When WVU’s safeties coach was the defensive coordinator back in the 1990s, he commanded the nation’s very best defense in 1996. A year later, things were different as the Mountaineers tried to replace a bunch of starters and regulars. Fast-forward so many years and Jeff Casteel is walking in the same shoes and working late to come up with the best combinations across the field.

That isn’t necessarily the continuation of Casteel’s frustrations, of his consistent search for consistent players, but it is nevertheless emblematic of how he’s getting creative to get the right lineup.

Don’t panic, though. The deadline to figure out who goes where before the first game is artificial, mobile and actually nonsense. Dunlap dealt with the same type of thing back in 1997.

“We had a bunch of veteran players, juniors and seniors (in 1996) and I think we lost seven starters off that team,” Dunlap said. “The next group thought they’d just go out there and everything would be OK. It doesn’t work that way. You’ve got to earn your stripes every day.

“In 1997, three games into the season, we took a third of the defense out. They couldn’t handle it. They were making so many mistakes we couldn’t handle it.”

The Mountaineers allowed 79 points in the first three games and gave up 31 points twice. They were 2-1, but Dunlap had seen enough.

“I just thought that the players that were playing behind (the 1996 team) thought they would step in and everything would be the same, but it was mistake after mistake,” he said. “It’s a mental game as much as a physical game, but it was a ridiculous amount of mistakes we made.”

In the next four games, WVU allowed 17, 0, 14 and 17 points and won all four games.