Zac Alley Quick Hits: Analyzes the Defense's Performance and Preparing for Ohio

The West Virginia Mountaineers (1-0) are coming off a 45-3 season opening win over Robert Morris on Saturday.

Defensive Coordinator Zac Alley met with the media on Tuesday to give his thoughts on the defense’s performance and the challenge on the road against Ohio this Saturday.

Analysis of the season opener against Robert Morris

“I thought we were OK. Tackling was pretty good. They weren’t able to really break anything. So, I thought the effort was good. It’s not hard to get there when he’s like three yards down the field. I thought our guys tried to play physical – tried to get knock back at the point of attack.

“We gave up two kind of explosives you would say, just off communication errors. That was frustrating. I really got on them for that because every single play you should communicate with everybody around you to make sure you’re doing your job correctly. One guy thought he was on one side, he was actually on the other side and the next thing you know, you give up a big play that shouldn’t have happened. So, that’s probably the biggest thing we have to improve on is just our communication and execution. Obviously, coming up this week we’ll have much more of a test.”

 Attempting to contain Ohio quarterback Peter Navarro

“Nobody really did it last year or this season. He kind of ran over everybody.

“It’s probably a blend of all those things (man and zone defense), both making sure we keep him in the pocket as far as the rush, trying to keep him from scrambling out and around. I think, we looked at he’s a top five quarterback in the country when he gets outside the pocket. He’s unbelievable once he’s on the move. So, we’ll do everything we can to keep him in there and that will involve the d-line, it will involve some spy players, it will be man zone. Anything I feel like we can do to corral him.”

Preparing the defense for Navarro’s scrambling ability

“We’re going to tell the quarterback to scramble, you know, the scout team guy, even if maybe it wouldn’t happen on that particular rush, just to get the feel of it. And then, honestly, I think our guys do a good job of understanding what we want to get done over there and we’ll do some natural scrambling in all fours.

“They study. I give them credit. Scott King does a lot of our scout teamwork, and he studies them as much as I do. He wants the mannerisms to be the same, he wants it to look the same, he wants to do everything he can to help us be the best defense we can be.

Those guys are valuable. I mean, they’re incredibly valuable. Our scout team does a great job and I “think they accept that challenge and hopefully they feel that from us.