Way back before the start of spring practice in early March, Dana Holgorsen said a few things about the past and future direction of his offense.

Offensively, coach (Shannon) Dawson and myself have been studying the cutups of what we saw and what we need to improve on. We are pretty much critiquing every aspect of what we do offensively – what we feel like we need to get better at and what direction we need to go based on what our production is.

Not a lot of context attached to that, and considering the prolific success of the offense the past two years, and all the seasons before that, you had to wonder precisely what that meant.

We haven’t seen anything to base hunches on during the portions of the spring practices we’ve been invited to witness, so it’s hazardous to even suggest. More under center stuff?  Fewer vertical routes? Increased pre-snap motion? A greater variation of tempo?

Every one of them a guess.

Yet your time would be wasted if it was spent looking for those things. What Holgorsen and Dawson have done is organize an offense that had branched out and added some complex layers the past two seasons.

Geno Smith could handle those things. Not to say that Paul Millard or Ford Childress cannot, but they shouldn’t be made to do what was put in place for a different player with different mental and physical propensities.

So it’s been streamlined and simplified and arranged in such a way that it’s easier to learn and master for both the players at various positions and the three new assistant coaches. Visually, there may be very little that looks different. Step inside, though, and it will sound and feel new.

“We packaged it differently, that’s all,” Dawson said. “You’re probably not going to be able to see it just looking at it, but the internal organization of the offense has changed. We grouped things together and simplified it. There’s not as much now. It was about cutting things out as much as making it make sense all the time.”

A large part of that can be directed back to the new players, but Dawson said he and Holgorsen would have done the same review no matter who was graduating or returning. The offense doesn’t have a lot of plays or parts, but it’s easy to add or adjust here and there and add layers that don’t always need to exist.

“When you’re dealing with a system without too many moving parts, you can get to thinking you can do more than you actually can,” Dawson said.

Plays, formations and player groupings aren’t going to change – and they haven’t changed for a long time, anyway – but Dawson said the outcome saw WVU removing complexities and adding clarity. There are fewer options now and better terminology.

“It’s just the inner workings of communication on the offensive line, just little tweaks on the offensive line,” Dawson said. “A lot of the communication as far as sideline to the quarterback, quarterback to the line, quarterback to the receivers, just things where we got together and made it make sense and made it work in such a way that it’ll roll a lot better during the course of the fall.”