Click to view photos from the WVU-Marshall game  

MORGANTOWN - Jeff Mullen is a relatively new guy around West Virginia's football program, so the first-year offensive coordinator is sometimes reluctant to say what's on his mind. Thus, as the Mountaineers struggled to score points early this season, Mullen simply asked for patience.

There has always been a plan, though, to gradually expand WVU's offense. It now seems the only question was in what direction to take it.

"The thing is, to an offensive coordinator we're kind of like toys,'' said slot receiver Dorrell Jalloh. "And he has so many toys he doesn't know which ones to play with.''

Well, in the Mountaineers' 27-3 win over Marshall Saturday, Mullen pulled Jarrett Brown out of the box and showed a crowd of 60,154 at Mountaineer Field just a little bit of what the backup quarterback can do.

Playing as a utility back for 21/2 quarters and then finishing as the quarterback after Pat White left with a bruised thumb, Brown was all the talk of a West Virginia offense that rolled up nearly 500 yards against Marshall. He ran for 78 yards, threw for 44 and caught one pass, but more than anything he pumped new life into a group that had scored only two touchdowns in the entire month of September.

And that was more than enough to subdue a Marshall team that could generate only 158 yards of offense all day and self-destructed any time anything seemed ready to go remotely right for the Herd.

And Brown's reaction to it all?

"I was wondering why we weren't doing it before,'' he said with an ear-to-ear grin.

In thrusting Brown upon the Herd, West Virginia pulled very few punches. The 6-foot-4, 220-pound junior lined up beside White, in place of White, ran in motion and generally did a little bit of everything, including serving as a de facto fullback in short-yardage situations. All of that served only to open the offense for tailback Noel Devine to run for 125 yards and for White to complete 17-of-21 passes for 130 yards and two touchdowns before leaving midway through the third quarter.

And so, as Brown asked, why wasn't it done before?

"The biggest thing for me is to make sure Jarrett Brown is well-versed enough [in each week's game plan] to play quarterback if we need him to,'' Mullen said. "We can't have him out there learning a bunch of other stuff all the time.''

At this point, though, Brown apparently knows enough to be able to do both, and that's exactly what he had to do Saturday. White left the game on the second series of the second half when he re-injured a thumb he'd bruised last week at Colorado, and Brown took over from there, leading two drives that ended in field goals.

In the end, West Virginia (2-2) rolled up 493 yards of total offense, including a huge rushing advantage of 319-39 over Marshall (3-2). Just as impressive was the effort of a defense that held Marshall to only 119 yards passing - roughly what MU receiver Darius Passmore was averaging himself in leading the country through three games. Passmore caught four passes for 39 yards.

"Credit their defense. It was hard to sustain drives against them,'' Marshall coach Mark Snyder said. "They're actually better when the field shrinks.''

As was the case in last year's game in Huntington, West Virginia struggled a bit in the first half, although instead of trailing - again, as was the case a year ago - the Mountaineers led 14-3. In short order, though, the game was over when Doug Slavonic sacked and stripped MU quarterback Mark Cann near midfield. After Devine's 36-yard run got the Mountaineers close, White capped the quick drive with his second touchdown pass of the day, a 5-yard wide-receiver screen to Jock Sanders to make it 21-3.

White left the game midway through the third quarter and Brown wound up throwing an interception into the end zone on his first play as the actual quarterback. But on the next two possessions he guided WVU to field goals of 39 and 36 yards by Pat McAfee to make the score 27-3 with seven minutes to play and erase all doubt. West Virginia finished the game by taking a knee at the Marshall 5 rather than trying to add a meaningless touchdown.

How frustrating were things for Marshall? Well, the Herd gained an embarrassing 158 yards of total offense and scored only because of a muffed punt return by WVU's Ellis Lankster. Even at that, Marshall's "drive" was minus-11 yards before Tyler Warner kicked a 34-yard field goal.

Still, at one point during the second quarter, Marshall held the ball for 16 plays, more than six minutes and moved 77 yards, from the MU 14 to the WVU 13. The result? Zilch. The Herd messed up the snap on a 30-yard field-goal attempt and came away with nothing. Marshall had an even more infuriating drive in the second half, holding the ball 19 straight plays and over seven minutes and again failed to score because of a missed field goal.

West Virginia was also shooting itself in the foot, but the Mountaineers did go 76 yards and scored on a Devine 4-yard run on the opening possession, then added a White-to-Jalloh 21-yard pass late in the half to make it 14-3. It almost certainly would have been more had White not scrambled so long on a goal-line play at the end of the half that he ran all nine seconds off the clock and wiped out a potential field goal.

Reach Dave Hickman at 348-1734 or dphickm...@aol.com.