Who among us has spent some idle time during this most idle time on our calendar giving great thought to even minor items concerning WVU football? As I expected. These are the things I think about, not only to fill my free time, but to help fill a sports section. I, and maybe we, keep coming back to one: The way Dana Holgorsen restructured his coaching staff this offseason.

If you whittle away and get to the core, you find he lost an offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach to be the same at Kentucky, replaced that piece with someone from the FCS level who became the team’s third defensive line coach, lost one of the other two defensive line coaches to the defensive coordinator position at UCLA and replaced that person by promoting a defensive graduate assistant to be the boss on special teams.

Read that all again. It’s very unusual.

Is it bad? Is it that bad? I could argue both sides capably, but I think I’d have more success saying it isn’t too large of a concern.

Bruce Tall was brought in from Charlotte to coach the defensive line after Shannon Dawson left for Kentucky, but he was never Shannon Dawson’s replacement on the staff. WVU wanted someone who could really elevate the defensive line before and then during (and of course after) this season, when the defense ought to be very good. That’s Tall, who WVU wooed last year before landing Tom Bradley. I happen to think Bradley was probably going to a special teams-like role in 2015 before he went to Westwood, and maybe that’s why erstwhile graduate assistant Mark Scott was promoted to the special teams spot, though he’s going to maintain the trust of defensive coordinator Tony Gibson.

The point in all of this is Gibson has the pieces arranged the way he wants them, and Holgorsen trusts him. Gibson likes Tall and he trusts Brian Mitchell with the cornerbacks and Joe DeForest with the safeties. If for whatever reason he has to be with one of those groups, he has his graduate assistant, former linebacker Anthony Leonard, to work with the linebackers.

It’s not that Holgorsen can’t work with the defense, though certainly it’s not his preference or his area of strength. It’s that he doesn’t want to. One reason you hire and pay coaches is to let them work. It would appear, after so many years and so many maneuvers, he has that, which then liberates him and allows him to work more with the offense. Let’s not forget, he was basically the offensive coordinator before. He was. That’s the reason Dawson left, too. Not because of conflict, but because he wanted to actually coordinate an offense and call plays.

But Holgorsen has never been the quarterbacks coach, and he absorbed that title in the offseason, as well. That’s a lot of hats for one head, and I do think it’s fair, whether now or in August, to wonder how big of a bite that truly is. Certain strategies in a game require constant attention — which way the wind blows, when to use timeouts, #TeamGoForIt, etc. — and minor slips can lead to mismanagement and cause major problems. The best head coaches have a handle on that stuff. The best coaches coach on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and watch the machine and its assembled parts do its thing on Saturday, intervening when it’s time to take a hold of strategy and impact the game with a decisive decision. They can be one of the assembled parts, and many are, but being extended too far can cause some issues, particularly during those three coaching days in the week.

So it’s hard, if not divisive, to build and defend an opinion about all of this without knowing the entire story. All of the above neglects one major part of the entire story: Michael Burchett.

You remember him as an extra arm and one of the backup quarterbacks in 2011. He transferred from Kentucky and was able to play right away, but he never played. He learned the offense and impressed the coaches, but he was admittedly impatient and split for Division II Center College, in Danville, Ky. After a semester there, he was back at Kentucky.

Not long after Mark Stoops was hired in December 2012, Holgorsen called Burchett and asked if he wanted to get into coaching. Burchett gave it some thought, changed his educational path and started working with the Wildcats after Holgorsen lobbied on his behalf. Years later, Kentucky offensive coordinator Neal Brown gets hired by Troy in December and wants to bring Burchett with him. Dawson replaces Brown and remembers and wants to retain Burchett. Burchett is between the two possibilities until Holgorsen calls and asks him to return to WVU.

He’s here now and he’s more or less the backup quarterbacks coach, and he’ll do a lot more work behind Holgorsen than he did behind Geno Smith.

“That’s what was really appealing,” Burchett said. “I know as the head coach and the offensive coordinator, he’s got a lot of duties, so he’d want me drilling the quarterbacks. He told me he trusted me to do that and that’s why he wanted me to come back.”

Burchett can check on grades and meet with quarterbacks when the rules allow. During the summer workouts, which WVU is in the middle of now, the group watches film from spring practice and walks through concepts on the field.

Holgorsen is always around. He has enough experience on the staff to let other assistants do what they want while he coaches the quarterbacks or coordinates offense. Sometimes he has to be somewhere else when a quarterbacks meeting starts, though. Burchett starts and hands the room to the head coach when he enters. No time is wasted.

When practice starts next month, Burchett will run the quarterbacks through the drills as Holgorsen floats around the field. The installation and the live parts belong to Holgorsen, though Burchett can pull quarterbacks aside and counsel them.

“I think if anybody can handle it, it’s him because of his personality,” Burchett said. “He gets after it. He has confidence in himself because he’s been successful everywhere he’s been, so why wouldn’t it be successful now? He’s got great help around him, too. All the assistant coaches are on the same page now. They’ve got some continuity and he doesn’t feel like he has to run to the other side of the building to check on things. That’s what takes a the pressure off him and makes this work.”