I ask because this was, at the time, a little unusual. Keith Patterson was taking over the defense and putting his touches on it and he was asking West Virginia’s maligned unit to do something that didn’t really seem to make a whole lot of sense.

He wanted the Mountaineers to slow down, not to pounce, but to be patient. There were problems he had to fix, but if there was one issue requiring his immediate attention it was immediacy itself. It was making sure players got to the right spot. It made no difference if WVU got somewhere first if WVU was wrong.

Everyone wanted to play fast on offense, which meant the Mountaineers would have to slow down on defense.

How’d that work out?

Not too well, and for right or for reason, Patterson is now the defensive coordinator at Arizona State. We’re not entirely sure why. We believe it had much to do with Patterson’s lengthy relationship with Sun Devils coach Todd Graham. We think Dana Holgorsen didn’t want to lose Patterson, a guy he hired from Arkansas State because he liked what Patterson did with Pitt to WVU in 2011.

But now we’re beginning to hear possible alternatives, or at least plausible differences of opinion — not to say one thing led to another, because sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but there are some things to consider now that weren’t present before.

The Mountaineers this spring, now under the direction of Tony Gibson, are doing fewer things and hoping to do more because of that. The Mountaineers this spring want to be quicker before the snap and then prompt after it. They are simpler and hope to be the masters of just a few things as opposed to the bearers of too many things.

“You’ve got to remain simple and sound with it,” Holgorsen said. “We don’t want to trick anybody with what we’re doing. We don’t want to line up in a bunch of different things. We want to line up quickly and bring different looks, which is an odd, multiple defense.”

Patterson’s defense was both last season, but to hear Holgorsen and Gibson describe it, Patterson’s defense was far from simple. Holgorsen said he thought last year’s defense was “too multiple” and got in trouble when “we were doing too many different things.”

Those Mountaineers couldn’t align themselves quickly enough to not only play the snap, but to gain any advantages before the snap. Given the tempo most of the Big 12 offenses use, WVU was at a decided disadvantage playing from behind from play to play.

“The key for us on defense, the key for any defense, is to be able to get lined up, get your eyes on your keys, to see what you need to be seeing, and to be able to react to it,” Gibson said. “The one goal we had coming into the spring was to get kids lined up to play faster.”