Keith Patterson is rolling up his sleeves and re-configuring what was just a dreadful defense last season, and though we haven’t seen anything to give us any idea how it will look, Patterson has opened up a little bit to talk about what’s happening in the closed parts of workouts.

Granted, you have to be willing to believe all of it to be true, which is not an easy request in this age of opponents gathering all available information and coaches acting understandably cautious.

So, for what it’s worth, Patterson says the corners and safeties will have the same positions and somewhat similar responsibilities, though Patterson speaks of ways they will be made to do some new and, ideally, better things. Hint: No cushion!

The front seven is going to look and play in a new way, though. Patterson’s  3-4 will have two defensive ends and a nose guard, which is different from last year. The linebackers will behave a little differently. Together, those groups are going to align themselves in ways Patterson doesn’t believe opponents will be comfortable with and that is supposed to create more pressure and turnovers, two things Patterson’s defenses have been good at in the past.

In April, it sounds so good, especially when Patterson speaks directly to so many of last year’s weaknesses. In August? November? Next April? Who knows? For now, take an inside look at a defense no outsiders have seen.

“If you play off the boundary, you’re going to get murdered,” Patterson said. “We do not ever play loose on the boundary.”

Patterson would rather force a quarterback to make a trickier throw across a longer distance to the field side and he’ll complicate that by bringing pressure from the field side and congesting the throwing lane between the guard and tackle. He believes the variation with the front seven complicates the offense’s decisions.

“You don’t know who the fourth rusher is,” he said. “Last year, it was pretty easy to identify. It was always, ‘It’s this guy right here. Let’s slide the protection to this guy.’ “

Patterson said the back end will play more coverages than it did last season and won’t give a quarterback or an offensive coordinator an extended look at one tactic. Where the WVU secondary covered four segments of the field last season, Patterson plans to move safeties and cornerbacks around before and immediately after the snap and use his linebackers underneath the secondary to defend certain patterns.

“Last year we were a quarters team pretty much,” he said. “You’ll never see me play quarters. You’ll see us rolling coverage. You’ll see us sinking guys.”