For West Virginia defensive coordinator Jordan Lesley, the added help he's getting this fall camp Is creating positives across the board.
This past summer, the NCAA Division I Council changed a rule to allow any staff members to provide instruction to players during practice and games.
For Lesley and the Mountaineers, it's allowing him to do more with his group and everyone as a whole is taking a step forward.
"It just makes you really, really, efficient with what you're trying to do," Lesley said.
Lesley gave the example of his defensive line coached by AJ Jackson which has many positions that are now able to be broken up into separate groups because of the added help.
"I'll just take the D-line for example. AJ's done a phenomenal job building the room, coaching, the whole thing, but, every one of those skills are different. The d-end Is different from a nose guard Is different from a d-tackle, Is different from an outside backer/d-end hybrid. Where now, he was kind of hamstring on how you broke those groups up, now you don't have that," Lesley said.
"We have one person that's coaching every single one of those based on what they need to be working on whether It's a technique or fundamental of that day, whether It's something schematic. Same thing In the secondary, you have the field safety, boundary safety, those all have different things that they do within the scheme of our defense. You just get so much more teaching of the basic things, It just makes you more efficient."
Lesley has also been able to do more as far as the organization of practices and things goes because he's able to see and do more because he's not required to be stuck in one place teaching.
"It really helps me one with efficiency and then build a practice, build a meeting, build schedules, game plans, whether it’s 30,000, 40,000, or 50,000-foot view of things, where it allows me to hone in and really, really sharpen what we’re trying to get good at," Lesley said.
"We have a system we use on defense, it's called, path to the ball. It's taking the drills we've done and expand them with the other groups with those same coaches that you talked about that are able to coach and now we've taken maybe it's a leverage drill and we've really done a lot of research this offseason that, you make a little bit of tweak to it and I'm able to see that real time from drill to drill to drill and then I'm able to come back the next day and let's change this."
Lesley added this helps him see improvement in real-time compared to having to study film because he can see the changes by being able to cover multiple places during a single practice.
"Probably the biggest thing Is when I see the improvement knowing I don't need to get away from what I'm doing. You get honed In on one frill a lot of times or one group, you have to go back and you have to study the film or make yourself go to different parts of practice to see the improvement. It's almost like I'm seeing the improvement in some of these guys like real-time, like drill to drill. It's fun for me, it's fun to coach, it's fun to watch," Lesley said.
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