MORGANTOWN — It’s no secret that WVU’s defense struggled mightily last year and a large reason for that was the play of an inexperienced and under-prepared secondary.
The Mountaineers finished second-last in the Big 12 in passing yards allowed last season (262.3 per game) and dead last with a paltry four interceptions.
“Last year, you had one returning guy (Charles Woods) who had played and he goes down on the 12th play of a huge ballgame at Pitt,” defensive backs coach ShaDon Brown said Thursday. “Now you’re out there with a bunch of guys who have never played. I think there’s a trust factor, in anything you do in working as a unit, there has to be trust, and that’s something that we didn’t have.”
Without Woods, WVU was having to depend on unproven veterans like Malachi Ruffin, Marcis Floyd and Wesley McCormick, and inexperienced underclassmen such as Aubrey Burks, Andrew Wilson-Lamp and Jacolby Spells.
“In the back end, there wasn’t really a veteran guy,” Burks said Monday. “Charles was a veteran guy, but he got hurt. When he got hurt, right then and there, that kind of killed us having a veteran guy.
“The chemistry wasn’t really there,” he continued. “I can say as a secondary, we didn’t fully commit ourselves to try and be the best secondary. Just having that one year together and carrying on to now, our chemistry is way better.”
The hope for 2023 is that now with a year of experience under their belts, the players who were on the field last season will step into that veteran role in the fall.
“To be a leader, you’ve got to be able to make plays,” Brown said. “It’s a lot easier to be a leader when you make plays and Aubrey and Malachi made some plays, so now they feel the comfortability to step out and lead.”
“It definitely feels like I’m becoming a veteran,” said Burks, who is entering his third season at WVU. “I’m not mad about the way I played last year, but I definitely left some plays out there. I definitely could have done better at the beginning of the season, but I think I finished pretty good.”
Burks thinks one of the biggest weaknesses of the secondary last season was a lack of communication, which led to confusion and hesitancy.
“Just don’t think,” Burks said as to what the defense can do better. “I feel like last year in the secondary that’s what we were doing a lot. There was a lack of communication and we were thinking too much.
“This year we just want to talk as a safety and control the defense. Kind of be the quarterback of the defense, control the calls, echo the calls and let people know. This spring is a big moment for us to improve our communication, so when we go into the season it’ll be better.”
Burks had one of the team’s four interceptions last season. Spells also had one and Ruffin had the other two. Generating more turnovers is a focus for the team this spring.
“Our emphasis this year as a secondary is just to play faster,” Burks said. “From last year to this year, we want to create more turnovers. … Just playing more aggressive and fast.”
“If you don’t make plays on the football and in the deep part of the field as a defensive back, the game can get away from you in a hurry,” Brown added. “You’ve got to be relentless to the football. In the second half of the season, I think we got a lot better on defense, with one of the reasons being more aggressive play calls that allowed us to play a little faster.”
TWEET @CodyNespor
