Football Notebook
April 03, 2009 08:46 AM | General
(8:46 a.m.)
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| Jarrett Brown |
Based purely on raw athletic ability, Jerry Porter is the best I ever saw put on a Gold and Blue uniform in my 20-plus years of observing Mountaineer football practice.
I watched Porter once throw a football 80 yards into the end zone at the Carrier Dome with his right arm, and then turn around and throw another football 50 yards with his left arm. He could dunk a basketball any way you asked him to, and I am told that he also was pro-level talent as a centerfielder in baseball.
That's why his four years at West Virginia were spent in a tug of war between the coaches trying to find the right place for him. With today's spread offense, I sometimes wonder what Porter could have done in college as a triple-threat quarterback in the shotgun.
Well, we may finally get an answer to that with Jarrett Brown under center. Brown is the closest I've seen to a Jerry Porter reincarnation in a West Virginia uniform.
Brown, like Porter, has tremendous size and athletic ability. There isn't a part of the football field that Brown can't cover with his arm. More importantly, Brown is showing great confidence and poise in the pocket. He is able to see over the line of scrimmage and he is showing an ability to make all of the throws that could make Jeff Mullen's offense so fun to watch next fall.
Come to think of it, beginning with Major Harris and continuing with Jake Kelchner, Chad Johnston, Marc Bulger, Rasheed Marshall and Pat White, I can't think of a Mountaineer quarterback who has thrown the football better in the spring than Jarrett Brown has.
Will that translate into success this fall?
That depends on how hard Brown prepares during the remainder of the spring and summer heading into fall camp. It depends on how well a young offensive line performs, and it depends on how well West Virginia's wide receiver corps develops.
So far this spring against West Virginia's base defense, Brown has looked great and that could bode well for the Mountaineers in '09.
Tony Caridi brought up an interesting point earlier this week about senior first-year starting quarterbacks. If I may expand on his point, I believe sometimes you don't get a true measure of a player's value until it's their turn to perform.
Yes, Brown has said he put in the time as White's backup studying the playbook and working on the technical things to make him a better quarterback. But the reality is he knew that he had a better chance of being struck by lightning than beating out Pat White for the starting job. That's why he spent last winter and spring on sabbatical playing with the Mountaineer basketball team.
Now that he's the man behind center and it's his time to shine, we are seeing a completely different approach from Brown. He looks confident on the field, and his leadership qualities are really starting to emerge.
Credit Jarrett Brown and also credit Jeff Mullen, who is working hard to expose Brown to the finer points of quarterback play.
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| Noel Devine |
After being excused from practice to attend a funeral in Ft. Myers, Fla., Noel Devine was back in uniform on Wednesday and upon his return, there was an immediate difference in West Virginia's offense.
He made several quality runs and provided a nice compliment to what is shaping up to be a revived West Virginia passing game. The junior admitted Wednesday that he is beginning to see the opportunities this offense presents.
"I feel like the offense is more balanced than it was last year," he said. "They have got to respect Jarrett's arm and his running ability, and we've got receivers that are threats.
"It's going to open up the run a lot."
If Brown continues to throw the ball the way he is throwing it this spring, and Wes Lyons continues to perform in the slot the way he has been performing, teams will be foolish to throw eight-man fronts against West Virginia this fall.
"If I follow through on the play fakes they are not going to know what hit them," Devine said. "If they bite on the play fakes the passes are going to be open. And then when we run, that is going to be open also."
Two areas still unsettled are offensive line and short yardage situations.
For now, offensive line coach Dave Johnson is using a first group consisting of sophomore Eric Jobe at center, sophomore Josh Jenkins and redshirt freshman Jeff Braun at guard, and sophomore Donny Barclay and senior Selvish Capers at tackle. There is not a lot of experience in that group.
"They've just got to believe in themselves," Devine said. "(Wednesday) there were a lot of big holes and I've got to give a lot of credit to them."
As for short yardage, Mullen has been using Will Johnson at fullback and redshirt freshman Ryan Clarke at tailback. Johnson is 14 pounds heavier at 230, and Clarke is 20 pounds lighter at 230. Clarke appears to be a guy who can fall forward and get the tough yard when the gaps are all covered, which big backs sometimes have to do.
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| Wes Lyons |
For you bubble screen haters out there, moving Wes Lyons to the slot may be a tip-off that West Virginia is beginning to move away from that play. Throwing bubble screens to a 6-foot-8 slot receiver is a lot like eating soup with a fork.
If and when Jock Sanders returns to the team, it will be interesting to see how he fits in with a receiver corps that features three veteran pass catchers all standing taller than 6-2.
What is so appealing about having tall, rangy receivers is that throws don't have to be perfect to be completed. I always wondered why teams would have a 5-foot-8 receiver running seams and post corners when the window to throw the ball into is so narrow.
Do you realize that it has been 11 years since West Virginia last had a 2,000-yard passer (Marc Bulger in 1998)? More surprisingly, it has only been done six times in the history of the program. Two thousand yards is not that difficult to achieve in today's game, and I am willing to bet that Jarrett Brown throws for more than 2,000 yards in 2009.
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| Robert Sands |
Charleston Gazette's Mitch Vingle has a trained eye for interesting things that others don't usually catch. During practice Wednesday, he pointed out the battle going on between 6-foot-8 Wes Lyons and 6-foot-6 Robert Sands during goal line drill.
If I am Bill Stewart, I want Lyons, Sands and Brown as my first three players coming off the bus on road trips this fall.
Those are three impressive looking dudes.
One of the things I have come to realize from watching spring practice is that football coaches are never satisfied. If the offense is moving the ball then the defensive coaches are mad. If the defense is shutting the offense down then the offensive coaches are mad.
The head coach, of course, takes the middle ground.
As a general rule of thumb, the defense should have the upper hand in practices and scrimmages because it has the advantage of knowing what the offense is going to do.
If a defense can't stop an offense it knows well during the spring, then that is usually a bad sign when it begins preparing for offenses it doesn't know during the fall.
Another did you realize: Jeff Casteel's West Virginia defense has finished ranked among the nation's top 15 in scoring defense in three of the last four years. Last year's inexperienced WVU defense finished 11th in the country, allowing just 17 points per game. Two years ago, the Mountaineers finished eighth giving up 18.1 points per game and in 2005, West Virginia was 13th giving up 17.6 points per game.
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| Reed Williams |
Coach Stew was not happy with the performance of the defense on Wednesday, nor was the defensive staff who kept the blue shirts on the field afterward for some extra work.
Stewart noted that the Mountaineers look like a different defense without linebacker Reed Williams on the field. Williams has been battling a virus the last couple of days and was held out of Tuesday's morning practice.
Stewart is expecting about 300 participants from several different states for his coaches' clinic going on Friday and Saturday. Some showers are in the forecast today and Saturday morning before the rain is expected to move out. The Mountaineers will conduct an officiated scrimmage on Saturday.
ESPN.com blogger Brian Bennett is coming to town to observe Friday's and Saturday's practices. He was in Pittsburgh watching the Panthers earlier this week.
Speaking of fine journalists, I spoke with Mickey Furfari on the telephone the other evening and he is going to spend the rest of April with his daughter in Florida. He plans on meeting ex-Mountaineer players Dave Oblak, Brian Jozwiak, Dale Farley and Darryl Talley while he is down in Winter Haven, and he is hopeful of being able to resume writing when he returns.
That would be great news, indeed.
