It’s the No. 1 question that everyone will be talking about when fall camp opens in August - who is going to be West Virginia’s two starting cornerbacks?
Last year, the Mountaineers had two very good ones - Daryl Worley, now playing for the Carolina Panthers, and Terrell Chestnut, a fifth-year senior who had his best season at WVU in 2015. Those two combined to pick off nine passes and break up 23 in helping West Virginia become one of the most effective third-down defenses in the Big 12 last year.
But now that those two, along with their position coach Brian Mitchell, are gone, the entire area is starting from scratch this fall.
New cornerbacks coach Blue Adams had the spring to familiarize himself with the West Virginia defense and also the players returning, but veteran defensive coordinator Tony Gibson believes Adams having a clean slate with a bunch of new corners coming in this summer could actually benefit everyone.
“We have 10 or 11 scholarship guys there right now and come fall camp we’re going to need them all to be ready to go and may the best two win the job,” Gibson said.
Who that will be is anyone’s guess, including the guy tasked with running West Virginia’s defense.
“It’s a wide-open competition right now,” Gibson said. “Sometimes you get into the problem that you’ve got too many that you’re trying to rep and you don’t really see what you need to see so we have to do a great job - and Coach Adams has to do a great job - of splitting these reps and making sure we’re just not seeing guys against the first group all the time or the second group all the time, because some of that might get misleading as well.”
Fifth-year senior Nana Kyeremeh has the most experience of the 10 scholarship corners, having played in 30 career games, but only one came in a starting role and most of his snaps have come on special teams.
Miami transfer Antonio Crawford sat out last year, but he’s played in 38 career college games for the Hurricanes, breaking up five passes in 13 games as a junior in 2014.
Kyeremeh and Crawford two took a lot of the reps in the spring.
Senior Rasul Douglas played in 11 games last year, breaking up a pass and picking off another. The former JUCO All-American at Nassau Community College played a season-high 60 snaps against Baylor, so he knows what Big 12 football is all about, and he is expected to be a factor at corner.
There are the Adams twins, Jordan and Jacquez, two promising youngsters from Reistertown, Maryland. Jordan spent the fall in Morgantown while Jacquez delayed his enrollment by a semester to attend Milford Academy. Both are a little light on weight and experience, but they will certainly get a long look this fall.
And then there are five new corners that will be thrown right into the mix when the team hits the practice field in August.
A pair of junior college standouts, Mike Daniels and Elijah Battle, were brought here with the idea of playing right away. Two high school standouts, Jake Long and Sean Mahone, were signed to compete for playing time and a late four-year transfer, former Iowa corner Maurice Fleming, was signed earlier this spring for additional depth.
Daniels was an All-American performer at Globe Tech (N.Y.) Community College while Battle entertained several four-year offers coming out of JUCO powerhouse Dodge City Community College. Those two guys have the size and athleticism to play immediately.
Iowa transfer Fleming broke up five passes in 14 games for the Hawkeyes, who played in the 2016 Rose Bowl against Stanford. Fleming’s experience in the Big Ten will help his cause, as will Crawford’s experience playing in the ACC, but neither league is known for throwing the football the way the teams in the Big 12 do.
Still, any one of these guys could end up out on the field when the Mountaineers kick off the season on September 3 against Missouri.
“We know what we have coming out of spring so we’re going to open the door up for Mike, Elijah, Maurice, the freshmen - the guys that just got here - and see what we can get out of those guys and see where they’re at,” Gibson said. “We have to get these guys ready because nobody in that room right now has played any significant amount for us.”
When camp begins, Gibson and Adams have a tricky deal in that they’ve got to give all of their corners enough reps to see what they can do, but also pare down those reps after a couple of weeks in order to get a defense ready for the season opener against the Tigers.
So that means they have to have a good plan going in.
“The first two and a half weeks of camp are just camp,” Gibson explained. “We’re not going to try and game plan then. We have to find our best 11 first and then once camp breaks then we’ll have a mock week getting ready for Missouri and then we will have the real week getting ready for them.”
The two biggest, fastest, strongest, most athletic corners will certainly get the attention of the coaches, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they will be the guys out on the field come the first Saturday in September.
“Obviously you’ve got to play within our system, No. 1, so in our eyes the guys that do that the best are our best guys. You do care what kind of athletes you have and you do care how fast they run but it’s not always those guys that are the best guys,” Gibson noted. “They have to be able to think, be physical, be able to hold up and all that. That’s all part of our camp plan and right now there are a couple of them that aren’t in good enough shape. We can’t really see everything, but they have one more month (to get in shape).
“Mike (Joseph) does a great job with them and I think they will be fine and ready to go August 1,” added Gibson.
