Don’t forget this about West Virginia’s running backs coach: He knows his way around WVU. He was a graduate assistant under Don Nehlen and Rich Rodriguez, which was an interesting time, and then he was an assistant coach for the 2007 season under Rodriguez, which was also an interesting time.

He’s been gone for nine years, so it’s informative to have him reflect on what the program is like now relative to what it was envisioned to be with a young, ambitious coach way back when.

And while we’re on the topic of ambitious, how about Dews?

He’s got an important job this season in that he’s in charge of the strength of the offense and one of the best handful of collective units in the Big 12. That’s a big deal. But he’s also never coached running backs before, and to many, that, too, is a big deal. Here’s a brand-new Porsche. Oh, you’ve never driven a manual?

But is it a big deal?

Head coach Dana Holgorsen doesn’t see it that way. He finds that the people who coach the skill positions on offense are able to coach any skill position on offense. The viewpoint of a receivers coach who became a quarterbacks coach who became an offensive coordinator is not without merit. Certainly, one coach is subjected to a lot of the same meetings and does a lot of the same drills.

And Dews, if nothing else, knows about running out of the spread because of all his time with Rodriguez and Calvin Magee, who once upon a time people really, really liked. He can also teach these running backs about practicing and then acting like a receiver from time to time. It’s not a terrible idea.

But Dews also has visions and goals, and spending much of a 19-year career with one position … and one coach … in essentially one offense can be restrictive. He’d like to be a coordinator and maybe even a head coach before he’s ready to retire, and branching out and adding to what he knows and what he can do, to say nothing of adding to the number of people who know what he can do, is proactive and potentially beneficial.

Narrow the focus, though. WVU needed a running backs coach to replace JaJuan Seider, but Holgorsen looked for a person to replace Seider. Who was Seider? Offensively aware but also a big personality, a talented recruited, someone who knew the school and someone who knew people on the staff.

Dews checks all the boxes.

“Presence,” Holgorsen said, “was the No. 1 thing that struck me with him.”

That should help with recruiting. The Mountaineers are spending less time and energy in South Florida, where Seider was renowned, and Dews, from Clifton, Virginia, can heighten WVU’s presence in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

Holgorsen had answers to many other questions about Dews before they ever met. Dews was on WVU’s 2007 staff, as was defensive coordinator Tony Gibson and defensive line coach Bruce Tall, who both left with Dews for Michigan that offseason and are with the Mountaineers again now. Dews also worked with safeties coach Matt Caponi at Arizona. He met offensive coordinator Jake Spavital a few years ago when Rodriguez welcomed the staffs of Indiana and Texas A&M, where Spavital was the co-coordinator, to campus for an idea-sharing retreat.

They now move forward together.

“When I see the success they’ve had here, when I look at what Mike Leach has done in the Pac-12 and how a lot of people are doing that in the Big 12, that’s what intrigued me about this opportunity,” Dews said. “Why not learn something new and be able to know one system and learn another?

“Like anything else, when you get an opportunity to do things your way, you want to do it your own way so that you’re not mimicking just what this one person does, but you collectively put your thoughts and ideas you have in mind toward what you want to do.”