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Veteran Aide Wickline Reunites With Holgorsen
March 23, 2016 10:00 AM | Football
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - When Joe Wickline became available after one year as Texas’ offensive coordinator, Dana Holgorsen wasted little time bringing the veteran offensive strategist on board.
The two worked together for Mike Gundy at Oklahoma State in 2010, and what a season they had, orchestrating one of the most potent offensive attacks in the country. Oklahoma State won 11 games that season, routed Arizona in the Alamo Bowl and finished ranked 11th in the country.
The Cowboys had the nation’s second-best passing offense, averaging 345.9 yards per game, ranked third in scoring, averaging 44.2 points per game, and third in total offense with 520.2 yards per game.
Oklahoma State had an unstoppable, three-pronged offensive attack that featured a 4,000-yard passer (Brandon Weeden), a 1,700-yard receiver (Justin Blackmon) and a 1,500-yard rusher (Kendall Hunter). Most impressively, however, was Oklahoma’s proficiency in the red zone that season – ranked first in the country.
If there has been one speed bump in Holgorsen’s West Virginia offenses, at least the last couple of seasons, it has been scoring touchdowns in the red zone. The Mountaineers have had little trouble moving the ball between the 20s, but when they near the score zone that’s when things have bogged down at times.
Getting another knowledgeable, veteran coach with a little dirt between his fingernails on the headsets might be the right prescription for more red-zone touchdowns in 2016. Wickline’s specialty, of course, is offensive line, and West Virginia already has a proven O-line coach on staff in Ron Crook.
So, how will the two work together?
Holgorsen believes like hand in glove, thank you very much.
“I’m very happy with Ron and the mentality that he has installed with the offensive line guys,” Holgorsen said earlier this spring. “We are really coming off the ball. We will stack up against anybody out there being able to do that.
“What we need is help in the pass protection area. Looking back on our stuff throughout the year, I don’t think we did a very good job with that,” he continued. “The schemes are there, we are fine; we know what we’re doing, but I think Wick is really going to help us with some tackle situations and protections.”
Holgorsen points out there are 20 offensive linemen in the program right now, meaning one full-time coach was in charge of all those players. By breaking some of those responsibilities up and having two outstanding technicians working with the interior and exterior guys, more can get accomplished.
And it’s really not that unusual. For years, Don Nehlen had two full-time coaches working with his offensive line – offensive coordinator Mike Jacobs concentrated on the interior linemen and coach Dave McMichael focused on the outside guys.
The two worked well together, and it worked well for West Virginia.
Holgorsen has no doubt it will also work well for the Mountaineers this season.
“I have always said, the offensive line is the hardest position to coach,” he explained. “If you put one guy in charge of 20, that is not fair. Those guys need help, so coach Wickline is going to coach a position and overall head things up and be the coordinator. He is going to coach the tight ends and fullbacks, but who is right next to the tight end? That is usually a tackle, so he will be able to have his hands on those guys a lot.”
“I have a lot of respect for Ron Crook,” Wickline said. “He’s one of the best in the business and I like Ron. When you coach at one institution and you watch defensively what they’re trying to get done and then you watch other offensive line units perform, they’re doing the right stuff. They have the right guys (in the right places).
“We may move the spokes around, but we’re not going to reinvent the wheel,” Wickline added. “We can work on fundamentals, technique, reads, snap counts and cadences. We can help those guys a little bit. I think protections have been something that’s talked about, but I don’t see it as a big problem.
“Am I working half the line? Am I working blitz pickup with coach (JaJuan) Seider? Are we working run schemes with Ron? What are we doing? There are enough players to go around, so we’ll all find something to do,” Wickline said.
Despite losing a 1,500-yard rusher in Wendell Smallwood a year earlier than expected, West Virginia probably has its best collection of offensive players since 2012 when Geno Smith, Tavon Austin and Stedman Bailey were marching the Mountaineers up and down the field against some pretty good defenses.
This year, West Virginia has an experienced quarterback returning in senior Skyler Howard, a deep and talented wide receiver corps that is really poised to blossom, a big and physical offensive line and a proven Big 12 ball carrier in senior Rushel Shell.
Therefore, the pieces look to be in place to have a really effective offense in 2016.
“It’s about your personnel,” Wickline said. “We are in a conference that’s a space-game conference – get the ball in space and make them tackle you and move around a lot. I just thing the balance of the space game, getting the ball in space, the movement, the motions and the different formations – formations to the boundary, unbalanced, the down-hill stuff that we’re doing such a great job of here, and then you spread them out and throw it around a little bit like we’ve done in the past here - I think the balance of all of it is what you’re really looking for.”
Which is exactly what Oklahoma State had going for it in 2010 when Holgorsen was calling the plays and Wickline was handling the O-line.
The two came from divergent backgrounds, Holgorsen from the Mike Leach coaching tree and Wickline from the Charley Pell, Johnny Majors, Billy Brewer way of doing things, but the two eventually clicked and gained respect for each other’s philosophies.
“When it started off I didn’t know him,” Wickline said. “I was trying to adjust to him and this is what we’re going to do, but I would come in all the time and say, ‘This doesn’t make any sense to me. I don’t know how all of this works. You tell me because I’m not in that circle you came from.’ And I would come out and say, ‘Well, I think it ought to be done this way.’ He would say, ‘That’s fine, do it the way you want to do it.’ So we would go back and forth like a ping pong game.”
Invariably, what happened was both coaches became more well rounded. Wickline was being exposed to new ways of doing things while Holgorsen was sprinkling in some of the concepts Wickline was exposed to while playing and coaching in the Southeastern Conference.
Today, Holgorsen’s offense is now equipped to throw the ball 50 times to win a football game (it has), and it is also equipped to run the ball 50 times to win a game (it has as well).
How many offensive systems out there can do that?
“There were several things I learned from him and I think he saw when we got into it, the ideas that I had,” Wickline said. “I think sometimes when you hear it from the outside … ‘why would it be called that?’ or ‘why wouldn’t it be called this?’ I think he kind of started seeing some things, and it all happened at once. It was more just sharing information, getting on the same page and then having success with what we developed there.”
Their concepts were innovative, their techniques and strategies sound, but Wickline cautions the true secret to the Oklahoma State's offensive success in 2010 had more to do with the guys they had running around on the field than what they were able to come up with in the film room.
“It had a lot more to do with the quarterback, the receivers, all of the linemen and the running backs we had,” he said. “Oklahoma State had a great setup, and still does. We were just part of it – the system, the flavor, it all tied together.”
Wickline sees something similar brewing here at WVU.
“Before it’s all said and done, I think we will help each other,” he predicted. “Ultimately, the goal is to help these football players. If nobody is worried about who gets the credit, we will move farther along. It’s not about your ego, where you’ve been or where you’re going, it’s about what we need to do to get this group of individuals ready to win the first game.”
And the work has already begun.
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