MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Second-year West Virginia coach Neal Brown concluded preseason training camp Tuesday night under the lights inside Milan Puskar Stadium with some heavy special teams work.
In fact, close to half of the practice involved working all five units in live situations with officials on hand.
Brown mentioned last Saturday after his team’s second full-scale scrimmage that he was unhappy with how his special teams performed.
“We got a lot of really good work in,” Brown said Tuesday evening. “We are a little bit behind on special teams, and we knew that by doing the split squad. Mentally, we know what to do but as far as reactions and full coverage work we are not where we need to be.
“I feel okay about our protection unit and punt,” he added. “We’ve still got to clean up some things in coverage. Kickoff, I think we’ve got the makings of a really good unit, and we showed that tonight, but both return units we’ve got to get better and those are hard.
“Punt return and kickoff return are both really difficult to execute so we’ve got to continue to figure out personnel wise who is the best fit. Then we’ve got to work it — work a bunch of live opportunities.”
For years, punt return was West Virginia’s Achilles heel. Numerous times punts were either not fielded or bobbled leading to costly turnovers or poor field position.
Consistently catching punts in the air appears to be Brown’s No. 1 objective coming out of the gate. Sure-handed redshirt freshman Graeson Malashevich from Ceredo was among those out there catching a lot of the punts Tuesday night.
Brown has established two full special teams units, a clear illustration of the importance he places on that aspect of play.
“We had two scout teams going and a one and a two for each unit,” he explained. “We wanted to get all of our ones and twos work with all five: Field goal, punt, punt return, kickoff and kickoff return.”
In addition to special teams, Brown also worked extensively on the downfield passing game. That was another area he wasn’t too thrilled with during last Saturday’s scrimmage.
Sophomore Bryce Ford-Wheaton made two long catches during situational work and Sean Ryan managed to haul in a 50-50 ball in the end zone later in the practice.
“Bryce (Ford-)Wheaton had a nice day and Sean Ryan made a really nice play on a go-ball, but we need to continue to work on it,” Brown noted. “We are going to have to hit some big plays and I think if you look at the teams that are really good on offense they hit big plays down the field.”
Brown has not said a lot during camp about his quarterback play and when he has been asked about it, his comments have been somewhat tempered.
Austin Kendall started the first nine games last year and completed 61.5 percent of his pass attempts for 1,989 yards with 12 touchdowns and 10 interceptions. Kendall was injured in the Iowa State loss and eventually gave way to Jarret Doege, who led the Mountaineers to impressive late-season road victories at Kansas State and TCU.
Doege connected on 65.8 percent of his pass attempts for 818 yards with seven touchdowns and three picks.
Those two are the quarterbacks of the present. The quarterback of the future is true freshman Garrett Greene from Tallahassee, Florida. Greene has looked impressive so far during the two team scrimmages going against the No. 3 defense.
Whoever Brown publicly reveals as his starting quarterback, he will be throwing to a vastly improved wide receiver corps that possesses perhaps the best depth on the team.
