They say it’s the silent ones you have to watch.

 

Most of the noise you hear these days from soft-spoken West Virginia University safety Karl Joseph comes from the crack of the pads when he runs violently into another player - not what comes out of his mouth.

 

Joseph is definitely Teddy Roosevelt’s kind of guy – “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”

 

Come to think of it, Joseph is a throwback to another era when the guys could fold up their helmets and put them in their pockets, if they chose to wear a helmet at all. He’s that tough. Do yourself a favor and search “Karl Joseph, Big Hit” on Google and what comes up are about a half-dozen videos of Karl ruining someone’s day.

 

Perhaps his most lethal collision happened at Texas during his freshman season in 2012 when he put his right shoulder through Marquis Goodwin’s ear hole (Joseph Kills a Man in Texas).

 

At the moment Joseph met Goodwin the Longhorn receiver fell to the ground like a dead tree in the forest … T-I-M-B-E-R!

 

Senior linebacker Shaq Petteway has watched Joseph whack people for four years now and admits it’s difficult to come up with a favorite Karl Joseph hit.

 

“It happens every day,” he said. “A lot of times you will see (quarterback) Skyler (Howard) throw the ball to a receiver and Karl closes in and you are like, ‘Whoa, that guy might be going to Ruby (Hospital).’ The plays when you don’t have pads on you wonder what it might be like if he hit him in a live situation.”

 

And it’s not like Joseph is The Incredible Hulk out there running around on the football field. He stands 5-feet-11 inches and weighs a couple biscuits shy of 200 pounds, but then again, think about some of football’s biggest hitters in the secondary through the years and a lot of them are about Joseph’s size.

 

Jack Tatum, “The Assassin”? He stood 5-feet-10 inches and weighed 200 pounds.

 

How about Dick “Night Train” Lane? He was only 194 pounds when he terrorized ball carriers back in the day.

 

Ronnie Lott? He’s 6-feet, 203 pounds.

 

And what about some contemporary players?

 

Former Pittsburgh Steelers head-hunter Ryan Clark is 5-feet-11, 200 pounds while recently retired Troy Polamalu (5-feet-10, 207 pounds) and Ed Reed (5-11, 205 pounds) were basically the same size – short, compact and explosive.

 

That basically sums up Karl Joseph in three words.

 

“He’s a very, very aggressive kid and (playing football) means so much to him,” said West Virginia safeties coach Joe DeForest. “This is his dream and he’s done nothing but progress each and every year.”

 

Joseph was a nice little present the prior coaching staff left the current group when Dana Holgorsen was named coach in waiting in December, 2011. When DeForest came aboard in the winter of 2012, Joseph was one of the players who immediately caught his eye.

 

“It was like, ‘Who is this guy?’” DeForest recalled. “This guy would work good in any scheme.”

 

It took about two or three practices for the coaches to realize Joseph was too good to sit on the bench, and he’s been playing ever since. The Orlando, Florida, resident begins his senior season as one of the most experienced players in college football.

 

“I think he’s got somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,300 snaps under his belt right now,” said Holgorsen. “Leaving here with around 4,500 snaps, that’s probably hardly ever been done in college football. You can’t replace that.”

 

No, you can’t.

 

For WVU defensive players, Joseph probably has more name recognition heading into a season than anybody since maybe Bruce Irvin or Pacman Jones, or even going back further perhaps to consensus All-Americans Grant Wiley, Canute Curtis and Aaron Beasley.

 

Joseph earned All-Big 12 First Team honors as a junior and has twice been named to the preseason all-league team. He’s been called college football’s “Most Physical Player” by NFL.com and a recent Big 12 player survey conducted by ESPN.com listed Joseph as the one guy others would most like to draft on their team.

 

Yet despite that, you almost get the feeling he’s a little bit underappreciated. Some of that is probably because of Holgorsen’s reputation as an offensive wizard and some of that is also a result of the defensive struggles the Mountaineers endured during Joseph’s first two seasons in the program.

 

Joseph was one of the young players on the field in 2013 down in Waco when Baylor dropped 73 points on them - definitely one of the low moments in the 123 seasons West Virginia has been playing football games.

 

“Embarrassing,” said Joseph of his involvement in that game. “I didn’t even want to get back on the plane.”

 

Thankfully, he did.

 

“It was hard but sometimes you’ve got to go through the hard parts to enjoy the fun part of the game,” he said.

 

That happened last year. West Virginia’s defense under first-year coordinator Tony Gibson showed across-the-board improvement and actually led the conference in a statistical category (third-down defense), and Joseph was one of the major reasons why.

 

He was second on the team in tackles with 92 while also forcing a pair of fumbles and picking off a pass. Several of those 92 tackles he took part in were of the bone-jarring variety requiring medical attention for the recipients.

 

If you recall, the big issue with Joseph heading into last year when the new targeting rule was enacted was how long it would take before he got nabbed for one of his kill shots.

 

Turns out it never happened.

 

“The first year they put that rule in I told everybody I would be alright because I always try to attack with the proper technique,” Joseph explained. “It’s not like I’m just running around out there with my head cut off.”

 

What Joseph chose to do was use his head instead of using his head, if that makes any sense.

 

“I try and take care of myself,” he said. “Sometimes I don’t think about it at all. It’s about being smart. I don’t try to hit a guy that’s (defenseless) or something like that. I just go out there and play and do what I’ve been doing since I was a little kid.”

 

After last season, Joseph briefly toyed with the idea of realizing a childhood dream by entering the NFL draft a year early, but he soon realized there were still things he needed to work on in college before taking a stab at pro ball.

 

DeForest listed some of the things Karl still needs to polish up on before that time comes.

 

“The biggest thing we’ve been working on is man coverage,” he said of Joseph’s next-level aspirations. “He’s got to be a better open-field tackler, believe it or not. In space going one-on-one he’s so aggressive and we’ve got to teach him how to be under control (when he approaches the ball carrier). But he’s worked hard at it and he’s trying to get better at those things.”

 

At any rate, having Joseph back for a fourth season at bandit safety is like having a security blanket at night - it just gives everyone a comforting feeling out there.

 

“Looking over and seeing Karl you are kind of confident that the offense is not going to try much on our side of the field,” said Petteway. “We spend a lot of time watching film and talking to each other about what I see and what he sees. Just having him next to you makes you play at a higher level.”

 

“We have a lot of confidence and we have a lot of maturity on our side of the ball – a lot of leaders – and we’re ready to go against whoever we play against,” Joseph added.

 

The question is: will those guys with the ball in their hands be ready to go against Joseph?