Garnett Hollis Jr gives Brown and WVU's secondary a new type of versatility
WVU co-defensive coordinator and secondary coach ShaDon Brown has a lot to like about Garnett Hollis Jr. due to his versatility as a cornerback.
Hollis comes to WVU after spending four seasons at Northwestern and his size and experience on the back end of a defense.
"Garnett gives you a guy that’s big on the outside. He's right at 6-foot-2, 205-pounds. He doesn’t look like a prototypical corner we’ve had here, but he’s long, he can run, he can disrupt routes at the line of scrimmage," Brown said. "He gives us that big body where we can match up. At times last year even with as good as Beanie [Bishop] was where we would get pushed around a little bit he’s so big and strong those plays don’t happen."
Last season Hollis finished with 49 total tackles, 33 of them being solo tackles. One thing Brown loves about Hollis is he isn't afraid to get in the mix when it comes to stopping the run due to his bigger size.
"The other thing is he is physical in the run game. He's not afraid of contact which is a big plus. Sometimes a long guy like that doesn't bend well enough to be able to tackle in space. He's got contact courage and he'll add a ton to our secondary and we can do some things differently to let him play by himself in the boundary and double some guys and do some different things we haven't been able to do here," Brown said.
The one area of concern with Hollis was how he played 50-50 balls down the field. Last season Beanie Bishop was also struggling with this before he turned in an All-American campaign. This is something Brown has worked on heavily with Hollis and Brown is starting to see the results of the increased emphasis.
"He’s gotten better. That was an area I thought he struggled with and one of the reasons why he came here, he saw the production of Beanie and what we do and how we teach it. He had a big flash play today down the field where he played the ball on the deep part of the field. If he can go do that consistently for us he will probably be a second day draft choice," Brown said.
Hollis is one of many bodies Brown has gotten out of the transfer portal to help sure up things on the back end for West Virginia. Brown believes if Hollis can become better at playing the ball down the field then he can really be a big-time player for the Mountaineers.
"If he can play the ball on the deep part of the field consistently, which he hadn't done up until this point, but Beanie Bishop hadn't done it up until this point either. It will take some time but I saw some flashes today where it was like an aha moment where it's starting to click for him and he's got elite skills and measurable," Brown said.
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