MORGANTOWN — West Virginia started the 2022 season 0-2 with close losses to Pitt and Kansas. Head coach Neal Brown believes his team lost those games, in part, because they weren’t physical enough in preseason camp. He isn’t going to make that mistake again.
“The issue for us is not going to be that we didn’t tackle in fall camp, that’s not going to be a reason why we’re not significantly better,” Brown said after practice on Wednesday. “We’re intentional about being physical in this fall camp. We’ll tackle as much as they’ll allow us to. One of the big components for us to be successful is our ability to be both mentally and physically tough. The only thing I know how to do is go out and practice that.”
WVU began its increase in physical practices this week. Monday the team was in shells, but Tuesday and Wednesday they went with full pads for the first time this fall.
“Some of them start to hide,” Brown said of when full tackling starts. “It’s a different game. Everybody likes flag football but you bring the contact aspect of it in and it definitely separates (players).”
Just like in 2022, WVU will not ease into 2023, with the season-opener at Penn State on Sept. 2. Just how physical to make practices is a question every football coach has to ask themselves in the lead-up to a new season.
“Every college football coach in the country is dealing with the same thing, what’s enough and what’s too much,” Brown said. “How do you walk that line because you don’t want to get your really good players hurt in preseason camp, but you also want to do enough work where they’re ready to go?
“We were thin last year, we had some injuries, but when you look back, we needed to be more physical.”
While WVU is nearing the halfway point of its fall camp — Wednesday was practice seven of 15 — the intensity will only continue to increase in the next few weeks. The team will have scrimmages inside Milan Puskar Stadium each of the next two Saturdays that will help decide several of the starting, and backup, battles on the roster.
“We’re in an evaluation process through a week from Saturday,” Brown said. “We’re trying to evaluate you situationally, we’re trying to evaluate how you handle adversity, how you handle success, all those things.”
Part of what makes having more-physical practices valuable is getting the players themselves to buy in. Middle linebacker Lee Kpogba has been a godsend in that regard.
“He’s a seeker of contact, so that was music to his ears,” Brown said. “He’s done a good job of enthusiastically selling that, because we have to do it.”
Kpogba, a senior, led the team with 92 total tackles last season, his first since transferring in from junior college.
“He’s our unquestioned leader over there and I think he did a good job of getting those guys going (Wednesday),” Brown said. “I thought they were physical (Wednesday) and he’s a big reason for that.”
A future solution Brown believes could help is allowing schools to hold combined practices like NFL teams do.
“Basketball does it where you can either have two exhibitions or you can have a closed practice against another team,” Brown explained. “I think it would be good for our game; our product would be better early in the year.”
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