Dana Holgorsen Entering Make-Or-Break Season At West Virginia

When Dana Holgorsen got hired by former athletic director Oliver Luck in 2010, he was expected to be the guy to lead the West Virginia Mountaineers to new heights. During his first season in Morgantown, Holgorsen met all expectations as the Mountaineers went 10-3 and destroyed Clemson in the Orange Bowl, 70-33. Holgorsen was beloved by fans and the athletic department alike, but the team has done nothing but regress since. Holgorsen led the Mountineers to a 7-6 record in 2012, 4-8 in 2013, and 7-6 in 2014, for a cumulative 18-20 record in the last three seasons.

Once Rich Rodriguez screwed the Mountaineers out of a National Championship Game appearance in 2007 and left for Michigan, the athletic department turned to assistant head coach, Bill Stewart, to take the reigns of their football team. Although he went 28-12 from 2007-2010, Luck decided that Stewart wasn’t the guy to lead the Mountaineers where they wanted to go. Luck decided to bring offensive mastermind Holgorsen to Morgantown in 2010, but the plan was for him to be Stewart’s offensive coordinator the first year, and then take over the head coaching job in 2011. Stewart wasn’t happy with the situation and stepped down before the 2011 season, allowing Holgorsen to become the head honcho a year early.

Before he came to Morgantown, Holgorsen had been an offensive coordinator at Texas Tech, Houston, and Oklahoma State. Beginning in 2005 as the co-offensive coordinator at Texas Tech through 2010 at Oklahoma State, Holgorsen’s lowest-rank in total offense was in 2005 and 2006, his first two seasons as an offensive coordinator, when Texas Tech finished number six nationally.

While Holgorsen has had the Mountaineers’ offense ranked in the top 12 nationally in three of his four seasons, he has shown a true lack of leadership for the rest of the team. The special teams has been one of the worst units in the nation the past two seasons, and the defense continues to not live up to expectations based on the talent on that side of the ball. Holgorsen is a tremendous offensive coordinator, but I’m just not sold on him as a leader of men.

With Luck leaving to go work for the NCAA, Holgorsen will have to impress his new boss, athletic director Shane Lyons, in 2015. If the Mountaineers don’t win at least eight games next season, I believe Lyons will send Holgorsen packing, and bring in his own guy. Lyons’ job is to put every West Virginia athletic team in the best position to succeed, and he likely would want his job performance to be tied to a coach he hires, rather than Holgorsen, who comes from the previous regime.

Jason Fletcher is a Featured Writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @JasonFletcher25, “Like” him on Facebook, or add him to your network on Google+.