West Virginia had an interesting off-season in many respects.
There were a number of players exiting and entering the program, coupled with the new rule change that essentially allowed organized team activities during the summer months.
Those OTA style practices were held twice a week during times in June and July for around 50-minutes a session with the goal to work on alignment and assignments.
“We were able to hold a number of those and they paid off,” head coach Neal Brown said.
Those were shut down into player led practices when the coaches went on vacation in July, but still the significance of being able to hold those during the summer isn’t lost on the coaching staff.
The sessions were beneficial because while it didn’t allow players to go against anybody they could work on things in order to better prepare them for the start of fall camp.
That means from a retention standpoint, the players had a better idea of what to do on the first day instead of a traditional camp start.
That’s important considering the program welcomed 33 new players since January and dealt with a number of departures through the transfer portal and graduation. That meant that the bulk of the roster that was in-tact after Memorial Day was going to be the one that takes the field this fall.
“Everybody with maybe the exception of Will Dixon and some of the new walk-ons that are here, we knew what to do,” Brown said.
Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that reactions or timing were in mid-season form but on both sides of the ball things were covered that essentially are typically ironed out over the first few days of camp.
“What we asked them to do on our day one install we actually covered three different times in our OTAs during June and July so we knew what to do and didn’t have to slow things down and teach,” he said.
Through the start of camp that has been apparent for Brown and he believes that the work done should pay off for the Mountaineers as they speed toward the start of the season.
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