Is it just me or is this spring more about the installation and personality of WVU’s defense than it is about the offense and some very notable elements on that side of the three-sided ball? And isn’t that weird at Dana Holgorsen’s WVU?

I can’t remember writing this much about the defense, or at least paying this much attention to defense, during the spring … and let’s remember we’re not exactly seeing and learning about the Mountaineers as a whole this spring. It’s more of a natural curiosity, though when you consider how bad things have been and just how many things have gone wrong and have been wrong, maybe it’s just morbid curiosity.

And maybe that’s natural.

Whatever the incentive, I’m in the presence of a wide-open quarterback race, an offense with some very good parts, compelling competitions and interesting characters, and I can’t tear my mind from the defense, the designed simplicity, the subtle changes that larger changes necessitate or anything else.

And, year, I’m also the guy who stapled himself to Keith Patterson for 10 months and just listened to learn a lot.

The coaches are elucidating the players by disentangling last year’s defense, which now seems as though it was overambitious. They’re going to play man-to-man more this season, or as long as they can afford to. They’re healthy! For now? And there are weird little things happening, be they individually or collectively.

Isaiah Bruce is back inside. K.J. Dillon is all over the field. Christian Brown played defensive end and defensive tackle Saturday. Heretofore anonymous Justin Arndt might be a thing. Why, WVU played a few snaps with only one player with his hand on the ground and six standing up near the line of scrimmage.

But don’t our eyes always shift to the cornerbacks? Don’t we pick them out because opponents always pick on them?

Well, sure enough, the eye spies something different about them, too. Cornerbacks coach Brian Mitchell is back to teaching what he’s always taught because Tony Gibson’s iteration of the defense asks cornerbacks to employ the backpedal in coverage.

Mitchell wants to teach the pedal way and thinks these Mountaineers can handle it, which is a different story than the one told a year ago, when Mitchell first arrived on campus to replace Daron Roberts.

“They were neither,” he said.

Mitchell quickly learned what then-defensive coordinator Keith Patterson was doing.

After just a few days of their first spring together, they determined what was best for Patterson’s plan.

“We decided the shuffle would be better to take the hips out of the equation,” he said. “What we were running, we didn’t need the pedal.”

What Mitchell found, though, was that his shuffling cornerbacks were giving up too many things, and specifically yards to receivers on out breaks.

“We couldn’t really shuffle in man coverage because you can only really transition one way, and that’s on an inside vertical route or an inside break,” he said.