West Virginia wants to play with an up-pace tempo on offense but that also means that the defense is getting plenty of training going against it.
And that means they’ll be plenty prepared to see variations of tempo during the season.
“They see it every day. I have to always tell them, there won’t be a team we play that goes fast enough to where it matters to you,” coordinator Zac Alley said.
Practice allows the coaching staff to create competition and that was on display throughout the course of the spring. And in the end that constant competition only helps to further prepare the defense for things they could end up seeing once the ball is kicked off for real this fall.
That’s because it forces the defense to get lined up quickly and communicate.
“We want to go as fast, and so our guys understand that's who we are and how we're going to play, and so that's a work in progress, but the base of introduction to it, if that's what you want to call it, I think that part's been in,” head coach Rich Rodriguez said.
Alley has been with Rodriguez at multiple stops so he is accustomed to going against the speed that he runs his offense. It's also helped him make decisions quickly.
“It’s harder to make decisions faster but to me that’s normal pace at this point,” he said. “And then if they go huddle up and slow, then they give me a lot of time to think about things.”
As a way to combat the tempo, Alley has built the defense around being able to show the structure but they’ll present something else to attack the offense. The focus is to get the call in, get up the line and simply do your job on each snap regardless of the speed.
“The whole defense is based around being able to do that,” Alley said.
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