Spring Drills Begin
March 23, 2004 09:47 AM | General
March 23, 2004
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Defensive coordinator Jeff Casteel believes his unit will have more depth this spring as the Mountaineers begin their fourth set of drills under West Virginia University coach Rich Rodriguez this week.
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| Defensive coordinator Jeff Casteel says there will be more competition for jobs this spring. (All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks) |
And although the second-year coordinator won’t have stalwarts Grant Wiley, Brian King and Lance Frazier around to depend upon this spring, he sees a growing comfort level with the rest of the players and coaches with his unorthodox, 3-3 stack alignment.
“I think having Coach (Bill) Kirelawich and Coach (Bruce) Tall at this time last year they were just learning about the defense like we did the previous year,” said Casteel. “I think now they can put a little bit more of their personality and input into the system. I think the kids having the same coaches and being taught the same way is also going to be a big plus.”
Casteel, who served one season as co-defensive coordinator with Todd Graham in 2002, says a major objective during the off season was to try and develop a bigger and stronger defense this spring. He believes that goal has been achieved.
“All of the kids are bigger right now than what they were last fall,” said the Paden City native. “When you start adding some of the younger d-linemen we’re a much bigger defense. We’re 290 and 295 with two or three of those guys. And we’re going to be bigger at linebacker, too.”
Among the bigger, young defensive linemen Casteel is anxious to get a good look at this spring are redshirt freshmen Andrae Wright, Mike Villagrana and Keilen Dykes. Those three will join a rotation that includes Ernest Hunter, Ben Lynch, Craig Wilson, Warren Young and Jason Hardee. Casteel is interested to find out if some of his talented youngsters are also ready to handle the load at linebacker, too.
“Boo McLee is going to take on more of a role and he’s going to start out at the sam backer,” said Casteel. “It’s his job to lose. He’s a 250-pound kid. (JC transfer) Joe Sykes is in the program now and he’s about 255. (Morgantown’s) Marc Magro is a young linebacker who is now about 242. We’re a little bit bigger with those kinds of players.”
Because West Virginia didn’t possess a lot of size and depth on defense last year Casteel admits his unit “ran out of gas” toward the end of the season.
“We couldn’t get off the field and that hurt us a little bit because we didn’t have a lot of depth,” he said. “What we tried to do was play to their strengths. Just like the team we’ll have this spring, we have to find out what their strengths are.”
Losing a Grant Wiley, a Brian King and a Lance Frazier leaves a big void in leadership on defense this spring. Casteel singled out a couple of seniors who are going to have to take on more of the burden.
“Most kids are natural leaders and they kind of come to the forefront,” he said. “I think we have that in Adam Lehnortt. I think Ben Lynch is a guy who is going to take on more of a leadership role as the spring goes one. You can see kids drawing to them.”
Casteel also says junior defensive tackle Ernest Hunter and junior safeties Jahmile Addae and Mike Lorello have the ability to develop into leaders.
“Those kids have natural leadership qualities,” he said.
In addition to refining the odd-front, 3-3 stack, Casteel noted that West Virginia will continue to utilize a four-man defensive front at times, too.
“On third down our first three or four games we were doing some four-man rushing,” he said. “I thought that was good for us. And then when Jamile went down and we had some issues with personnel we didn’t quite feel comfortable on third down and just went back with our base package. Now that we’re going to have some more depth we’re going to have some more of our core guys rush the passer a little bit.”
In order to go after the quarterback, Casteel has got to be confident he has a secondary with enough athletes to stick with wide receivers. Among those returning in the secondary are second-team all-Big East defensive back Pac-Man Jones, Lorello, Addae, senior Lawrence Audena and junior Anthony Mims.
A talented class of freshmen DBs consisting of Vince Beamer, L.J. Montinar, Larry Williams, Davanzo Tate and Vaughn Rivers also has Casteel encouraged.
“I think we’re getting close,” he said. “We’re full of a lot of good, young players in the secondary.”
Because West Virginia has an abundance of athletic safeties, some of them could eventually be moved to linebacker in the future if they continue to get bigger.
“We’ll see how things go but that may be something that we look at; you always want to recruit a big safety and move them down if you can,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of young players who fit that body type and we’ll play them back there and then see what happens.”
Having the leeway to move safeties up to linebacker gives Casteel the opportunity to field a faster defense, which is one of his primary objectives.
“The number one deal in college football is they’ve got to be able to run,” he said. “If they can’t run it’s really tough. I think as we continue to go with some things and some things that we’re going to try that are new this spring it will help our kids and help them play faster. That’s our goal is to play faster.”
Because there are a lot of younger players vying for both starting and key backup positions, Casteel says his staff will spend a lot of time this spring with individual instruction, “The group we had last year had a pretty good handle on the defense from the previous year,” he said. “We are going to have to do a lot of teaching and it’s exciting because I do think we’re going to be bigger and stronger and our big push is to try and become a much more physical defense.”
Notebook: Casteel believes there will be more competition for jobs this spring than at any time since he arrived at WVU in 2001, “We think we’ve got a good group of young kids and then we’ve got kids like Craig Wilson who played a good deal for us last year,” he said. “Those guys have got to start doing it every day against good competition and they haven’t been in that situation yet ...” the defensive coordinator, who coaches the Mountaineer linebackers, believes his unit has got to become much quicker … ideally, Casteel says he would like to rotate “five or six guys” at linebacker this year if possible … as offenses get more complex and varied, Casteel admitted it becomes tougher for defensive coordinators to develop schemes to stop them, “It’s tough each week because there are some really good coaches out there,” he said. “We were very leery the first year in the defense because we didn’t know how we were going to get attacked from week to week. But being through it two seasons now we have a pretty good idea of what people are trying to do but it’s really tough and each year there is always something new that you have to prepare for and there are a lot of good players that you have to defend, too …” Casteel says the object is always to implement a plan that players are comfortable with that enables them to make plays, “The key is to do what we do best, be good at that, and hopefully make the offenses have to adjust to us instead of us having to adjust to them …” West Virginia was scheduled to begin spring practice Monday afternoon but that workout was postponed until today due to inclement weather in Morgantown … the team is scheduled to practice three times this week.
