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When former West Virginia athletic director Oliver Luck hired Oklahoma State offensive coordinator Dana Holgorsen in 2011, the original plan was for Holgorsen to be the Mountaineers’ offensive coordinator during his first year under Bill Stewart and then take over in 2012 as head coach. As one could expect, the heir to the head coaching throne and the current head coach couldn’t agree on decisions which led to Stewart’s resignation.
Holgorsen is now in his fifth season as the Mountaineers’ head coach and has a career record of 31-26, including going 1-2 in bowls. Prior to the 2015 season, I put a lot of stock in the team’s performance this year on whether Holgorsen should be the guy to lead the Mountaineers for the foreseeable future. With a new athletic director in Shane Lyons, it was time for the head coach to prove that he was the guy to lead the team.
Through the first three games of the season, albeit against lesser competition, the Mountaineers did what was expected of them and went 3-0 while demolishing each opponent. Then came the team’s first road trip to Norman, Okla. to face the Oklahoma Sooners. What transpired was a five-turnover performance from quarterback Skyler Howard and a defense that allowed receivers to run free all day long, despite returning 10 of 11 starters from the 2014 defense.
The following week, the Mountaineers returned home to play the Oklahoma State Cowboys. Howard would turn the ball over three more times, and West Virginia would turn the ball over four times as a team, as the Cowboys would emerge victorious, 33-26 in overtime. While the Cowboys were ranked at the time, West Virginia can’t afford to lose any home games in the Big 12 or the team runs the risk of not making a bowl game and embarrassing a proud fanbase.
Entering this past weekend’s game against the No. 2 ranked Baylor Bears, no one expected the Mountaineers to come out on top, but a solid showing would prove that Holgorsen wasn’t too far away from having this team competitive in the Big 12. Instead, the Bears went through the West Virginia defense like a warm knife through butter on their way to a 62-38 victory. The defense that was supposed to be such a strength for the Mountaineers in 2015 has underachieved massively.
The Mountaineers are now sitting at 3-3 with a Thursday night game at TCU on the docket. Once the Horned Frogs give Holgorsen’s team another thrashing, the Mountaineers will be sitting at 3-4 with home games against Texas Tech and Texas to follow. While both of those games are certainly winnable, the West Virginia defense will have to figure out how to get some stops first.
Performance on the field isn’t the sole reason that it’s time for Holgorsen to be fired. There have been numerous run-ins with the law for Mountaineers players since his arrival, in addition to the failure to get the most out of his players. The great coaches can take two and three-star talents and turn them into stars, while Holgorsen takes four-star talents and turns them into mediocre of below-average players.
Coaching is an ability to teach and get through to your players, and with Holgorsen spending the majority of his time on the sidelines throwing his headsets while getting in the faces of his players and degrading them, he’s obviously not sending the right message.
Jason Fletcher is a Senior Writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @JasonFletcher25, “Like” him on Facebook or add him to your network on Google+.
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