Mountaineers have experience, depth at safety

After the season-ending injury to Dravon Askew-Henry last fall camp, West Virginia had some major questions to answer at the safety position with new starters at two spots and another with limited time.

Of course those questions were answered as seniors Jeremy Tyler and Jarrod Harper more than adequately filled their roles at free and bandit safety, while junior college transfer Kyzir White was the missing piece to address the loss of the versatile KJ Dillon to the NFL at the hybrid SPUR spot.

Fast forward seven months later and the position is now looked at as a strength with White returning for his senior season and Askew-Henry expected back from ACL surgery. The latter was thought of as the best defensive player on the team prior to the start of last season and his return is an immediate boost.

“The type of player he is, the athleticism and doing what he can do how he fits our scheme it’s always good to get one of your best defensive players back,” safeties coach Matt Caponi said.

While Askew-Henry might be limited throughout the course of the spring he is fully expected to be fine in time for fall camp. So Caponi understands that his unit will be one of the most experienced of all on the defensive side after key losses of personnel at other spots.

However, that doesn’t mean things will be any easier this spring.

“I’ll probably be after them more now and do what I can to help them reach their potential,” he said.

So this spring will be more about what the backups at the spot can show. Those backups are redshirt senior Shane Commodore, redshirt freshman Osman Kamara and redshirt sophomore Deamonte Lindsay, who was moved to that spot in the offseason.

“He’s a rangy kid and he want to see what he can do there,” Caponi said.

At SPUR there are no changes for West Virginia as White it set to assume his starting role and is backed up by redshirt senior Marvin Gross, who stood out filling in for a start in the Baylor game as pass rusher, and sophomore JoVanni Stewart.

The final piece of the solution will be at bandit where the Mountaineers will be forced to break in a new starter but redshirt junior Toyous Avery has emerged as front runner heading into spring. It’s not a surprising move, as West Virginia started the transition of working Avery there toward the end of last year in order to get him some valuable reps heading into the spring.

“To get him greased up for this year. This spring we’ll have plenty of reps to show us if he can produce there or not but we still have the ability to move guys around,” Caponi said. “But he’s one of the guys definitely, if not the top guy, there going into the spring.”

Behind Avery, West Virginia will work true freshman Derrek Pitts as well as walk-ons redshirt junior Brandan Rivers and redshirt freshman Dante Bonamico.

So while the starters are taking shape, this spring will be key for those reserve players to see where they fit into the overall picture at the safety spots.

“It will be a big spring for those guys to step forward,” Caponi said.