WVU's Man in the Middle
May 21, 2015 09:33 AM | General
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| Linebacker Jared Barber produced a career-high 71 tackles in 2013 before a knee injury against Texas prematurely ended his season. | |
| All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks photo |
Yes, Barber’s knee rehab was far from routine.
To backtrack, Barber was having his best season at West Virginia in 2013 when his right knee went one way and his body went another while trying to make a tackle in a game against Texas.
The result was a completely torn anterior cruciate ligament. And that was the good news.
The bad stuff happened once the surgery was completed.
Barber opted to have his surgery performed back in North Carolina by a physician with whom his family was comfortable - which is done quite frequently, by the way - but about a week after the operation when he returned to Morgantown the WVU athletic training staff noticed that the wound from his surgery wasn’t healing properly.
It turned out he had MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), a severe, penicillin-resistant infection that must be treated immediately.
“The whole thing with MRSA is it’s cillin resistant, so all of the drugs you would normally use to treat that infection are ineffective,” explained WVU athletic trainer Dave Kerns. “(MRSA) is a little bit difficult to diagnose without doing a study of what it is. When you look at it, you are not 100 percent sure what it is.”
As for Barber, he was clearly 100 percent concerned when he was told the infection could potentially cause him to lose his leg if it was not treated.
“For two and a half months I fought it and nothing could get rid of it,” Barber said earlier this spring. “Finally they ran an IV through me and it finally got rid of it. (The doctors) said if that didn’t work they didn’t know what they were going to do.”
This happened right around the time of final exams in 2013 and Barber was not only worried about playing college football again but also simply being able to toss a football in the backyard with his kids one day.
“There was definitely a concern of ‘was football even an option anymore?’” he said. “That was scary. At that time I was really focused on life and just being able to walk around. Football wasn’t even talked about – it was just getting through this.”
Fortunately, Barber was able to get past the serious infection and was eventually able to get his rehab back on track.
“Once the medication did grab hold, it did what it was supposed to do, but that slowed down the rehab process from a normal or typical ACL reconstruction process,” Kerns pointed out. “After a month or two he regained where he was and by nine to 10 months later he was back on track.”
However, that meant 2014 was a total wash for Barber and it wasn’t until right before last year’s Liberty Bowl preparation that Barber was finally cleared to begin practicing again.
He remembered walking up to the indoor practice facility feeling a little uneasy about getting back out onto the field once again. It was one of those typical dreary December afternoons that we have in Morgantown when the skies are dark and it’s spitting out a mixture of rain and snow, sometimes coming down sideways.
“I was shaking a little bit,” Barber admitted.
He was able to get through that practice without a problem and since then he’s put himself right back into the mix at middle linebacker.
Defensive coordinator Tony Gibson was certainly pleased with his progress this spring.
“He looks like he’s a little bit bigger as far as muscle-wise but he’s basically had a year and a half to lift weights, rehab and do all of that and he looks really good right now,” noted Gibson. “He’s got a lot of good qualities, but the one thing that makes him so special is his leadership qualities. That’s where he really excels, and I love the way he leads this team and this defense.
“The guys listen to him.”
That includes the coaches, too.
“He knows the defense as well as any of our defensive coaches do just because he’s been here so long. We call him Coach Barber for a reason,” said Coach Dana Holgorsen.
Barber especially knows the 3-3 Stack. He is one of the few players you will find anywhere who actually played the stack in high school and when he graduated he sought out college programs that ran the defense.
That’s how a guy from Mocksville, North Carolina, ended up going to college in Morgantown, West Virginia.
“I played this all through high school and even some during middle school and not a lot of middle schools play that defense,” he said.
Therefore, when Gibson took over the defense in 2014 and brought back the stack it was music to Barber’s ears.
He was just like a pig playing in mud once again.
“Coming back to this is just like coming home again,” Barber said. “And I’m back in the middle, too. I’m not the fastest, most athletic linebacker out there but you put me in the middle and what I am is really good at studying film, working hard and I try to have good vision from tackle to tackle.”
Barber fits the profile of the successful 3-3 Stack middle linebackers West Virginia has had in the past. Who doesn’t recall Jay Henry manning the middle during the 2005 Sugar Bowl season or Reed Williams making plays at middle linebacker during the 2007 Fiesta Bowl campaign?
Both were not the biggest or fastest players around, but they made up for it with their intelligence and their ability to think on their feet.
Barber said he has made it a point to study how those two guys played middle linebacker in this defense.
“Reed Williams wasn’t the biggest, fastest, strongest guy out there, but he worked his butt off and he was a smart kid and he made play after play after play,” he pointed out.
Barber, who eschewed a protective knee brace this spring, says he’s back to 100 percent and he’s ready to lead an experienced Mountaineer defense in 2015.
“I don’t come out on the field and think, ‘I’ve got to be careful.’ I don’t even think about it at all and it’s like it’s never even happened,” he said.
What Barber does think about is how he can help make an improving West Virginia even better this fall.
“They definitely got better,” he said. “You can tell by the numbers. Watching them out there was great, but now we’ve got to get even better.
“We want to be a top-10 defense in the country this year, and I really think we can reach that goal,” he concluded.
Having a healthy and reinvigorated Jared Barber back in the middle of the 3-3 Stack will certainly help the Mountaineers in their attempt to reach that lofty status in 2015, that’s for sure.
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