After proving explosive early, the West Virginia Mountaineers offense has sputtered in back-to-back games, combining for 28 total points in a pair of losses.
Through five weeks, Dana Holgorsen's offense was clicking like few college football offenses in the sport's history. The team had put up 40 every week and was undefeated, coming off 70- and 48-point outings against ranked Baylor and Texas squads, and Geno Smith was everybody's Heisman frontrunner. But the team has only three offensive touchdowns in its past two games, and now sits at a disappointing 2-2 in its first Big 12 season. Saturday, Smith threw a pair of picks and for only 143 yards, leaving offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson without any answers, as reported by John Harris of the Tribune-Review:
"I’m not a psychologist, but we’re going to evaluate the whole group," Dawson said. "I don’t know if I have any answers. If I did, I would have answered it earlier in the game.
Smith was also disappointed in the worst outing of his season:
"I am the leader of this team, and I am the leader of the offense... As an offense, we didn’t do enough."
The defense gave up 55 points, but earlier in the season, that had been OK. The Mountaineers allowed 63 and 45 points in those big wins against Baylor and Texas, but the offense held up its end of the bargain. Now, the team is 118th in scoring defense with an offense that seems to have lost direction. They need to figure out what's wrong on the offensive side of the ball if they want to get back into the Big 12 title race.