Good day to you. Thanks for all the concern expressed here and in texts and emails. It’s been a tough month, and the past two days were far from easy. There were some things we all had to handle, and we needed to keep it all to ourselves. I trust you understand. We’re clear now. I’m good to go. Let’s take the rest of the week to recharge and then come back Monday to hit it strong.
I know you want to boor or point a finger at someone when it comes to special teams, but sometimes it’s hard to be so specific with assigning blame.
Punt returners might stink, but there are teammates who have to hold up defender to create time for a catch and there are teammates who have to set blocks to spring returns. The same holds true on kickoff returns. A guy may miss a tackle late on a kickoff return, but maybe he was forced to cover for someone who ran out of his lane earlier and created the alley the returner exploited. The shield on punts can sometimes allow too much pressure on a punter who mishits under duress. The hold and snap might be wonky on a missed field goal.
And when something goes wrong with special teams, you know who the target for scorn typically is. Or do you? Turns out WVU has a specialized structure for coaching the third side of the three-sided ball.
Dana Holgorsen is West Virginia’s football coach and he has nine assistant coaches on his staff. One of them is Mark Scott, a former graduate assistant promoted to a full-time position in the spring.
He’ll help with the secondary during the season and from the coaches’ box during games, but his primary role is as the team’s special teams coach. Scott also has nine assistant coaches on his staff, including Holgorsen.
The fact the special teams coach isn’t the only special teams coach, and that he divvies up duties among the assistants is lost on many who seek to blame the name at the top of the flow chart, but it also helps the Mountaineers provide better coaching.
“What it allows us to do is bring up every individual and break down the specific parts that we teach to each position and bring the whole thing together,” Scott said.
West Virginia’s pass rush was anything but a Legion of Doom last fall, and maybe that was to be expected. Not the depth of the struggle, but the fact it was an issue.
The 3-3-5 is unique and createa obstacles you must learn to overcome. The coaching wasn’t synced up like Tony Gibson wanted. Everyone needed time, but the season doesn’t make time for such situations.
It should be better, if for no other reason than it be hard to be much lower in the final national rankings.
But there’s more to it than than … though that’s pretty good incentive.
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Look, offensive coaches are going to talk up Jovon Durante because he’s a newcomer and he’s looked quite good. He can help and we all ought to know and get excited about that. We get it, though we do have to stop and think when Lonnie Galloway is willing to unbridle the enthusiasm he typically reserves.
Galloway on No. 5: "I think he'll be a good player. He's got something. What it is, we'll see, but he's a good player." He's playing in '15.
— Mike Casazza (@mikecasazza) August 13, 2015
And, hey, JaJuan Seider recruited Durante, first when he was an assistant at Marshall and then through an extremely competitive process for the Mountaineers. Of course he’s going to brag a little and warn that the freshman “can be that next big thing here.” Teammates are always supportive, even if they play the same position, and guys like Jordan Thompson don’t much mind admitting Durante started making big plays the first day Durante was allowed to fully participate.
But defenders and defensive coaches? For that defense? You can confidently assume they’d be a little more guarded and unwilling to issue too much praise and dent the reputation of their defense. But that hasn’t applied to Durante.
“Has Dana talked about him yet?” said cornerbacks coach Brian Mitchell, who was then assured his boss had indeed discussed Durante. “Special. That’s all I’m going to say.”
Defensive coordinator Tony Gibson was careful, too, and though he oversees a defense that Holgorsen said could be the best he’s ever had, Gibson admitted Durante has left his mark so far.
“As good as I’ve seen as a freshman since I’ve been around here,” he said. “He’s scary good.”
We begin the third edition of the exceedingly popular All-Camp Team with a disclaimer…
This is not a depth chart. If you present this as a depth chart, I’m done with you. If you see someone presenting this as a depth chart, you should be done with that person — and I might be done with you simply because your eyeballs associated with that person.
For some reason I will never be able to explain, people see the listing of players that follows and then scurry to whatever platform they can get to the fastest and say something ridiculous.
Yo, Casazza has a depth chart.
Man, he predicted a depth chart, and it stinks.
We’re not going to have a depth chart for a while still. As always, my hunch is we won’t get one until WVU has to give us one, and WVU doesn’t have to give us one until the Tuesday of the first game week. When reporters walk into the weekly Dana Holgorsen news conference, they pick up notes packets for WVU, the Big 12, the opponent and the opponent’s conference. Early on in the WVU notes is a depth chart. That wouldn’t happen until Sept. 1. Holgorsen suggested late last week he might publish a depth chart this week based off of post-camp evaluations and conversations with his staff. He has a news conference Aug. 25, and there might WVU notes there. But he also said that a depth chart either soon or a week from tomorrow might not be worth much because WVU doesn’t play until Sept. 5.
In any event, this is not a depth chart. This is my list of players who made the most out of the 13 days of camp. They don’t have to be stars or starters, but they must be players who came out of camp with a much better, much more certain situation than they had before it began Aug. 3. These are the players who helped themselves and/or who helped the team the most. And it was hard. I puzzled over a handful of positions. You’ll find there are some “No kidding, Caz” picks here, but it’s indicative of the situation WVU has with its roster. There are players you won’t be surprised to see but who also deserve to be included. This is what’s called working from a position of strength, and it’s something Holgorsen has not yet enjoyed.
If you’re curious or into history, here’s how it looked in 2013 and 2014. If you’re tired of my lecture, here’s how it looks in 2015 based on my observations and my (mostly anonymous) conversations with players, coaches and staffers.
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I had almost forgotten about the grey unis…
Redshirt senior linebacker Nick Kwiatkoski
On what the defense is doing this year to try and improve the pass rush
We are putting in different types of ways to blitz. We are just working every day, and we are working on our pass rush moves, before and after practice. Everyone is working. The linemen and linebackers are working on pass rush moves.
On if a lot of emphasis has been put on the pass rush and if the coaches made the point that last year’s pass rush wasn’t sufficientIt’s kind of known. We just emphasis it more every day.
On what junior defensive lineman Larry Jefferson adds to the pass rush
He is a great pass rusher. He is a tall and very quick guy. He can bring a lot into the pass rush game, and we are lucky to have him. He’s one of those guys that gets to the quarterback, so we will see.
On individual improvement throughout fall camp
Camp is definitely a grind. We are hitting it hard every day. The biggest thing is going out every day and trying to get better. It’s hard. It’s hard for everyone. You definitely have to make an emphasis on trying to improve each day.
On finishing off his last year with redshirt senior linebacker Shaq Petteway and redshirt senior linebacker Jared Barber
It definitely allowed us to get close. Like you said, we came in together. (Redshirt senior linebacker) Shaq (Petteway) and I were bother safeties, and then we moved to linebacker. Those two guys, along with me, have experienced a lot of defense and a lot of change over in coaches and schemes. It’s all about coming together, especially now, since we can finish off our careers here. It means a lot.
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There hasn’t been much to say about what WVU has done and who the Mountaineers have played in the Bahamas, but I suppose that changes today. The Mountaineers again pilfered and plundered their way to a 20-point win against the best competition they saw and finished 3-0.
“I thought it was good for us,” said coach Bob Huggins. “They played hard and it was competitive for the majority of the game. I thought our freshmen really stepped up and played well. I thought our young guys gave us great minutes.”
Maybe it’s one of those little things I will sometimes make into a bigger thing, and maybe it’s just August, but, man, Bruce Tall’s players really like the way he works.
Rushel Shell is related to Tony Dorsett, though precisely how escaped him at the moment he revealed it to a captive audience Tuesday. Certainly they’re not that close, and they’ve taken different routes of late when it looked like for quite some time like one would follow in the footsteps of the other.
Both were stars at Hopewell High, in Aliquippa, Pa., where Dorsett set all the school records and then Shell broke them. Shell signed a scholarship with Pitt, where Dorsett won a Heisman Trophy before becoming a NFL Hall of Famer. Shell spent but one year at Pitt before transferring here and further branching off on his own as a way to make it at the next level.
He’s no longer an I-formation running back. He’s a shotgun tailback who has multiple duties in a multiple offense, and that it wasn’t easy during an otherwise successful debut season marred by an ankle injury suggests it’ll be better this fall.
“You can’t just throw an I-formation back into the shotgun and expect him to be just as crisp as he was in the I formation,’’ Shell said. “There’s a lot more techniques and paths and tracks and reads that you’ve got to know, rather than just dot that I and I’m going to run right or I’m going to run left.’’
Again, though, that’s all Shell had ever known.
“It was just that it was new to him,’’ WVU running backs coach JaJuan Seider said of the transition Shell had to make. “You go from high school, where they hand it off 30-40 times a game, and you go to that other school and they just hand the ball off.’’
That wasn’t going to get Shell anywhere and he knew it. He began diversifying last season, when he led WVU in rushing with 768 yards and also caught 21 passes, but that wasn’t enough. Holgorsen has spent the offseason raving about running back/slot receiver Wendell Smallwood and how he fits into both West Virginia’s offense in particular and modern offenses in general. And Shell took note.
“I just felt like I wanted to show everybody that I could do anything they wanted me to in an offense,’’ Shell said. “Right now, multipurpose backs are in style. Those are the ones that are getting paid for what they do. I had to do it. I didn’t have a choice.’’
The brilliance of K.J. Dillon, as you can see above, is he is the appropriate blend of ambitious, confident and capable. He has, therefore, arrived to save WVU’s punt return with simple approach.
“I’m not saying I’m going to be the next Tavon [Austin],’’ Dillon said of the former Mountaineer, who returned four kickoffs and a punt for a touchdown in college. “But I am going to catch the ball and run.’’
Let’s be honest: Dillon’s not being honest.
OU's Ty Darlington, HS teammate of WVU's KJ Dillon on Dillon returning punts: "He makes it sound like he's Tavon Austin out there."
— Geoff Coyle (@GFCoyle) July 21, 2015
