West Virginia getting physical this fall

Neal Brown isn’t going to leave any doubt.

A lack of physicality isn’t going to be an option for this team and Brown wants to ensure that it can’t be used as an excuse for why this team isn’t significantly improved.

“The issue for us is not going to be that we didn’t tackle in fall camp,” he said.

It’s something that dates back to the spring and has continued through the summer and fall. The fifth-year head coach sat down with inside linebacker Lee Kpogba when the two were at Big 12 media days and explained to him that he needed buy-in from the top down on the roster. Kpogba is one of the leaders on that side of the ball and was able to help pass that onto others.

“I always talk about contact, he’s a seeker of contact. That’s music to his ears. He’s done a good job of enthusiastically doing that because we have to,” Brown said.

As part of that, West Virginia has been doing more 11-on-11 work and simply being more physical in practice. Last year the Mountaineers were thin due to some injuries, but there is no denying that the team needed to bring more in that department.

The key is finding a fine line with what’s enough and what’s too much?

“You don’t want to get your really good players hurt in preseason camp, but you also want to get enough work where they’re ready to go,” Brown said.

One way to manage that is the introduction of combined practices like you see in the NFL between two franchises but until that happens the best way is to simply observe it. It also would help the early season product as well by giving more game-like looks.

West Virginia practiced hard back-to-back days in full pads and tackled each of the past two days during certain periods. The plan is to tackle as much as is allowed and one of the big components for the Mountaineers to be successful is the ability to be mentally and physically tough.

“So the only thing I know to do is go out and practice that. That’s what we’re going to do,” he said.

The key to tackling comes down to first a want to do it and secondly technique where you run your feet and shoot your arms. And when it comes to breaking tackles on the offensive side, you have to be efficient with your moves and get vertical while running behind your pads.

But when the pads go on, the time for being physical comes with it.

“Yeah, some of them start to hide. It’s a different game. Everybody likes flag football, but you bring the contact aspect in and it begins to separate,” Brown said.

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