West Virginia football defensive coaches set, focus on season

The Mountaineers have entered the 20-hour weeks in preparation for the season so continuity was important. The new arrangement after previous coordinator Vic Koenning mutually parted ways with the program following a lengthy investigation accomplishes just that.

There won’t be any coordinator by title which makes sense given the pay raise that would require, but instead defensive line coach Jordan Lesley will handle the front and secondary coach Jahmile Addae will handle the back. Those two made the most sense in a co-role, considering Lesley has been in the defensive scheme with Koenning since 2016 and Addae spent a full-season in it last year.

The only question if the Mountaineers remained in-house, which always seemed to be the only realistic approach, was which of the two would handle the responsibilities. Well, head coach Neal Brown elected to split the difference and give both a role in the defense although it’s unclear who is assigned with calls.

But it is important that in the release, Brown emphasized the committee approach that the Mountaineers will be taking on that side. Again, timing played a role but the players are simply too late in the game to look at wholesale changes to what they were doing.

Dontae Wright, who in his first season was set to coach outside linebackers, instead will slide over to safeties where he coached at Western Michigan and has experience. Jeff Koonz, who also was added this off-season, will maintain his role as an inside linebackers coach with special teams duties.

The new outside linebackers coach will be Jeff Casteel, who brings 33 years of defensive coaching experience to the table, and was the most obvious in-house option to be elevated. The decision made sense not only because of the timing given the fact that the season is just a little over a month away but when it came to finances as well.

Not every coaching staff has a ready-made option to step in to handle the role, but adding Casteel as an analyst before allowed for this.

This allows for a one-year trial period for the group before a potential conventional search is conducted to fill either the coordinator role or a position coach.

Casteel has plenty of experience coaching all over the defense and pulling him off an analyst role into an on-the-field position will not take much, if any adjustments for all those involved.

It isn’t a surprising result at all, but what it does do is create stability out of a difficult situation. Now, the Mountaineers can turn their focus toward gearing up for fall camp which is set to begin Aug. 7.

Then potentially the season after that.

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