MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — It was Vic Koenning that pointed Neal Brown in the direction of Blake Seiler, believing Seiler would be a great addition to Brown’s coaching staff at West Virginia when he was assembling the group in January.
The problem was Seiler was entrenched at his alma mater, Kansas State, as an assistant, and plucking someone away from that kind of situation would be tough. But with Bill Snyder retiring as the Wildcats’ head coach and the introduction of Chris Klieman to the position, Seiler thought it was time to make the jump.
“It was hard, especially how it ended,” Seiler said. “Coach Klieman was great to me and my family, and I had a chance to help them finish out that recruiting class. It was one of the hardest decisions I’ve had to make. But I’m a man of faith. I thought about it, prayed about it and felt at peace about it.”
Brown wanted another defensive coach with Big 12 ties on his staff, and Koenning brought that experience with him as a defensive coordinator. Koenning played at K-State in the early 1980s and returned as co-defensive coordinator in 2009. While he was there, he worked with Seiler, who was a quality control coach breaking into the business for the first time.
“I knew nobody worked harder and nobody had been trained to work harder since he worked for coach Snyder,” Koenning said of Seiler.
Seiler has the brains, too. After his playing days from 2004-06 with the Wildcats, he was an aerospace engineer, and that’s exactly the type of coach Brown wanted — someone with a lot of attention to detail, so that’s one reason Brown made Seiler the special teams coordinator.
“He’s done a great job for us here,” Brown said. “He’s led our special teams and I think that’s been a bright spot for our entire football team. He’s been in on a lot of our high-ranked recruits. I’m extremely pleased with him, and [his] attention to detail.”
Brown, who opens every midweek news conference talking about his team’s special teams performance from the week before, is very meticulous about how the often forgotten third phase performs.
When Brown was looking for another coach, that was something Koenning thought Seiler could bring.
“He was an engineer building airplanes — that’s what type of brain he has,” Koenning said. “I knew he and coach Brown would be similar types. I figured they would get along pretty good.”
West Virginia’s kick and punt return coverage units have been two of the best nationally. The Mountaineers are eighth in yards per punt return, at 1.45, and 18th in yards per kick return at 17.6.
But Seiler, the perfectionist, wants to see more from the entire group.
“We’ve done some good things,” he said. “We haven’t had a complete season. We need to be more consistent. The kids are bought in and trying hard, but I’m greedy. We need to be around here. My motto is to change the game on special teams. We didn’t get that done last week, but there’s an opportunity to get it done every week.”
That next opportunity will come Saturday at Kansas State, which will be a homecoming for both Seiler and Koenning.
Koenning said he hasn’t been back to Manhattan since the coached there a decade ago, but it’ll always feel like home.
“Manhattan’s a beautiful town,” Koenning said. “I have a lot of great memories of playing there and going to college there. I don’t have any negative thoughts there.”
