Unfinished Business
December 17, 2009 04:33 PM | General
December 17, 2009
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Selvish Capers says he has some unfinished business left to take care of before completing his college football career in the Konica Minolta Gator Bowl on Jan. 1 against Florida State in Jacksonville, Fla.
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| Offensive tackle Selvish Capers has played 797 snaps in 12 regular season games this year.
Bill Amatucci photo |
Being West Virginia’s top pro prospect Capers could easily get distracted. Some draft experts already have the 6-foot-5, 298-pound senior tackle slotted for the second round. Of course good personal workouts could push his rating even higher. Capers admits the thought of playing professional football has crossed his mind a time or two.
“I feel blessed to have that … who wouldn’t?” Capers said recently. “At the same time, I owe West Virginia University for the things they have done for me, so I’m not going to turn my back on them and focus on something else (for the bowl game).”
This season, Capers has been a mainstay on an offensive line full of mainstays. Not only have the same five players started all 12 games, but they have also played nearly every snap of every game as well.
You would be hard pressed to find a group of offensive linemen anywhere in the country that did what Capers, Josh Jenkins, Eric Jobe, Joey Madsen and Don Barclay were required to do in 2009. All five were involved in at least 783 snaps (an average of 66 per game), with Capers and Jenkins both taking part in a team-best 797 plays.
It is one of the most stunning statistics you will ever encounter. That is like sending five of your kids out in the backyard with a pair of white pants and having all five of them come back in four hours later without any stains on their pants. Those of you with kids know how impossible that can be.
Outside of West Virginia’s five starters, junior Matt Timmerman has the most playing time with 45 snaps. The rest have a combined 66 plays to their credit.
First off, that speaks highly of the five guys that were able to get through the aches and pains that come with playing a 12-game major college football schedule. It also says a lot about the strength and conditioning and athletic training staffs that Coach Bill Stewart has assembled at WVU.
“It is a huge feat and there are numerous things that go into play,” said West Virginia football athletic trainer Dave Kerns. “No. 1, they were probably in better playing condition this year than year’s past.”
“I didn’t have any thing big,” added Capers. “I had some nicks and bruises and things like that but nothing too bad. The only person that had an injury was Donny Barclay, and that was last spring. He pushed through it and was ready when the season started.”
The one benefit of having all five guys playing together on the field all of the time is that they tend to get to know each other pretty well. When you do something together 780 times it probably takes a lot of the guesswork out of the equation.
“We don’t lose our rhythm because we have played together every game,” Capers explained. “We’ve had the group the whole season, we’ve stayed in sync with each other, fortunately we’ve had no injuries, and it’s been smooth sailing.”
Well, not quite.
No sane football coach in America wants to go through a football season using only five offensive linemen. A big reason West Virginia has been able to do this is because of the position-specific weight training Strength and Conditioning Coach Mike Joseph has adopted.
“We’re a lot looser and we’re not as stiff; we’re more mobile,” Capers said. “They are maintaining our weight a lot better. It helps our line move a lot faster than our normal line would. Our footwork is great. It shows what we’ve been doing in the weight room is working out on the field.”
Kerns, working his 16th football season for the Mountaineers, has certainly noticed a difference.
“There was a little bit of different running that these guys were doing that didn’t produce quite the muscular-skeletal stress,” Kerns explained. “And, I think one advantage helping us was this was the first fall since I’ve been at West Virginia that we have been able to mandate knee braces - this is the first year the coaches have supported it.”
Kerns says the players that eschewed knee braces in the past did so because they believed it reduced their quickness and mobility.
“But that just isn’t the case,” Kerns said. “Plus, there were one or two things that happened this year when someone got thrust onto somebody’s legs from the back or the side that knee braces probably diminished the severity of injury that could have occurred.”
Offensive line coach Dave Johnson has been highly supportive of his players wearing knee braces. Then again, Johnson is much different in temperament and style from the previous offensive line coaches that Capers has been around at West Virginia. And just because Johnson doesn’t degrade his players every time they screw up doesn’t mean he is any less demanding of them than those who do.
“I’ve learned to stay poised while at the same time be more aggressive,” Capers said of his two-year experience working with Johnson. “He teaches me a lot more fundamentals. He focuses a lot more on technique. My coaches did that in the past, but it wasn’t necessarily a big emphasis like it should have been, I feel. He’s very technical, which makes the game a whole lot easier when you get it down pat.
“I’ve learned a variety of pass sets and a variety of footwork schemes for run blocking so he has been a big contributor toward my game,” Capers added.
Capers said there have been instances this year when the offensive line hasn’t met Johnson’s high standards. Specifically, two that stand out are West Virginia’s most recent games against Rutgers and Pitt.
“The Pitt game we had a lot of mistakes that Coach Johnson wasn’t necessarily happy with and Rutgers we had a lot of mistakes that Coach Johnson wasn’t happy with,” Capers said. “Our skill position makes us look real good at times. It’s the truth. We do a variety of things well. The majority of the time our run blocking has been great together and in certain sets our pass blocking … but a lot of things people don’t see are the things we need to worry about.”
Capers will get one more crack at pleasing his coach against Florida State on Jan. 1 before taking the next step in his career. It is with a touch of sadness that Capers is finally moving on.
“I think I’ve matured a whole lot, especially this year,” he said. “I had to kind of mature a little bit because we had a younger line. For the most part I’ve grown to love the game even more, and I’ve grown to love my new family here at West Virginia University.”
