West Virginia felt that the front seven had a chance to take a step forward based on how they performed during the course of fall camp against the offensive line.
The group started off slow in the spring and the performance even bordered on being ugly at times but as time passed and the calendar spilled over into the fall, they started to win some of those battles.
It was much different than what unfolded the year prior when the offensive line dominated their counterparts at the line of scrimmage during the course of camp.
“I was hopeful because they made some strides and that held true,” head coach Neal Brown said.
That was put to the test in the opener against a veteran Penn State offensive line and a running back duo that ranks as one of the tops in the nation. While the Mountaineers did allow 146 yards rushing, that total is somewhat skewed with 39 of that coming on the final drive.
Overall, the Mountaineers held the Nittany Lions rushing attack to just 4.2 yards per tote.
“We got moved off the ball the first play of the game and I don’t really feel we did the rest of the game. As far as giving up chunk yardage,” Brown said. “We misfit a few things but I don’t feel like we got pushed off the ball.”
In total, West Virginia played seven defensive linemen in the game, which comes close to what was projected prior to the start of the year. On the interior of the line, the Mountaineers played a mix of Mike Lockhart, Fatorma Mulbah and Hammond Russell.
Lockhart played the most snaps at 45 and has transformed his body to the point where he can withstand that after being only used typically in a situational role a season ago.
“He made some really good one-on-one plays and two high effort plays,” Brown said.
Russell, now in his third season, displays power and has learned to play with pad level which could allow him to see the field more moving forward. Mulbah is another big body that has a chance to carve out a larger role given his combination of size and strength. The Mountaineers added Mulbah this past off-season from Penn State and while he was out of position for his skill set, he was a perfect match for what the program wanted, and he constantly ran to the football.
The trio was aided by the inside blitzes of the linebackers that helped to free things up for them.
“The nose guards they traditionally eat blocks but that allows them not to do that the whole game,” defensive coordinator Jordan Lesley said.
Sean Martin also stood out on the edge and has the chance to be a special talent if he continues to develop after missing most of fall camp with an injury. Eddie Vesterinen, Tomiwa Durojaiye, Davoan Hawkins and Jalen Thornton also saw time and made an impact as well.
The group also is on the verge of adding another player in redshirt freshman Asani Redwood to the mix in about two weeks which is going to make things even deeper.
“I feel good about our rotation, and we’ve got a good mix of guys,” Brown said.
Now, they’re far from a finished product and there are areas that need to be improved such as the secondary but for a debut the Mountaineers are pleased with what they got out of the group.
“The capability of their run game and you can control it with your depth, and you can roll eight guys in there that makes a lot of the things easily correctable and fixable. But we just need to maintain that and get better at a couple things up front some alignment things, but I was really happy with it,” Lesley said.
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