Summertime Hard Work for WVU Football

Earlier this spring, senior wide receiver Jordan Thompson talked about the need to get on the same page with quarterback Skyler Howard this summer.

Well, this summer is here.

Mountaineer players are currently working with Mike Joseph’s strength and conditioning staff in preparation for the 2015 season, which begins on Saturday, September 5, at 7:30 p.m. against Georgia Southern at Milan Puskar Stadium.

For those of you counting, that’s 86 days from today.

Even though the coaches are only allowed limited interaction with the players this time of the year, summertime has become super critical to a football team’s development.

Consider the progress quarterback Clint Trickett and Kevin White made last year working out on their own. Trickett completed just a little better than 50 percent of his pass attempts for 1,605 yards with a seven-to-seven touchdown-to-interception ratio during his junior season in 2013.

A starting quarterback with those type of pedestrian numbers operating a Dana Holgorsen-offense is literally unheard of.

Then there is White, whose 35 catches, 507 yards and five touchdowns in 2013 are also about as ordinary as it gets.

But these two guys got after it last summer, got on the same page and blew up in 2015. Trickett’s senior season exceeded everyone’s wildest expectations, the former Florida State transfer completing 67.1 percent of his attempts for 3,285 yards and 18 touchdowns.

At one point in October, Trickett had West Virginia in contention for a Big 12 regular season title until he suffered a concussion in a close home loss to league champion TCU that hampered his play for the rest of the season.

And as good as Trickett was in 2015, White was even better.

He became the first player in the country to crack 1,000 yards receiving and finished the year with 109 catches for 1,447 yards and 10 touchdowns. White was able to parlay that great production and an outstanding workout in the NFL Combine into a huge payday during last spring’s NFL draft when the Chicago Bears took him No. 7 overall.

Don’t think for a second West Virginia players such as Jordan Thompson can’t connect the dots between the hard work White and Trickett did last summer and their increased output last fall. The two go hand in hand.

“From the spring to the fall it was like night and day for them,” said Thompson after an afternoon practice at The Greenbrier earlier this spring. “During the summer they went out there and worked hard and it showed on the field. Learning from that, me and Skyler are going to keep doing that.”

Thompson isn’t close to being in White’s category in terms of his size (5-feet-7 inches and 176 pounds compared to White’s 6-foot-3-inch, 215-pound physique), but small guys have also thrived in Holgorsen’s offense in the past if they can perform on a consistent basis.

That is what Thompson wants to prove to the coaches this fall.

“When you play a football game it’s not all going to be up,” he explained. “It’s going to be up and down, but if you maintain consistency and focus and know that the bad times are eventually going to go away, you are going to start making big plays. When we get that figured out we are going to be unstoppable.”

There were times last spring when the offense looked pretty unstoppable and then there were other times when it was very stoppable.

Howard took command of the No. 1 offense midway through spring drills and got the vast majority of the reps at quarterback, but in the three major scrimmages as well as the Gold-Blue Game, he completed right around 50 percent of his passes – a lower-than-acceptable percentage for Holgorsen’s system.

Completing a higher percentage is clearly something Howard is going to have to improve upon this summer and fall leading into the opener.

“I like his ball and he’s improved a lot, especially since the (Texas) A&M game when all of his balls were kind of sailing,” said Thompson. “We were talking after (the A&M game) and I was telling him, ‘Your arm slot … you are stepping away from your target and that is causing your arm to go up.’ I just noticed that from playing baseball in high school. He focused on that during the offseason and now his ball is pretty.”

The one aspect of Howard’s game that Thompson said is already there is his competiveness. Nothing seems to bother him.

“He’s comfortable back there,” said Thompson. “He’s confident and that’s the one thing I can say about Skyler. When things go bad he shakes it off and it doesn’t affect him at all. He doesn’t change his expression. He knows you have to play the next play.”

Thompson added, “It’s good having that come from your quarterback position. It’s like, ‘Okay guys let’s play the next play.’ When you have a guy like that constantly reminding you to play the next play big things are going to happen.”

The question is: Who is going to be on the other end of those big plays, if they do happen?

Thompson is the team’s leading returning receiver with 49 catches for 598 yards and two touchdowns, but he was able to do that in a supporting role with defenses focused on stopping outside guys White and Mario Alford.

Running back Wendell Smallwood is the closest thing West Virginia has to another Charles Sims (who is expected to be Tampa Bay’s starting running back this year), and Smallwood’s ball skills and versatility could make him a big-time weapon in 2015, wherever he lines up.

Daikiel Shorts Jr. also showed flashes last season, catching 24 passes for 346 yards and two touchdowns, as did sophomore Shelton Gibson, whose 47-yard catch in the Liberty Bowl against Texas A&M gave us a glimpse of his straight-line speed and ability to stretch defenses.

Those guys, along with Devonte Mathis, KJ Myers, Jacky Marcellus, Lamar Parker and Ricky Rogers, will be in the wide receiver mix this fall, as will newcomers Ka’Raun White, Jovon Durante and Gary Jennings. All three new guys are on campus right now and all three look the part.

The word is Ka’Raun is a carbon copy of his older brother, Kevin, in his appearance and movements on the field so far. Durante was considered one of the top wide receiver prospects in South Florida, despite catching just 11 passes for 221 yards and four touchdowns in limited action last season.

Then there is Jennings, a big-framed, 6-foot-2, 195-pound receiver who the Mountaineers were able to steal out of Virginia. Like Durante, Jennings saw limited action during his senior season, but the coaches saw enough of him to believe that he is capable of competing for serious playing time this fall.

This is the group of wide receivers that West Virginia will be counting on this fall, with Thompson being the most experienced of them all.

“It’s my senior year and I know what I’m doing out there,” he explained. “With me and Daikiel being the only receivers returning with any significant amount of snaps, they are leaning on us to be ‘that guy.’

“Each year my role has increased a little bit and I feel like I need to be that big playmaker on the field (this fall). My consistency has improved greatly from where it was two years ago, I just wish I had one more year after this one but we all have to leave sometime,” added Thompson.

Just ask Kevin White, a guy whose hard work last summer not only changed the outlook on his football career, but also his life.

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