Live rep! We’re going to get excited about this!

My full disclosure here is I’ve been covering spring football for nine days now. I missed the early part, and I can’t even tell you how long that was. I mean, I could tell you if and once I looked it up, but the fact I don’t know off the top of my head is my point. I was unplugged, so view this in that frame: My impression is West Virginia is withholding a lot.

Some of this is normal and to be expected. Spring football is about experimenting with players and packages, and you don’t want to find something and have everyone else see it, ask about it and write about it — because that’s happened before. These are lab hours, mixed with a dose of just-in-case planning. It’s definitely happening, what with a new offensive coordinator and an admitted overhaul of special teams, and the head coach has flat-out said on multiple occasions now that he’s just not going to talk about specific things that happen out of sight.

That was from Tuesday, the day he also said he’s through talking about injuries now. (Long story short, something got out last week and was presented to be potentially more severe than it turned out to be, and the team, the player and his family were unnerved.) So, now that’s closed off, too, and I can’t say I’m surprised or that I disagree. He’s right. A lot of people fixate upon injuries, and I have theories on why that’s happening here, but it’s also part of the story. The media/coach rapport can’t avoid topics like this, but those topics can be managed better. Again, I could go on about this, because I think that particular aspect has created a dynamic that is crossing other borders, but it’s not entirely germane except to say it’s a slice of the secretiveness we’ve so far witnessed. Outside of even that, you talk to coaches and players and you discover some stonewalls. Simple questions, expressions of curiosity, quests for details, big or little, you can see the lid looming over the conversation.

It’s 2017. Information is everywhere, as are the means to access it all. I don’t necessarily know that this falls under Holgorsen’s “I’ve got a contract extension!” persona, the one that has him energized and enthusiastic, wheeling around in a golf cart and delegating to his offensive coordinator so he can put his eyes on as many areas as he sees fit, but certainly he’s going to exercise more control over his program now. He’s secure, and now he needs to find ways to sustain that. A head coach’s top priority is to stay employed.

But we still get to watch parts of practices — 30 minutes, once a week — and we still see an extraordinary amount of special teams work, which Holgorsen involves himself in, as promised.

After all of that Tuesday, we saw offense v. defense, and though I know a spring lineup is mostly hollow and though I know it’s not beyond coaches to put people and ploys on the field to confuse or confound us, what the heck? We saw something at practice — we don’t ever have access to basketball practices — and were given no restrictions for our reportage. Here’s how the first-team offenses and defenses lined up Tuesday:

QB: Will Grier
RB: Justin Crawford
WR: Ricky Rogers
WR: Jovon Durante
IR: David Sills
IR: Gary Jennings
LT: Rob Dowdy
LG: Kyle Bosch
C: Matt Jones
RG: Grant Lingafelter
RT: Colton McKivitz

I’m going to get into this over the weekend, but Grier’s arm is legit, and that’s going to open up the offense. Rogers earned receivers coach Tyron Carrier’s praise — not an easy thing to do — for the way he’s performed this spring and amid the absence of players around him. The size of the inside receivers is a change offensive coordinator Jake Spavital has encouraged. Offensive line coach Joe Wickline and moving the pieces around, but that lineup left to right isn’t changing much … though Yodny Cajuste is back and he’s going to be the starting left tackle if he’s healthy. The bigger concern is not the starting five, but Nos. 6-8. Dowdy …

DE: Jon Lewis
NG: Xavier Pegues
DE: Reese Donahue
Will: David Long
Mike: Al-Rasheed Benton
Sam: Hodari Christian
CB: Hakeem Bailey
CB: Elijah Battle
Spur: Marvin Gross
Bandit: Toyous Avery
Free safety: Jovanni Stewart

That defensive line is … we don’t know a lot about that defensive line yet. Pegues has opened eyes, though, and he can play inside and outside. Lewis is following the track of a fifth-year guy, but Ezekiel Rose is another end to keep an eye on, because his name comes up quite a bit. I saw Xavier Preston, and he’d been the Sam, but Hodari Christian is an inside guy who is maybe getting a look outside now, and that’s another fifth-year guy who ought to know what he’s doing. Bailey is going about his business and knocking out good practices without much fanfare, and Battle is the most experienced player out there. The safety spots are pretty fluid right now, which isn’t a bad thing. I’m pretty sure I saw Kyir White out there before this, but everyone seems more than comfortable with Marvin Gross. Avery was a backup free safety before but he’s been a bandit all spring. Stewart continues his charge.