West Virginia WR Smith uses productive off-season to elevate his role

West Virginia wide receiver Reese Smith realized that things weren’t going to just magically change for him when it comes to his role on offense.

It was going to take work.

While a constant presence on special teams, Smith wanted to see his role catching the football grow. Smith had only played a total of 308 offensive snaps over his first two years and half of those were spent blocking so the Kentucky native wanted to find a way to see more action.

So, this off-season that started with a heart-to-heart sit-down discussion with head coach Neal Brown.

The two have known each other since Smith was a high school sophomore and share the common bond of being products of the Boyle County football program. That established trust between the pair made it easier to sit down and look at where Smith needed to improve.

“We had one of those conversations where it was coach I need to play more. I play a lot of special teams but I want to play more offense and he told me what I had to do and it was straight forward,” he said.

Brown made it clear that while Smith had to physically improve by getting faster and stronger, it was more important for him to learn the game and find a way to play fast without overthinking things. It sounds easy enough but with the bullets flying and little experience it’s a difficult task.

With his areas of focus in place, Smith attacked the off-season while keeping those bulletin points always in the back of his mind. He saw progress in the weight room, but once spring football rolled around he was dealt a difficult blow with a hamstring injury that forced him to sit out all but one week.

“Nobody was more disappointed than him because he got injured in the spring. We had go in the indoor and he got a pretty significant hamstring issue first day of pads and really wasn’t himself,” Brown said.

While he was sidelined for a long portion in the spring, Smith was active in getting treatment and doing everything he could to get back on the field. That paid off by working his way back into the lineup for the final week of practice and then being able to participate in the spring game.

Through it all Smith believes that he’s in a much better spot than he’s ever been during his time with the program. He has accomplished his target goals physical, but has now started to build and stack positive days upon each other in fall camp practices.

It’s something Brown has taken note of in his third year as Smith has constantly ran well and posted strong numbers through the GPS tracking equipment.

He’s also earned the trust of the quarterbacks which has put him in line to accomplish his goal of seeing more time on the field once the bullets start flying this fall.

And that’s a testament to the drive and determination of Smith to change his situation.

“He has no intimidation. He’ll catch it going across the middle, gets north and south when he gets the ball in his hands and he catches about everything thrown to him,” Brown said. “He’s been really solid on special teams but we think he’s ready to be a contributor on offense.”

----------

• Talk about it with West Virginia fans on The Blue Lot.

• SUBSCRIBE today to stay up on the latest on Mountaineer sports and recruiting.

• Get all of our WVU videos on YouTube by subscribing to the WVSports.com Channel

• Follow us on Twitter: @WVSportsDotCom, @rivalskeenan

•Like us on Facebook