MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - The other day, our Dale Wolfley barged into my office the way only Dale Wolfley can: eyes bulging, veins popping out of his forehead and overcome with excitement.
 
"Hey Johnny," the Wolfman announced, "I just got done breaking down tape for my segment on the TV show this week and you won't believe the play David Long made against Kansas State last Saturday, man!
 
"It was incredible!"
 
Wolfley's description of Long's play was so full of football jargon that he had my eyes bulging, too, but I understood enough of what he was saying to figure out that it must have been pretty damn good.
 
So, I asked Long's coach, Tony Gibson, about it.
 
His eyes lit up as well.
 
"He had a 4-yard TFL the other day against Kansas State, and he went through the A-gap and there was a guard, a tackle and a fullback and not one of them touched him and he makes the play 4 yards deep into the backfield," Gibson marveled.
 
You got the sense that Gibson wanted to say more about what his sophomore linebacker did, but with so many reporters standing around him with cameras pointed in his face, he probably didn't want to get too carried away.
 
So, I sought out Long to get his version of things. Here is what he had to say.
 
"I knew what the play was before the snap because I saw the fullback's eyes," Long said in almost a football Svengali sort of way. "I knew it was going to be split and usually when the running back takes the ball, he's going full-force the opposite way and this time he slowed down trying to cut it back, and I already knew what he was going to do. I knew he was setting up for it, and I ended up making the play."
 
What Long described was the instinctive part. As for the rest of it, well, there's no way anyone can describe that.
 
You have to think back long and hard, deep into West Virginia's rich football history to find a more impactful linebacker than David Long Jr.
 
The Mountaineers have had many terrific ones through the years - consensus All-Americans, first-round draft picks, longtime pros, etc., but someone who plays as explosively as David Long Jr. does …? 
 
And in such a short and compact package …?
 
Let me know when you come up with one who plays the way this guy does.
 
To me, Long is a modern-day 5-foot-11-inch, 220-pound version of Darryl Talley, the most disruptive linebacker in the modern era of West Virginia University football.
 
But Talley stood 6-4, weighed 230 pounds and ran like the wind. Long is easily 5 inches shorter than Talley, probably 10-to-20 pounds lighter yet he covers the entire field the same way Talley once did back in the day.
 
"I play like I'm 6-4, honestly," Long said. "That's what keeps me going. I know a lot of players with all of the advantages of having a big wingspan and stuff like that, but when it comes down to it, you've got to play football, and at the end of the day that's what I do."

Now there is where the similarities between the two really intersect: both are/were football players. These guys also happened to be from Ohio - Talley from Cleveland and Long from Cincinnati, two pretty good football towns on the opposite ends of the state.

But back to the point; Talley was always a football player first. That's what WVU recruiter Gary Stevens saw in him that other schools didn't, and that's why he recruited Talley like he was another Lawrence Taylor. That's also what Tony Gibson first saw in Long that others didn't because this guy can play just about anywhere he wants on the football field and for any football team in America, too, Alabama included.
 
"He changes games," Gibson said. "He's special; I've said it before, and just think where he'd be if he didn't miss the first four games."
 
For starters, Long would probably rank among the national leaders in tackles and tackles for loss. He has 52 tackles and 11 TFLs in the six games he's played so far this year, which averages out to about nine tackles and a couple TFLs per game.
 
The dude had 18 tackles and seven TFLs against Oklahoma State all by himself. Talley had some great games - his performance at Pitt in 1982 going down as one of the greatest individual efforts ever in school history - but not even he made 18 tackles and seven TFLs in the same game!
 
Nobody has since the NCAA began recording defensive stats in the mid-2000s, according to the website Sports Reference.com.
 
"There are two things that help David: his ability to slip blocks and Al (middle linebacker Al-Rasheed Benton)," Gibson explained. "Al covers him up."
 
What Gibson means by that is Benton will sometimes cover the gaps Long leaves open when he takes risks to make big plays. More often than not, though, Long gets to where he needs to be to make the play.
 
"When he does it, I say, 'You better make it.' We'll be watching film and he knows one is coming up and he will say, 'Hey Coach, I made this play now! I know I wasn't in the right gap.' But you don't coach that stuff," Gibson admitted.
 
Or suppress it too much either!
 
"I pride myself on making that play if I'm going to take the risk of taking the wrong gap or something," Long said. "I can't do it too much because in the 3-3 stack and how we play most of the time you've got to do your job. Sometimes I take chances and I make myself right most of the time.
 
"That started last year when I began to do it," Long continued. "Al just looked at it over time and played off of me and I play off of him, so we just kind of work together now."
 
Talley also had that with inside linebacker Dennis Fowlkes. They used to call Fowlkes "Mr. Inside" and Talley "Mr. Outside." The game was much different back then, of course, but the results have been just about the same.
 
Although Benton, spur safety Kyzir White and corner Mike Daniels Jr. will be moving on after this season, the nucleus of Gibson's defense will remain intact for the next couple of years.
 
It's that way up front, it's that way with Long and it's that way in the backend with young, up-and-coming freshman safety Kenny Robinson, another ball hawk who isn't afraid to play off his instincts.
 
Robinson, like Long, is a football player first and Gibson was so anxious to find a place for him on the field that he lined him up at corner on his side just to shout instructions at him before each play.
 
He's now comfortable enough with Robinson to move him out to free safety where teams can't avoid him.
 
"He still doesn't have clearance to go on the other side of the field yet, though, but we've worked him from the sideline to the middle of the field," Gibson joked.
 
Long does have the green light to roam about, to a degree, which is why the players love playing for Gibson. His defense gives them the freedom to be football players. Sometimes, it just takes a while for them to figure things out.
 
And it's taken this group some time to get cranked up, but once Long returned to the field, and Robinson no longer needed instructions before each play, it's been a completely different Mountaineer defense the last couple of weeks.
 
After all, at the beginning of the year who would have ever imagined the offense putting up a couple of goose eggs in the second half and West Virginia still winning those games?
 
Not I.
 
But that was 2017 D.L., before David Long.
 
"Right now, we're just getting cranking," Gibson said. "I wish it was game two or game three, but I know the players probably don't. They're beat up, but I like where we're at. Now we've got to continue to do it because at any point this thing could go sideways again …"
 
Gibson caught himself once more. He doesn't want to get too carried away.