Pretty much any offense like WVU’s can recruit inside receivers who are going to get the ball on the run and have the skills and the speed to do something with it. Fewer offenses are like WVU’s and have the plays or the capabilities to feature and even enhance a talent like Tavon Austin.

Simply put, he’ll be one of the better ball-in-hand players in the country next season and the Mountaineers are absolutely going to make the most of Austin and his gifts while they can.

But when the music stops and Austin is doing his thing in the NFL, well, what then at WVU?

Is Austin simply a once-in-a-while player who made the offense so dynamic?

Or is WVU’s offense, and all it can do for and with a player, so dynamic that it is actually an every-year thing that can turn a player into a star?

Do the Mountaineers simply accept that Austin is gone and the next guy isn’t going to be quite as special with the same plays?

Does the offense keep Tavon’s stuff in the repertoire and let the next guy go with it?

You might have an answer because WVU might have its next Tavon in Jordan Thompson. No one is saying he is Tavon. The comparisons, at this point, are unfair and probably inaccurate. Dana Holgorsen and Shannon Dawson didn’t go out looking for the next Tavon and decide it was Jordan Thompson, but they think the potential is there. That was their recruiting pitch.

Thompson is already here this spring and already running Tavon’s plays in practice. The hop potato pass no one else ran last year? Thompson runs it, and Dawson calls that a “pretty high honor.”

If all goes according to plan and Thompson and the offense take care of each other in 2012, WVU will slip Thompson into Tavon’s slot in 2013 and see what it’s used to seeing.

“Tavon runs plays we’ve run for a long time, but he’s just really good at them,” said receivers coach and offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson. “When Tavon’s gone, we’re going to continue running those plays, which is why we’re trying to develop another guy like him.

“Some guys when they run those plays, it doesn’t look the same as when Tavon runs them, but we’re going to need that.”

The Mountaineers believe they might have that in true freshman Jordan Thompson. Better yet, Thompson believes that, as well.

“We’re going to need a guy like that next year. That’s the way I see it,” he said. “Right now, they actually have me running plays that are his plays.”