West Virginia looks to be explosive in return, coverage units

Jeff Koonz is excited for what West Virginia can do this year with the coverage and return units.

The special team’s coordinator believes that the Mountaineers are equipped with the most available body types for all the different components of the third phase since the assistant has been here. That combined with the buy-in across the board from the team gives Koonz optimism.

“They will be explosive,” he said.

That isn’t simply limited to the returners either as Koonz has seen the return teams and the coverage units make strides in a multitude of schemes. There is an understanding of what the team wants to accomplish in those areas and with more depth and athleticism opens more opportunities.

“With athleticism on the front lines where those blocks are occurring in space. When you can make those blocks you can be really explosive,” Koonz said.

Yes, there is optimism with the options on the return teams as well given the players that are back there but it’s the work that’s done across the board that has the arrow pointing upward.

And that would be a welcomed change considering the program only ranked inside the top 40 nationally last season in kickoff returns. Punt returns were especially poor coming in at 126th in the country while kickoff return defense was 79th nationally and punt return defense finished at 49th.

One area that can help with this, especially in the areas of kickoff coverage is Florida State transfer Parker Grothaus. It’s easier to cover kicks when the ball can reach the end zone for a touch back and that only happened 12 times all of last season.

“We invest as much time as anybody in the country. I believe that and our entire team understands that,” Koonz said. “There’s times we’re in here as a team and we’re watching it. That creates an extremely high buy-in within the program.”

Even with the difficulty of executing special teams in full speed situations, the Mountaineers are both covering and returning both in controlled situations. That way the coaching staff can see who are the best options to fill certain roles in those controlled environments.

Is that going to occur hundreds of times over the course of camp, no. But there are opportunities.

“That’s how you find out if the young guys are ready to go and we still do the competitions,” Koonz said. “You can see if that young man is ready to make that block in space against a quality opponent or that man is good enough to defeat that block in space.”

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