Welcome Joe DeForest back to Mountaineer Field, folks. The erstwhile West Virginia defensive coordinator-turned-special teams coach is now running special teams at Kansas. They’re all right, this punt return touchdown notwithstanding. I don’t think there’s any questioning this: DeForest was the most disliked assistant coach among fans from the Dana Holgorsen Era. Jeff Mullen_ wonders where he ranks all time.

A brief review will remember that WVU covered a buyout to pull DeForest from Oklahoma State to replace Jeff Casteel and be Holgorsen’s defensive coordinator as the Mountaineers moved to the Big 12. DeForest had never been a coordinator. The defense was historically bad that season, DeForest blamed magic after a loss, trolled fans with his choice of hat and was replaced by Keith Patterson before the year was finished. That’s a lot, and then next year he was implicated in the Sports Illustrated expose on Oklahoma State.

DeForest maintained his high salary and associate head coach label to run the special teams — not particularly well — and coach safeties the following two years. When his contract was up following the 2014 season, Holgorsen encountered and overcame some resistance to bring back DeForest for one year without the title and for $125,000 less.

What if I told you it didn’t have to be that way? Because it did not. When David Beaty was putting together his coaching staff soon after accepting the head coaching job at Kansas in December 2014, he tried and failed to hire DeForest.

“He’s a loyal guy,” Beaty said. “Dana hired him, and he loved working for Dana and he loved West Virginia. It’s not as easy as just saying, ‘OK, I’m gonna go.’ I offered him an opportunity to come with me. He had an opportunity to say yes or no. At that point in his career, his heart was right where it was. There was nothing wrong with that.

“But I told him, ‘I’m going to keep coming at you until I get you,’ and the next time it just worked out.”

DeForest was looking for work, of course. His contract was not renewed following the 2015 season, and Beaty had a vacancy. It’s a better rebound than what Mullen, Daron Roberts, Erik Slaughter or many others enjoyed.

“I look no further than this,” Beaty said. “Kevin Steele did not do very good as the head coach at Baylor. Now he’s, what, the defensive coordinator at Alabama? LSU? [It’s Auburn.] All I know is Kevin was kind of thrown to the wayside. He didn’t forget how to coach. Sometimes you kind of run aground a little bit on talent, and sometimes the talent determines how much you can accomplish.”

Beaty was at Texas A&M and in the SEC the first three years WVU was in the Big 12, but he’s done his homework on his hire and perhaps even the manner in which he’d have to defend it.

“At the time when Joe I think took over for you guys, I think you all had a bunch of young (defensive backs), and the defense was kind of retooling a bit, so to speak,” Beaty said. “You had some good players, but he didn’t benefit from a lot of veteran guys, I guess, so to speak, but I’ve watched this guy do it year in and year out special teams-wise and on defense — he’s coaching special teams for us — and the thing I like about him most is his demeanor with the kids and the way he teaches.

“And I only use the Kevin Steele analogy because, all of a sudden, he’s widely thought of as one of the best in the country.”

Kevin Steele, you might remember, was the defensive coordinator on the wrong side of 70-33. He got run after that game and was out of football for a year, but he spent a year as the head of player personnel at Alabama and was the coordinator at LSU in 2015.

DeForest has some work to do, but the business, it seems, can be a rock tumbler.

“A couple years ago, Manny Diaz was the talk of the town as the top defensive coordinators in the country — well-deserved,” Beaty said. “People would flock from all over the world to talk to Manny Diaz. And then for some reason they had one bad year and things don’t look like that anymore and he gets thrown down to (Louisiana Tech) and then he’s back at Mississippi State and now once again he’s resurfaced (at Miami) because those guys don’t forget how to coach. Sometimes talent changes, but the patience nowadays does not allow a man to work through things.

“Listen, we know it when we get into it. We get it. But I think it takes an opportunity like we had available for Joe to step right back in and become the guy that he always has been.”