Campus Connection: WVU's 'Fun' Defense
October 24, 2014 01:01 AM | General
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| Brandon Golson gets one of West Virginia's four sacks against Baylor quarterback Bryce Petty during last Saturday's 41-27 victory. |
| All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks photo |
It doesn’t take a Vince Lombardi to notice two things about Tony Gibson’s West Virginia defense. One, his kids like playing for him and, two, they REALLY like playing for him.
“Coach Gibby is just a fun coach to play for,” says junior safety Karl Joseph.
Gibson is getting West Virginia back to playing defense the way it used to be played around here when guys named Stydahar, Huff, Howley and Talley were punching people in the face. “You may score on us and you may even beat us," Sam Huff used to say, only half jokingly, "but you ain’t getting out of town in one piece."
Not too long ago, the running joke in Morgantown used to be that West Virginia’s 11 defenders and Billy Graham were the only 12 people on the planet who could make a crowd of 60,000 West Virginians stand up and yell “Oh God!”
Actually, after the way West Virginia fought and scratched and clawed last Saturday afternoon against a Baylor offense some people are proclaiming is the best since the German panzer division of 1940, many Mountaineer fans are now saying “Thank you God!”
This is Tony Gibson’s first crack at running a high-profile Division I defense and he’s going about it like he’s been doing this for years.
Last Sunday morning when he came to the Puskar Center following West Virginia’s last-second win over Texas Tech, Gibson told the rest of the defensive staff to get their players ready for lots of cover zero and a bunch of exotic blitzes. The guys in green may ring up 8,000 yards on us like they did a year ago but we ain’t getting our lunch money taken again without a fight. (You may recall Don Nehlen doing something similar back in ’84 when the Mountaineers blitzed Doug Flutie into oblivion).
Then, when Gibson told his players on Tuesday afternoon that they were going after Baylor quarterback Bryce Petty like a Chihuahua chasing down the neighborhood mailman, a shot of adrenaline went through the entire team.
“When he lets us loose I’m excited about it,” admitted senior defensive end Shaquille Riddick, who sacked Petty three times last weekend to earn Big 12 defensive player of the week honors.
Make no mistake, this defense is not going to make people forget about the ‘85 Bears, and it is not the second coming of the Fearsome Foursome, the Steel Curtain or the Purple People Eaters – far from it - but considering where this group was 12 months ago … check that … where they were just a month ago, it sure does feels like it.
What Gibson has done is take the Mountaineers back to their roots - an odd-front, oddball, unorthodox cast of odd fellows running around on defense like a bunch of knife fighters.
Think about this: all six second-level players (including the linebackers) in this defense are almost interchangeable, a scheme Fox college football analyst Dave Wannstedt last weekend referred to as “elastic.”
What that means is because the Mountaineers have a hybrid safety/linebacker they can go from being a base nickel defense to a 3-4 at the snap of a finger. And West Virginia’s safeties can line up just about anywhere on the field, which makes them hard to locate and even harder to block.
Plus, all of them are about the same - same height, same weight and same athletic ability with the same Bobby Boucher, eyes-glazed-over tenacity. To opposing quarterbacks it’s almost like there are six of them running around out there wearing the same uniform number, or more when Gibson makes a line change with backups Shaq Petteway, Hodari Christian, Isaiah Bruce, Al-Rasheed Benton, Jeremy Tyler, Jarrod Harper and Jaylon Myers.
“It’s definitely a challenge for offenses to know who’s coming; who’s not?” said senior linebacker Wes Tonkery. “It’s fun for us.”
Even mike linebacker Nick Kwiatkoski was once a hybrid coming out of high school athletic enough to play safety but also big enough to play linebacker. Same deal with Tonkery, who began his career at spur safety before Gibson moved him closer to the line of scrimmage at sam linebacker.
“All three safeties can play all three different positions,” explained Joseph. “I think that’s what’s so fun about this defense. It’s an easy defense to understand and it allows us to fly around and have fun.”
Did somebody mention fun?
A little history lesson is in order. This scheme was born out of necessity, much like last spring when Gibson was promoted to defensive coordinator to revive it.
Gibson was around here 12 years ago when Rich Rodriguez changed defensive coordinators and got rid of a 3-4 system ranked No. 1 in the country against the pass. He did it because nobody was stupid enough to ever stop running the ball against his defense - that’s how bad it was.
So Rich Rod ordered his remaining defensive coaches to go down to Wake Forest and learn the 3-3 stack from Dean Hood because Rodriguez had a tough time attacking it when he was running Tommy Bowden’s offense at Clemson and he thought it was something that could give other people problems at West Virginia.
Also in the back of his mind was the fact that the last good 3-technique to come out of the state wore a single-bar facemask and the really good ones in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey and Florida rarely ever leave. Since this isn’t horseshoes and grenades, there's no need investing a bunch of time to come in second for out of state D-linemen that everybody else wants, Rodriguez figured, so he went all-in with the odd-stack and the Mountaineers began stockpiling safeties and hybrid players the way Warren Buffett hoards money.
It was a defensive plan good enough to help West Virginia win the Sugar Bowl in 2006, the Gator Bowl in 2007, the Fiesta Bowl in 2008 and the Orange Bowl in 2012.
Then, three years ago when Jeff Casteel left for Arizona, 10 years worth of recruiting defensive players for a specific system was cast aside to go back to what everyone else was doing. After two difficult seasons watching offenses go up and down the field on him the way he goes up and down the field on other people, Dana Holgorsen figured it was time to go back to the future.
“It’s the defense that Tony is comfortable with,” Holgorsen said earlier this week. “They put it together when Tony was here the previous time. He was an integral part of putting that together and doing what they did prior to them leaving. He’s very comfortable with it. He understands what the calls are. He understands how to put the guys in the correct positions.”
More importantly, Gibson’s players understand it because a lot of them were brought here to run it in the first place.
“The seniors and even some of the juniors were recruited for this defense and we understand it,” said Tonkery. “It’s simple. It’s easy for guys to learn. You can see that guys have picked it up and we’ve played a lot better the last few weeks.”
You can say that again, especially last weekend. Plus it's fun, if you haven't already figured that out yet.
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