… ’till it’s gone.

Show of hands:Who among you knew of this Jim Lewis character before WVU’s kickoff coverage team deteriorated into something resembling recess at North View Elementary?

Too harsh? OK, how about P.E. at North View Elementary? What’s that? Too harsh for North View? My apologies.

There are myriad reasons the Mountaineers just aren’t very good at a very basic skill, though it should be noted this is a problem for teams at every level of football, including the NFL. Why on Monday night the Cleveland Browns were getting shredded by the Buffalo Bills until the Browns decided to sky kick it. The results were wonderful and Cleveland managed to take a 23-13 lead. Apparently the sky kicks were working too well, so the Browns kicked deep … and gave up a 98-yard touchdown. And no, I have no idea what that shrieking was around 11 p.m. last night.

Point being it’s a problem everywhere. At WVU, the simplest explanation I’ve observed, gathered and confirmed is the players are too slow down the field and too slow getting off blocks. Jimmys and Joes over Xs and Os.

Only the Mountaineers were missing a Jimmy for the past six games, which is precisely when Jim Lewis became a name.

Last season, a lot of players talked about Jim Lewis and how he was a scout team demon. This year, he seemed like a good end-of-the-summer feature. He was, to be brutally honest, someone you write about then because you won’t feel the need to write about him afterward.

Woops. Jim Lewis started tackling everyone who tried to return a ball against WVU and, I kid you not, tackled a teammate to make a play against East Carolina. So in asking about him afterward, it was learned he was about to get some serious playing time at linebacker. That Jim Lewis, a walk-on senior who transferred from a Division II school, was about to become a starter.

Then things went terribly wrong. He thought he had a bone bruise on his left foot and practiced through it in preparation for his starting assignment, but in the 12 days between ECU and Colorado it only got worse. Then Reed Williams decided to test his shoulders against Colorado, which kept Mortty Ivy as the starter on the strong side and Lewis a backup. Lewis soldiered through the pain and made two tackles on three kickoffs, but realized he had broken his foot in the process.

 When Bill Stewart announced it and said Lewis was out six-to-eight weeks, I asked, without hesitation, if Lewis might take a medical redshirt. I’m not ashamed of that whatsoever.

Lewis sat and watched as WVU’s kickoff coverage average jumped nine yards without him. In not-so-quiet corners of the press box, he became a solution to other woes, too. Fullback? Jim Lewis! Short-yardage back? Jim Lewis! Backup quarterback? Jim Lewis! Tajh Boyd? Jim Lewis!

Needless to say, he’s ready to make his return and make an impact against Louisville.

Now, the word is that he’s coming back for the Louisville game, which may not be the best of news for the Louisville kick returners.

“I’m going to go down and take someone’s face off,” he said, providing a rather graphic description of play on special teams. “I’m going to have the hit of the year or the miss of the year.”

It is difficult to imagine that the loss of one player could make such a difference on the kickoff team. It isn’t like there’s any magic formula in stopping returns.

“You just got to go down there and tackle the guy,” said Lewis.

Aha! Wonder if anyone told the other guys that?

“It’s not like you got a scheme, you know what I mean,” Lewis continued. “You’ve got to do some things, obviously, but special-teams play is all about mental. If a team says, ‘Wow, they’re the worst, we’re gonna do good against them,’ I think that helps them when they come into the game. They will have big returns.”