Preparation, forecasting is an analyst's game
West Virginia is now into the analyst game and it’s easy to see why.
It’s now an important, almost integral, piece to today’s college football world. And for the first time in program history West Virginia has joined the fray.
The Mountaineers now have three such positions in the program with Dan Gerberry serving as the senior analyst, while each side of the ball also is equipped with one.
Former West Virginia quarterback and then graduate assistant Michael Burchett is handling offense and former linebacker and graduate assistant Casey Vance serving in the same role on the defensive side.
Burchett had been a graduate assistant at West Virginia for the past two seasons where he served as the unofficial quarterbacks coach, while head coach Dana Holgorsen handled other duties.
Vance started a handful of games during his senior season at linebacker in Morgantown, becoming a favorite of the coaches, and had been serving as a graduate assistant.
The role of the analyst in today’s game is one that is about staying ahead in a game that is constantly changing. The responsibilities of the job will be to create advanced scouting reports, evaluate game film for statistics and future game planning and charting in-game statistics, among other items.
So what does an analyst focus on during fall camp?
Scouting and a lot of it.
“They’re really getting ahead for the next upcoming opponents. I want summer breakdowns of all of our opponents so I at least have a feel for who they are and what they do,” offensive coordinator Jake Spavital said. “And what type of coordinators they are.”
Because Spavital goes up against defensive coordinator Tony Gibson on a daily-basis in practice, he doesn’t get a lot of looks against the defenses that he will be going against when the schedule opens.
Instead of the unique 3-3-5 defensive scheme, Spavital will see more traditional four-man fronts and quarters teams so the analysts are charged with gathering as much information as possible.
It all comes down to forecasting what opponents could do and recognizing tendencies. That’s where the football savvy analysts come into play by getting advanced scouts on opponents while the coaching staff is deep into getting their own team readied for the regular season.
That will also come into play during the season as the coaches typically would use Sunday to close the door on an opponent and then start preparation for the following game Monday.
Now, the analysts will have much of that work with reviewing data from the games by Saturday night or early Sunday morning so the coaches can move onto preparing for the next contest on the schedule.
"Last year I took five years off my life on Monday morning trying to hurry up and catch up. It was hard," head coach Dana Holgorsen said. "It's really going to make a difference when they come in here Sunday morning and get the game over with and turn the page and move on."
Spavital is a coach that typically starts his look at upcoming personnel as early as Sunday in order to familiarize himself with opponents early into the week of preparation. This change will help on that front by giving him more data to craft that approach.
“It’s all forecasting,” he said.
