http://twitter.com/WVUfootball/status/763708884762537985
Someone told me last night that this was going to happen this morning, and I just shrugged it off as though it could not be true. Are they going to tell him the temperature of his seat? Hey-o!
But, no, this happened, and now I need to know Dana’s Skype handle. McCracken70? ThatSucksMan7033? Tell me, please.
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I don’t know what the motivation was, but WVU decided to have a scrimmage this Saturday and allow the media to watch. The first 30 minutes are open for photographs and videos. We’re then whisked away to the suites, and we get to watch the rest, though we cannot send out live reports.
We went over this last week when it happened, but it was a big change to the preseason media schedule, which prior to that had only given us a few 30-minute windows. I suspect it was nothing more than Dana Holgorsen looking at the schedule and thinking, “Eeh, we need to scrimmage. Let ’em watch.”
But it’s happening on a Saturday before high school football seasons start, and it turns out weekends in the preseason are very for recruiting purposes.
Limitations on practice time — for both college and high school players — allow recruits to set up visits to colleges in their spare time, hoping to get one last look at a few schools before turning their attention to their senior seasons.
That’s certainly the case at West Virginia, where the Mountaineers hosted two offered prospects over the weekend in Stockbridge, Georgia, teammates Jalen Holston and Kelton Dawson. Holston is a three-star prospect ranked as the No. 42 running back in the country. The Mountaineers are one of over two dozen programs to offer him, although he recently listed Virginia Tech, North Carolina and South Carolina as his top three schools.
Dawson is a three-star recruit, ranked as the No. 56 strong-side defensive end in the 247Sports Composite, and he had plenty of positive things to say about the Mountaineers after the trip.
“It was very good,” said the 6-foot-2, 242-pounder. “They showed us the school, the weight room, and how they get after it with school and weights. Then we watched them practice.”
Remember this gadgetry? Where did it go? Will we see it again?
Once upon a time, it seemed like that devilish touch pass would always have a place in West Virginia’s offense. We saw it throughout 2012 but rarely in the seasons that followed. Nowadays, it’s sort of like a special occasion when the Mountaineers run it, so much so that a preseason practice rep is revered like a winning scratch-off.
But just because WVU worked on it the other day doesn’t mean it’s making a comeback. The offense has the players who can run it, which is a difference from the prior three years, but Dana Holgorsen doesn’t have the need for it, which is the biggest and best difference.
You’re not going to believe this, but there’s an explanation: Skyler Howard is Tavon Austin.
They don’t play the same position. Marcus Simms (above) is an outside receiver. I seem to remember him playing a lot of X (the left side) in the spring. On Tuesday he played the Z position on the right side. Steven Smothers is an inside receiver, either at the Y or the H. We haven’t seen him appear on a two-deep to know for sure, but he was at the H Tuesday.
But they are freshmen, and right now it sounds like Simms has a greater chance to get onto the field and make a splash this season.
“Simms is way closer based on the spring,” Holgorsen said. “He was here all spring, so he’s in a position where he’s probably going to be a contributor at some point. He does a good job in the return game, and he can stretch the field, but he’s still learning. I’m not to prepared to say either one of them is in the top eight, but Simms is a lot closer to us being able to count on him.”
There’s another factor to consider: Jovon Durante. He was the backup Z. Simms was with the second-team there Tuesday because Durante is an inside receiver — or not, because of the depth chart we’ve seen today. So while Durante bumped Simms up by changing positions — at least temporarily — he also bumped Smothers down by moving inside.
Congratulations to pknocker40 for winning Preseason Bingo. We had to discuss “season-ending injury,” because Jaleel Fields was hurt in the spring. But swapping Fields for Jake Long was sufficient for the Authentication Committee.
We can keep going through camp, which ends Aug. 16, but we’ve already found the winner.
What if I told you that I produced and scheduled this post Tuesday night and that the nickname I used for the players in the story was the “Final Four?” I only used it to fit the headline, not to print T-shirts … and then gymnastics happened later that night, and, well, I had to make an edit this morning.
Anyhow, WVU’s defense has a pretty unusual thing going at cornerback. Eight players — apologies to freshmen Sean Mahone and now-injured Jake Long — are battling for the two starting spots … and then the backup and nickel back roles. But half of those eight are fifth-year seniors with wholly different backgrounds and one thing in common: There is no next year.
The Mountaineers believe there’s something to that motivation.
“It’s not necessarily pressure, it’s more that you have to be focused and you can’t slip up and have a bad day,” Kyeremeh said. “We’re so close on the depth chart that somebody can pass you if you have one bad day. That makes you more focused to try not to have those mistakes.”
Repeated errors or one bad day will cost a cornerback his spot in a competition as crowded as this one, and it can take a few days to make up for what went wrong. Time isn’t something any of the four seniors can afford to waste.
“You see a lot in this business when guys become seniors that something happens to them mentally,” Gibson said. “I’ve seen a ton of guys have their best year in their senior year, which is the way it should be.
“These guys are on their last chance to make an impression and finish their careers the right way. Some of them might be able to go play at the next level, and some of them will play, hopefully, 13 or 14 games here and that’ll be their last hurrah.”
"Throw your uppercuts."
Let Bruce Tall show you how to attack another Wednesday. https://t.co/DTXNTjIknM
— Mike Casazza (@mikecasazza) August 10, 2016
Seismic news coming in a bit. We have a Preseason Bingo winner!
If you’re into extraordinarily small sample sizes, I’ve got a treat for you. During the 30-minute widow of today’s practice that was open to the media, we saw 1s v. 1s and 2s v. 2s and — prepare yourself — the offense could not move the ball.
OK, it was two series and eight total plays, but the (first-team) offense only moved the ball forward once and the (second-team) defense was able to move the offense back twice.
But still …
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