This fall camp is different for many reasons, one of those being the structure itself.

As we’ve explained, West Virginia football team is currently participating in split practices which divides the 100-member team into two groups. The goal is to prevent all the players from being together at the same time, while getting quality work.

The players have been split into two teams created by grouping those players that live with each other and spend time with one another outside of football.

Those within the groups are further split in position groups put an older and younger player together in order to maximize the experience. That allows not only the younger player to learn and observe but provides more practice reps than normal at this time of the year.

One benefit of the structure aside from the teaching is that there is simply more time to devote to each player. The Mountaineers are conducting a lot of half-line pass work in 7-on-7 sessions and half-line run where they work the front as well as the back side of a run combination. There are fewer guys so there are more reps available during each sessions of the practice, while providing built-in rest.

That’s a lot of quality work against quality players on the roster.

But it hasn’t all been positive, however as because of the structure of the practices it is harder to evaluate players at times because you don’t always pit the best against the best.

The teams are structure more towards learning than competition which makes things uneven. The typical one-on-one matchups have mismatches and you have some seasoned players pitted against those that were just playing high school football last year.

“Quite frankly we have some mismatches,” head coach Neal Brown said.

That means that making evaluations for a possible two-deep will be more challenging until the team reconvenes in a normal practice environment. But for now, Brown isn’t sure when that will occur, as they are scheduled to continue the split method for the immediate future.

There are a lot of positives to the split method, but some challenges as well. Still, with time on their side with the opener set for Sept. 12 the Mountaineers can manage.

“It’s harder to evaluate because you don’t always have your best on your best,” Brown said.

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