This came up in today’s chat (transcript right here) and the weird truth about WVU is, overall, the special teams are decidedly not terrible. Kicking is unreliable. Punting is worse. But that’s only two parts of the entire operation, one that is actually … OK … this season.

The punt return defense is ranked low nationally, but because of one return by Marshall — and a lot of Corey Smith’s or Mike Molinari’s punts weren’t or couldn’t be returned.  The kickoff return defense is also ranked low, but has gotten a lot better. WVU is also the best in the Big East in punt returns and No. 3 in kickoff returns. The Mountaineers rank in the top 20 nationally in both.

Surprised? I thought you might be. So new talking point: Special teams … not too shabby?

“That’s the thing about special teams: If it doesn’t look good, everybody complains about it, but if it looks like it’s supposed to look, everybody ignores it,” Coach Dana Holgorsen said. “Referring to when things didn’t look good on the kickoff team, everybody wanted to talk about it. Now that it looks good, nobody wants to talk about it.

“Give those guys credit. The effort was good, and we played well. We had guys step up.”