West Virginia emphasizes special teams and field position
West Virginia has made it a point to emphasize the importance of special teams and with that comes field position both with the return and coverage units.
Head coach Neal Brown educates the team on how if they can eliminate as many plays as possible backed up on their end, the percentage of scoring points increases drastically. And the same thing happens on the defensive side of the ball when it comes to field position.
“If we can cover and we can get explosive stops on a cover unit like punt or kickoff and we’re going out there and the ball is on the 19-yard line as opposed to the 25-yard line the percentage of being successful on defense goes up,” special teams coordinator Jeff Koonz said.
It sounds simple enough but has been a primary focus for the Mountaineers and something that the coaches have talked about with the players throughout the year. Starting field position matters.
And that isn’t just limited to the returners.
“That’s blockers on the back end, those are gunners on punt, those are jammers on punt block that have to hold up guys and understand where they are in dimensions of the field,” Koonz said.
There’s a lot of education that goes into that all around and the Mountaineers have developed a strong plan and path with what they’re trying to do to win football games in that phase of the game.
When it comes to the kickers themselves, Koonz said that the style of kicks will change from game plan to game plan, and the returners will try to generate some yards in a variety of different ways.
“How we can steal those yards by possession and sometimes that’s a fair catch and sometimes it’s off a return,” Koonz said.
As far as a punt returner for this coming season, Preston Fox has solidified himself in the role after a strong campaign a year ago and has continued to push himself to improve.
“He’s really dialed in and if we do catch him on the off chance of him losing his technique on a return, he’s beating himself up and he’s all over it,” Koonz said.
The Mountaineers also are starting to develop depth behind him with Rodney Gallagher improving his technique and confidence.
As far as kick return there are several candidates competing such as Hudson Clement, Traylon Ray, and Jaden Bray and each of those are going to be bigger and more explosive options than the program has been able to roll out the past couple of years. That could lend itself to breaking some tackles or as the coaches refer to it “running through the smoke.”
“So, when it’s not necessarily wide open back there because that doesn’t happen, run through the smoke and break a tackle and turn a 10-yarder into an 18-yarder, turn an 18-yarder into a 30-yarder, and then the big ones will come when it’s time and then continuing to block it up for them,” Koonz said.
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