Bill Stewart gets a lot of grief for the sometimes meandering manner of his press conferences. Sometimes we get confused trying to follow along and sort sense from nonsense. Quite often, there’s a good point lost in translation. 

Fortunately, there’s value in Decoding Bill Stewart. This week, WVU’s head coach is asked to discuss the evolution of the 3-3-5 defense. Stewart revisits the reality the program cannot consistently recruit a wealth of large defensive linemen and explains why and how the defense has taken a different tack through the years to connect spoke to hub.

From Tuesday’s press conference

Question: “Would you discuss¹ the evolution of your defense from when you took over? I know it went to that 3-3-5 defense a few years before you came in,² but it seems you’ve grown from three years ago in it and [are] doing some more things. Would you discuss a little how that came about?”

Answer: “I’ll try to do that briefly, and what you do is, the type of youngster we get at West Virginia is of a strong safety mold.³ We don’t get a lot of great free safeties, although Robert Sands would break that mold.⁴ We get strong safety guys. We don’t get a lot of big linemen, although we’ve had some in the past.⁵ We get a tweener guy, you know, the 6-3, 6-4 rangier, thinner guy.

“So our defense, we get three big guys, what we have is a three-linebacker spoke⁶ and that’s six in the box,⁷ but we have five, a hub of five DBs.⁸

“That being said, the guys we recruit, we bring in a safety for a linebacker. We bring in a corner for a safety. There comes our 40 team. There comes our SWAT team.⁹ So it’s all speed ball. All we’re doing is throwing speed. Come in a little bit and throw a curveball at the opponent, you know, to the offense. We like to play fast. We like to play with a lot of speed. So those kind of athletes we recruit here, we get them on the field with this 3-3 stack.¹⁰

“Now people will say, ‘Well, you know, you don’t get a lot of sacks.’¹¹ It’s still the old Oklahoma 52, we’ve just got them stacked.¹² And they come up on the edge and blitz, like Maryland, we get ahead and they have to throw, we blitz pretty well. We go to the 40. We go to the SWAT team. So we have the SWAT team, 40 team. That’s our speed guys. That’s our nickel, dime. That’s a nickel, dime, the 40, SWAT.¹³

“So you use speed. And that’s what we evolved to because I just don’t think we get those big, big John Brownings¹⁴ all the time. We just don’t get those guys. We play against a lot of them, but we don’t get them.¹⁵”

And breathe. Let’s tiptoe through the footnotes.

1. Akin to “Talk about …”

2. Just so we’re clear – and this was understood in the question and the answer — the 3-3-5 was introduced a few years before Stewart came in as head coach.

3. Strong safeties in college are often guys too small/fast for linebacker, too big for cornerback and too big/slow for free safety. WVU recruits a lot of similarly pigeonholed players — great high school athletes who don’t fit a specific position in college, but can definitely play in college. A USA Today story a few years back referenced the Island of Misfit Toys and it’s applicable across the board.

4. Robert Sands would break it into 2,500 pieces with his shoulder and then walk back to the huddle without a sliver of celebration.

5. Guys like John Browning.

6. Try and follow me here … Spoke: (noun) One of the rods or braces connecting the hub and rim of a wheel.

7. Three defensive linemen plus three linebackers equals six defenders in the imaginary box near the line of scrimmage.

8. The hub would be the five-player defensive backfield — two cornerbacks, three safeties. Note how Stewart backtracked to connect spokes and hub, much the same way the spokes connect the rub to the rim … with the rim being the defensive line. This really impressed me.

9. As stated before, WVU recruits athletes with the ability to play a position, even if they lack the physical characteristics to suit the stereotype of a certain position. This is a personality trait of WVU’s defense, though. On third downs, they’ll sub out linebackers for safeties and safeties for cornerbacks. The players who sub in play the former position on the field but with their own ability and WVU subsequently gets more athletes, better speed and greater coverage on the field. Two such packages are called “40” and “SWAT” at WVU.

10. That pretty much ties it all together. WVU wants to play fast, aka speed ball. It’s one way, much like a pitcher always throwing his fastball until he goes offspeed. On some occasions, WVU gets the defense attuned to one thing and then switches to something else. The constant, though, is WVU is going to be a fast team with players adept at covering the field.

11. Everyone says that. Every year. And there isn’t a more overrated stat in football than sacks.

12. The 5-2 defense — five defensive linemen, two linebackers — was a Bud Wilkinson staple at Oklahoma and, not coincidentally, became popular in the old Big Eight Conference. And Stewart’s right: It is a little like the 3-3-5. Where 5-2 teams had five defensive linemen, WVU can choose to stack and use a linebacker and/or a safety to give the appearance of a four- or five-person front. Swap one “E” for an “S” and/or one “E” for a “B” below.

13. The “40” defense is WVU’s version of the conventional “nickel” defense with an extra defensive back. The “SWAT” is WVU’s version of the “dime” defense with two more defensive backs (Two nickels is a dime … get it?). I’ll spare you the details because WVU is intensely protective of its personnel and philosophy and I can respect that. That said, watch and you can see.

14. John Browning was 6-foot-5 and 275 pounds … but more of a giant in his day.  He grew to be a 300-or-so pound defensive lineman with a pretty fair NFL career.

15. You play with who you have and you have who you can get. In college football, that has to be connected. WVU cannot get behemoths up front so it tries to get tweeners there and elsewhere. As such, WVU wins with a defense that realized years back it cannot consistently recruit large and able defensive tackles and ends, but could instead use an unconventional formation and recruitable talent. WVU is skilled at identifying high school players who clearly can play at the college level, even if they don’t have a clear position. The Mountaineers focus on speed and ability and have in recent years evolved to diversify their personnel groupings by having an interchangeable lineup that can handle any down, distance and game situation.