But there is a massive difference between saying Zac Alley needs to do a better job and saying West Virginia needs to fire him.
I still believe Alley is worth the $1.5 million salary, and I still believe he is the right defensive coordinator for Rich Rodriguez and West Virginia. What I want to see is what Alley can do when WVU gives him the same type of investment on the defensive side of the football. If West Virginia wants to seriously compete for Big 12 championships, that has to happen.
The Mountaineers need difference-makers on defense. They need defensive linemen who can consistently get into the backfield, linebackers with speed and physicality and defensive backs who can hold up when Alley wants to be aggressive. Those are the types of players that allow a defensive coordinator to open up his playbook and dictate what an offense can do instead of constantly trying to cover up weaknesses.
Changing defensive coordinators every time you have a terrible Saturday isn’t how you build a championship program. Rich Rodriguez brought Zac Alley to Morgantown because he believes in his defensive philosophy, his aggressiveness and his ability to develop a defense. Rodriguez didn’t handpick him for no reason.
Giving up 609 yards to Oklahoma State was embarrassing. There is no way around that. Zac Alley deserves criticism for it, and so does everyone associated with that defensive performance. But Alley didn’t become a bad defensive coordinator overnight.
West Virginia has a talent problem on defense right now, and until that gets addressed, changing the guy calling the plays isn’t going to magically fix everything.
Zac Alley is the right man for the job. Now West Virginia needs to give him the players to prove it.
