Dana Holgorsen: Spring Football Update

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia head coach Dana Holgorsen addressed members of the media earlier today prior to the opening of spring camp.

Opening statement

Welcome to our spring practice presser. You’ll be happy to know this is our last press conference in what we call our ‘team room’. We’ll be transitioning over into the new one in about a week or so, and we will handle all of the press conferences over there. We will have a nice facility to comfortably sit 300 pounders. It will be tiered so guys can sit in the back and can still see film and learn appropriately.

I’m pretty excited about the new room. It’s going to be great. Our guys will be excited about having that facility. It’s one of the best I’ve seen anywhere. It will help us with recruiting. The first event we will have will be this Sunday. We will have a junior day where we will explain to them all the benefits of being a Mountaineer, and the room should grab attention. That’s one of the biggest things in recruiting.

The current state of the team is great. We’re in our seventh week of strength and conditioning. The mentality is awesome. There’s a lot of familiar faces. There are a lot of guys who have been here for four or five years and are in a really good place.

I can’t begin to explain how happy I am with Mike Joseph and his staff. He’s as good as anyone in the country. We’re lucky to have him. He keeps getting better and better. He’s the head coach of the team in the offseason. I view him as important to me as anyone in the program. They represent our athletic department and our football team pretty well.

I want to give a shout out to Kevin White and Mario Alford. They are in town this week getting ready for Pro Day. That’s kind of Mike’s Super Bowl. He’s getting those guys ready to go. I know you all saw the NFL Combine. Kevin knocked it out of the park at the combine, Mario did well, and Mark Glowinski did extremely well. I can’t wait till this Friday. There will be a lot of high-profile NFL people here to see our guys up close and personal, and I’m excited. Quinton Spain and Shaq Riddick have been training hard.

Clint Trickett isn’t trying to grab anyone’s attention which you all know. He’s going to be in town to help those guys out. We’re really looking forward to it.

Spring practice starts next Sunday. We will have three non-padded practices on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday and then we will go on Spring Break. It’s very similar to last year. The difference this year is that Spring Break is two weeks later. We pushed the spring game back two weeks which should help out with weather. I think we’re all sick of this white stuff out there. We’re looking forward to the weather being more beneficial. We have a lot of guys who have been going through spring practice for a while now. We’re pretty fired up about getting started.

There are a couple things with the roster that have been brought to some people’s attention. There are a couple guys who are in limbo right now. I want to wish Dustin Garrison well with his adventures. I’m proud of Dustin and what he’s given us. I recruited all of these guys to come play in the Big East. Dustin will leave here with a degree. I didn’t force any of these guys out. They’ve all decided that they want to move on. I’m proud of Dustin and what he’s given us.

Paul Millard came in and told me that his career at West Virginia is over. He will get his degree this summer. Whether he moves on to play football is something he is unsure of at this point in time. He is going to graduate and see what his future holds.

Andrew Buie is not on the team. I see him all the time working academically in the back. He’s on schedule to get his degree this summer. He hasn’t told me what he’s doing at this point in time.

Keishawn Richardson is the same way. He’s on track to graduate this summer. He’s not on the team right now. Whether he ends up continuing to play or not is something I’m unsure of.

Garrett Hope is playing baseball. I’d like to congratulate on him hitting his first grand slam. Two of his brothers are playing in the minor leagues, and he has played for a long time. He tried to do this a year ago. He was so sore from strength and conditioning. I made a deal with him. He’s taking that, and he’s running with it. I think his future in that sport is pretty cool.

I think we have 68 scholarship guys on campus right now. Our numbers are good and our roster is healthy. We have a lot of returning guys that are pretty fired up and ready to get on with 2015.

Staff updates, as far as who is where, we’re in a good place offensively. The continuity, Xs and Os, we’ve been doing the same stuff for five years. There will be small changes that you can’t see. We have a lot of coaches coming back who have been here for going on three years. Lonnie Galloway is still with the receivers, JaJuan Seider is still with the running backs, and Ron Crook has been doing a great job with the offensive line. These guys are in a much better place now with understanding how I do things. They understand what the scheme is. We’re in a really good place there.

As you all know, I’m going to coach the quarterbacks. I will be in the room more. I brought in a graduate assistant Michael Burchett who is a bright young coach. He was here four years ago as a student. He’s been the quarterback GA for Neil Brown at Kentucky for three years. He’s already taken it and run with it. He understands what we do around here and meets with the young guys a lot. He will be a great coach.

We’ve also got Dan Gerberry who was at Youngstown State last year. He will be coaching the tight ends. He played in the NFL for a couple of years. He’s got tons of upside and will be great.

There are two other GAs running around. We have ‘big’ Zach Hueter and little Zach. He’s the biggest person in this building now, and will be the offensive line graduate assistant. He looks like he could still be playing, but he had some should surgeries. The ’little; Zach is Zach Motley, who’s going to help us on offense as well.

Defensively, we have a lot of the same stuff happening. Coach Tony Gibson is coming back to coach the linebackers. We’ve got a lot of guys who have been doing the same thing for a long time. Anthony Leonard is going to be helping them, and he played in this defense. He’s like having a full-time coach on the field. Gibson is happy to have him coming back.

Our secondary coaches are all as good as anyone in the country. Coach Joe DeForest is coming back to coach the safeties, Brian Mitchell will come back to coach the corners, and we have all five returning. Gibson really relies on those guys to do things right.

Mark Scott is a guy who’s been here and you need to remember this name because he’s a bright young coach and an up and comer in this profession. Gibson trusts him, and he’s coached every position on this team. Andre Sexton comes back as a graduate assistant as well.

Defensive line was the biggest area that we felt we needed to address. Taking that into consideration, we made tons of improvement on defense. The defensive line has to get it together better this year. The numbers speak for themselves. We have a lot of guys coming back. We also brought Bruce Tall in. He’s coached defensive line at several different stops. He’s a guy who coach Gibson really trusts. Him understanding what the front is supposed to do every snap is going to be beneficial. He’s been the d-line coach for seven weeks now, and we already see improvement on how those guys are doing.

Damon Cogdell will be the assistant defensive line coach. He needs to learn this defense. He can learn from some guys who have been coaching it for a long time.

I want to congratulate Coach Bradley for moving on to be a coordinator at UCLA. I thought that was a great move for him, and we appreciate his time here. We were probably going to put him in a bigger role on special teams, but now that position is void. Right now we’re in the interview process.

With special teams, we’re not going to change much. We just need to get better, not just on special teams but on all three sides of the ball. That’s what spring practice is for. Our guys are going to know what to do. There’s nothing wrong with the schemes that we run, but we need to get better at it. The biggest thing that stands out that we need to address is we need to eliminate the big play and that’s something we’re going to focus on this spring.

As far as our guys, just a quick rundown as far as where we’re at positionally. Everybody wants to talk about the quarterback.

Right now, Skyler Howard is running with the ones at the quarterback position. He’s the one that understands what to do. We’ve got three freshman behind him. All three are very promising. I can’t wait to get out there and start working with them. They all are great looking guys who had loads of potential, but we just have to start coaching them. We don’t know where they’re going to be. Skyler is the one who runs things much better because he has a few games under his belt. Austin Hensley has four years of eligibility and looks about the same as the other three guys. I can’t wait to see what they can do.

We have tons of depth at running back even though we lost some people. Even after losing a few guys, we have tons of depth. (Rushel) Shell and (Wendell) Smallwood both were extremely productive as sophomores. They’re still young. They’re going to keep getting better and better. Donte Thomas-Williams looks great. He was a young guy who is talented, and I can’t wait to see what he can do. Elijah Wellman is going to play running back. We probably did too many things as far as him being a slot and tight end. With those four guys, we feel like we have four guys who can all do a lot. We will continue to see how those guys develop. Tight end wise, Cody Clay is coming back as a fifth-year senior. He’s played a lot of ball. He’s one of the best football players on our team. We did move Darren Arndt there who’s a fifth-year senior and a really smart guy. He looks like a tight end. He hasn’t played much, but he will give us a body there. We also moved Michael Ferns there. He has loads of talent. He will have to sit because he’s transferring, but he will be able to get a lot of reps in the spring to be able to continue to be able to schematically do that stuff with our tight ends.

Receiver wise, we have big shoes to fill. Kevin (White) and Mario (Aflford). To put things into perspective, they had had 50 percent of our catches and about 50 percent of our production. We still have guys who have played ball. If you look at where we were two years ago, when we lost Stedman Bailey and Tavon Austin, they were 98 percent of our production. Having guys like Jordan Thompson, Daikiel Shorts, Vernon Davis Jr., Shelton Gibson, KJ Myers, we have guys who have played ball. We have guys who have played in games. It’s a far cry from where we were two years when almost 100 percent of our production was gone. We have some guys who have experience. Devonte Mathis is another guy who has experience. We need to see who steps up. We need two guys on the outside who can stretch the field. Whether it’s that, or it’s the three guys who we recruited, they’re all going to have to have chances, and we will see who can step up. We’re going to see who steps up and takes control of that.

Offensive-line wise, we have 18 bodies, with 15 bodies in the spring. We added four more who will be joining us in June. We have a lot of depth there. We have three returning starters there. We have moved Adam Pankey from left tackle to guard, much like we did Quinton Spain when Spain moved into his junior year. Adam looks great there with Tyler Orlowski both having a lot of experience under their belt, that’s a lot of good stuff there. Marquis Lucas is a fifth-year returning starter so we have three guys coming back, and we just need guys to step up and we will evaluate those guys and see where we’re at.

With the specialists, we have all the guys coming back. Josh Lambert has made a lot of plays for us. Nick O’Toole has been back there a bunch. The most underrated guy of the bunch is John DePalma. He’s going into his senior year. No one knows who he is because he never screws up. You find out who the long snapper is when he’s launching the ball over the punter’s head. He’s as consistent of a deep snapper as I have seen. We have a couple young guys in Billy Kinney and Mike Molina who are pushing for a role, I can’t wait to see how that plays out.

With the returners, we have a void with Mario (Alford) leaving, he was an all-American guy. We expect Shelton to take that over. Wendell Smallwood can be a kickoff return guy as well, he’s done that in the past. With punt return, it might be Darryl Worley back there, it might be KJ Dillon back there, it may be one of the young guys who we recruited could be back there. We have some guys. We have all spring, and we will see who steps up and can be that other guy.

Defensively, I think when you look at the roster with everyone coming back the one thing that stands out is the depth at linebacker. (Nick) Kwiatkowski has started games, Isaiah Bruce, and Shaq Pettaway have all started games for us. Then you bring in Jared Barber who comes in and fills the role that (Wes) Tonkery played with as many games as he started, I think we’re at a great spot with the linebackers. We’re going to put Barber at Mike, and move Kwiatkowski to where Tonkery was at Sam. Jared is really comfortable at Mike, he’s got a bunch of experience. He can run this defense in his sleep. We’re about four deep at linebacker. Who the younger guys that are going to step up, it’s going to be fun to see who are the young guys who step up.

Secondary wise, we have all five guys coming back, and that puts us in a good spot. Injury wise, the only things that I have are Daryl Worley and Jarrod Harper had shoulder surgery and will miss all spring and be back in June. Those are the only two guys that are out. I think we’re pretty healthy, and I think we’re at a good place with that. Even with Daryl not being there in the spring, with Karl. K.J. Dravon, and Chestnut, those guys have played a lot of football for us and now it’s just about the young guys stepping up and getting them a bunch of reps and seeing who develops as much as they can. Defensive line wise, things are spear-headed by Kyle Rose. We also have Christian Brown and Noble Nwachukwu. We have guys who have played a lot and who are pretty good place moving forward. We have depth at that spot.

That’s my rundown. I think we’re in a pretty good spot with depth moving forward.

The only other thing with spring is that you guys will get to see the first 30 minutes this Sunday. We’re doing things like we did last year. We’re taking things to two different places in the state. The first one is in Shepherdstown. Shepherd University is gracious enough to let us use their facilities and we will be up there on April 4, and in the Eastern Panhandle we’ll have a MAC event in the spring, and we’ll let the guys see the Eastern Panhandle. The next weekend on April 11, here in Morgantown, we’re having a coaches’ clinic and have a bunch of high school coaches in to speak. We’re bringing in a bunch from different parts of the country. We’re trying to get a bunch of guys in here and you guys will be able to watch that practice as well. The next weekend on April 17 and 18 we’re going down to the Greenbrier. This is going to be a fun weekend.

The WVU Cancer Center is having their 30 Year Cancer Gala. West Virginia University’s Mary Babb Randolph Cancer Center is going to go down there and raise a bunch of money. We’re anticipating practicing on Friday afternoon and practicing on that Saturday. There are a lot of good things that will be happening down there. Coach Huggins will be coming down as well. By the way, congratulations to Coach Huggins on his Big 12 Coach of the Year honor. As you all know, the cancer stuff is very important to him, and he has his own foundation. We will both be doing a chalk talk on Saturday morning, so it should be a good weekend for not only the cancer center, but WVU athletics as well.

The foundation is doing a lot of stuff down there as well that we are trying to support as much as we possibly can. There are NCAA rules and regulations, but we’re trying to do as much as we can with the team. We’re excited about traveling down and getting to see the southern part of our state. I doubt a lot of guys on our team have ever been to the Greenbrier so I know they’re fired up about it. Spring will conclude on April 25 with our spring game. We have enough numbers to break it down into two separate teams, but we’ll have to see how the injury situation is at that point.

On the full-time coaching position available

I have some flexibility with that. I have everything covered at this point in time. We have one of the most widely regarded special teams’ coaches in the country with coach (Joe) DeForest. He’s doing so much on defense. We’re trying to get him some help. We’ve got some flexibility with that. I don’t know exactly where we’re going to head with that at this point in time.

On coach Holgorsen spending time with quarterbacks

Coach (Michael) Burchett is going to do a great job with these guys. He understands what we want to do. He was here. He will be able to do a lot of the drills. That’s the only thing I can’t do. I can’t spend 30 minutes doing those drills when I need the time to walk around and look at the different areas. I have a hard time justifying me doing that. I’m going to be sitting in the meetings regardless. I sat in a lot of the quarterback meetings in the past. I feel like every coach that we have on our team, every area that we have on our team, is at a very good place. That understand what needs to be done. If I’m not in there with the quarterbacks, I don’t know where I’d be. Maybe I would go back with coach (Ryan) Dorchester and talk recruiting. I’d be in the offensive meetings anyway. I have for five years. The only thing I can’t do is take that time to drill. I wasn’t going to go outside and hire someone to do it full time if I don’t have someone who knows exactly how I want it done. That’s how I’ve always been. Coach Spavital and coach Dawson knew what I wanted. I felt very comfortable turning it over to them. Without having someone that I knew like that, I wasn’t going to do it. I won’t do it and never will.

On the quarterbacks

Skyler is the one that knows the most right now. He’s played the most and he knows the most right now. He’s going into his junior year. He started junior college, and he started for us late year. He played a big role in three of the games last year. He’s still pretty raw so he will continue to get better. William (Crest) has the next amount of experience. What I’ve seen of him is very limited. We can sit in a room and meet with them for two hours. We can watch the offseason strength and conditioning stuff.

David Sills may be the most athletic one we have. You can see that with the different drills he’s running. We know William is an incredibly athletic guy. Skyler is a fierce competitor. Chris Chugunov is a little less athletic but has absorbed the offense quicker. You can tell from asking him questions that that dude is pretty bright. Until I can put a ball in their hands and watch the drills and see them execute, I don’t’ know.

Crest looks great physically. I told him he better quit lifting or he will be a linebacker. He looks great. As far as how they process things, how the ball comes out of their hand, I don’t know. Because we haven’t been able to do that yet.

On naming a starting quarterback

That’s up to them. I name them when I feel good about naming them. Two years ago we did it and no one took ahold of it. Last summer, Clint came back and took ahold of things. That’s up to them. There will be a lot of snaps in the spring that will give them opportunities to prove themselves.

On if Jordan Thompson or Daikiel Shorts would move to the outside

You have to have guys that can stretch the field. Those guys are so good inside. We moved them inside for a reason. I think they are pretty solid inside. Every other guy that’s on our roster has been moved outside. We’ll have KJ Myers, Devonte Mathis, Vernon Davis Jr., Shelton Gibson, Ricky Rogers, Lamar Parker and Jacky Marcellus – all those guys can play on the outside and all of those guys were recruited to play on the outside. You’re looking at 8, 9, 10 bodies that we need to develop. I’ll tell you right now, Shelton can stretch the field. You guys saw that in the bowl game. He’s one of the fastest kids we’ve got. All those kids are going to get a chance and whoever can take control of it will be the guys who get the ball.

On if Coach Holgorsen was surprised by Kevin White’s performance at the NFL Combine

Yeah. I think we looked at him – he’s so big and physical, and he high points the ball. That is what caught the attention of the NFL. He did that so well that we didn’t think about the fact that he could actually run because all that other stuff stood out so much. When I was watching it, after about the first 15 yards, I went ‘woah.’ I was obviously proud of him. He’s like ‘what’s the big deal? I don’t understand why you guys didn’t think I could run.’ I was surprised. I think it was because we saw his other physical skills that kind of overshadowed his speed.

On moving Adam Pankey to guard
We have a lot of bodies. We have five bodies, we have Marquis Lucas, we have Marcell Lazard, we have Yodney Cajuste, we have Russell Haughton-James, and we have Sylvester Townes. That’s more than we have ever had in the spring. We can always move Adam Pankey back out. We talked about that with Spain a lot. Spain was a better guard, and I think Pankey will be a better guard too. He’s big, he’s physical, and he can come off the ball.

On Darryl Worley and Jarrod Harper’s injuries
Typically with shoulders you can get small tears and that’s not like tearing your cartridge in your knee or anything. Shoulders are a little bit different. They had to fight through those injuries last year and they did. When you have an opportunity to fix them you fix them, and they both have a lot of experience anyway.

On Kyle Bosch
All we can do is file the waiver and it’s been filed. So hopefully we hear something pretty quick.

On Rushel Shell
His strength and conditioning should be in a much better place than it was a year ago. He needs to continue to get in as good as shape as he possibly can and develop the mentality that he is the man. Going into spring last year, he wasn’t the man, and he made his mark in camp. He should be more confident and more dominating because he’s in better shape I feel he is on his way to do that.

On Running Back Depth
As long as you stay healthy, you’re in great shape. The thing you worry about is injuries and whether they deplete the position. Running back is a very physical position, and it’s a hard position to play. The fourth and fifth team guys last year wish they would have had more carries and more time. You have to struggle with having the fourth and fifth guys not being very happy because there’s not enough carries to go around. Eli is pretty important because he’s a strong and physical kid. He can do everything with him as a fourth teamer. We can use him as a blocking back and on special teams and all of that. We’re not going to be able to manufacture a Charles Sims, those are hard to come by. We’re losing a couple of guys who have eligibility, and I think there’s a reason for that.

On getting Jared Barber back
He’s a coach on the field. He was in meetings five years ago with coach (Jeff) Casteel. He has been here a long time and has played a lot. He was pretty valuable to us a year ago. He was basically a student-coach. Now he’s a player/coach.

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