Dunlap Talks Kickoffs
August 22, 2010 10:29 AM | General
(10:01 a.m.)
There are two things Steve Dunlap is looking to fix with West Virginia’s kickoff squad that finished 104th out of 119 teams in return yardage last year. One, he is looking for 10 guys willing to fly down the field and make tackles. And, two, he is looking for a kicker that can hang the ball up in the air long enough for the cover guys to get to the ball carrier.
“We’ve got to get those kickers to place it where we want it if it goes right or left … the big thing is I don’t care if it goes to the five yard line but it better be up there 4.2 seconds so we have a chance to get under that sucker,” said Dunlap. “If they start hitting line drives at 3.1 or 3.2 then we’ve got a problem.”
Last season, a combination of low kicks and a lack of distance by the kickers, as well as the cover guys getting blocked, enabled teams to consistently get good field position at the start of drives. Last spring, Dunlap was given the assignment of trying to come up with a way to improve that this season.
Of course the first part is the kick. So far, all of West Virginia’s kickoff guys are consistently getting the ball into the air long enough for the cover guys to get off blocks and get to the ball carrier, according to Dunlap.
“We’re putting the ball in the middle of the field occasionally and we’re just kicking the heck out of it,” Dunlap said. “They don’t have to aim it so much. I don’t know about you guys but when I get my driver out I better have a wide fairway. It seems the wider it is the straighter I hit it and the more narrow it is the more crooked I hit it. Hopefully we can tell them to get it in the middle of the field and let it rip.”
Last Friday was the first time West Virginia went good on good in a live kicking situation. Dunlap said he wants to have a firm plan in place by the end of next week.
“We’ve got to narrow it down to two teams and focus on trying to get them better,” said Dunlap. “We start with three teams and then you start squeezing it down to two. Then we’ve got to figure out who is going to travel, what freshmen are going to play and all those sorts of things. There is a lot yet to be done in all of our special teams.”
On the other side of the ball, offensive special teams coach Dave McMichael says there are four players he is looking at right now for kickoff returns. They are Noel Devine, Tavon Austin, Eddie Davis and Brandon Hogan.
“They’re all pretty good athletes and if you give them a crease they have the ability to make a safety that is over the top or a kicker miss,” McMichael said.
Tavon Austin’s 98-yard kickoff return for a touchdown last year against Connecticut was one of only three long kickoff returns a West Virginia player has had in the last 10 years. The other long returns were by Darius Reynaud against Maryland in 2006 and Pacman Jones against Boston College in 2003.
Having your best playmakers back for kickoffs and punts is the trend in college football these days.
“There are a lot of great players returning kicks,” noted running backs coach Chris Beatty. “(Cincinnati’s) Mardy Gilyard was pretty good. If he doesn’t return those kicks they don’t beat us out here two years ago, and they don’t beat Pitt in that game and they don’t go to a BCS game if he’s not back there returning kicks. When you’ve got guys that can do that then you need to make sure they touch the ball in that facet of the game.”
Sunday Morning Notes …
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| Dave McMichael |
Said McMichael, “You can’t be more than two yards within each other so we’re working on getting them to stack. You can stack behind (the two players forming the wedge) and still have the same relationship. We’re like everyone else, we’re going to tweak it and experiment with it to see what the best solution is.”
“We have four guys that have experience: (Terence) Garvin, (Robert) Sands, (Eain) Smith and (Sidney) Glover. Then there is a huge drop after that because they are all basically freshmen or redshirt freshmen,” he said.
“Right now it looks like we will be traveling with (true freshmen Mike) Dorsey and (Travis) Bell. We are going to try and redshirt them at the end of the year, but we are going to try and keep them ready to play and they may have to play just because of a lack of depth.”
Dunlap said the focus for him last spring was to try and develop a viable second team, which is still a work in progress this fall.
“Developing a second team to us is critical because we were not a very deep team last year and as the season wore on we got nicked and banged and we just didn’t have the quality depth to replace them … or they got hurt,” said Dunlap. “If we can come up with a second team that is viable and we can plug a guy in there for 15-20 plays that will help us a lot.
“I like my freshman guys as far as their ability and how fast they’ve come along, but how well they’ll do when the lights come on is yet to be seen,” he added. “They all have talent and they’re all bright kids and they’re all pretty tough so I’m pleased with those guys as far as the recruiting process and what we got after the recruiting.”
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| Eain Smith |
“Eain has always had a lot of ability,” said Dunlap. “He’s been nicked, banged and hurt a little bit from time to time but he had a great summer. He came into camp looking bigger, stronger and faster and a lot more confident. It’s his time. He needs to be productive now. He’s in the (safety) rotation now and he’s going to be in the game, there’s no question about that.”
“Like I tell my guys, there are three guys on the other side of the ball that we couldn’t tackle if we were in a phone booth with them: Number 9 (Jock Sanders), Number 7 (Noel Devine) and Number 1 (Tavon Austin) and you know who they are. Tavon and those guys are just ridiculous. They’re so quick and agile it’s unbelievable. You add young guys like Stedman Bailey and I think Lonnie (Galloway) has done a great job with those guys and they keep getting better every day.”
“I think he’s got a lot of the same traits that Percy has, now Percy is 6 foot, 200 pounds, and Tavon is about 5-9, 170, but first step … Tavon is kind of a blend of Jock and Noel,” said Beatty. “He’s kind of got some of the same traits that each of them have and there are not too many better than him with the ball in their hands. Now we’ve got to make sure he’s always in the right spot, that he does the right things to get there and then we’ve got to make sure that we get it to him.”
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| Noel Devine |
Beatty also touched on the vast improvement Noel Devine has made in becoming a more complete football player.
“Noel’s biggest thing is being better without the ball. We all see what he can do with the ball,” Beatty explained. “I sat down with a scout the other day and I told him that Noel’s game is 100 percent better than it was just a few years ago. No longer do you see those Barry Sanders type runs where he’s going side to side and all that stuff. He gets north and those kinds of things are going to give him the opportunity to play at the highest level.”
Still, there are things Beatty says Devine has to do better in order to make himself more attractive to pro scouts next spring.
“He’s got to catch the ball better. He’s got to pass protect better. He’s got to do a better job of being out in space and running routes and he’s working on those things,” Beatty said. “He made a catch on a corner route (last week) that two years ago, if I were to ask him to run a corner I don’t know what I would have got. He’s come a long way in that respect and we can put him out in the slot and do some different things.”
Beatty sat down with Devine at the end of last season and went through a checklist of the things that he needed to work on in order to become an elite back.
“We felt like Noel was a good back but not an elite back at the time,” Beatty noted. “In order to do that, he needed to get downhill, he needed to get vertical on runs and be able to square his pads up and do those things. We sat down, we watched film, we corrected those things and it became an emphasis last spring and into the fall.”
Despite Devine’s size, the third-year running backs coach thinks Noel can become an every–down back in the right pro system. He said the key will be getting into the right scheme, perhaps an organization such as Denver or Washington that employs a zone running offense.
“Run game wise he can play today but he would not be able to play right now in the pass game as far as route running or protections,” said Beatty. “He might get Geno killed and that would be a quick way for me not to be up here (talking to reporters at the podium).”
Last year, the Big East didn’t have a single team ranked in the preseason AP poll.
Here are the years West Virginia has started the season ranked in the AP poll:
2010, 25th
2008, 8th
2007, 3rd
2006, 6th
2004, 10th
1998, 11th
1995, 23rd
1990, 25th
1989, 17th
1988, 16th
1970, 20th
1955, 19th
1953, 17th
Both are looking great.
