MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia University football coach Dana Holgorsen addressed members of the media on Sunday, Aug. 12, 2018, at the Steve Antoline Family Football Practice Field.
 


On his takeaways from Saturday's full-contact practice
It was all situational stuff. We've tackled twice. What's this now? Practice nine, I believe. I believe it's practice nine. We've tackled twice. This will be uppers today. So, we'll still hit, we just won't tackle. Yesterday, we tackled and had some situational stuff, which I like a whole lot more than they like. They want to put the ball down and play football – try to put a drive together and all that. I'm more interested in teaching them situations, third-down stuff, what you do on specific fourth downs, coming off the field and two-minute, four-minute drills. I like putting them in as many of those situations as we can. I learn from it coaching staff-wise and player-wise as well. So, I liked the practice a whole lot more than they did. We'll do uppers today, and then, tomorrow, we'll back off them and tackle again on Tuesday. We'll start letting them drive a little more at that point. It's more teaching than evaluating, probably. I was happy with it overall.
 
On the amount of quality at the linebacker position
You start with (redshirt junior) David Long (Jr.). We didn't have him a year ago at this time. So, having him in camp has elevated our defense, in general. He was our defensive MVP last year pretty much. Having him is an awesome start. He looks as good as he ever has, it makes a whole lot of a difference. We can't block him, and it gets frustrating to get things drawn out to where he's accounted for, and he still likes to play. That's good news for our football team. (Redshirt sophomore Dylan) Tonkery looks really good. He's another starter that we have in position that's coming back from having a whole lot of experience. Then, we have a whole lot of young guys on top of that. (Redshirt sophomore) Charlie Benton's looked good, (redshirt freshman) Exree Loe has looked good. You've got some guys on the sidelines that'll come back at some point this year that will give us some help as well. The backups are inexperienced, and our job is to not only get the starters to play at a high level, but to have the backups be able to go in and hold things together as well. I think we're on our way to doing that.
 
On the difference between practicing situations and scrimmaging
You have to teach them the situational stuff. You'll want a combination of both. We're having less tackle days than I have had in a decade. We usually have eight or 10 days where we're going to tackle. That's ample time to be able to get as many different situations as you want, while allowing them to be able to put the ball down and drive as well. We have four this year. That's half as many as we've had. We focused on the situational stuff the last two days. You're still going to get the situational stuff in those put-the-ball-down-and-scrimmage days, but it's not going to get as many of them. We're teaching them what these situations are, and then, we have to put the ball down and play it. We'll get into those situations throughout the course of an actual scrimmage, which we'll do Tuesday and Saturday as well.
 
On how important it is to practice situational, third-down offense in fall camp
It is, it is. It's just the maturity of my decision making, working with (assistant coach – offensive coordinator/quarterbacks) Jake (Spavital) and (redshirt senior quarterback) Will (Grier) as well. There's a lot of areas on the field where if you just did half of what it is, then you're going to have another opportunity, potentially, on fourth down. We have to figure out what the range of our kicker is, where (redshirt senior kicker/punter) Billy (Kinney) feels comfortable pooch punting – that sort of thing. A lot of things go into it. We're just working through some of that stuff and working out the kicking game aspect of it as well. There's no better way to do that than to put the ball down, play and see what happens. I think we got better at it yesterday, and I feel good with where we're at. Defensively, we were really good on third down last year. It doesn't mean we were good on defense, we were just good on third down. What's ironic about it is we were bad on offense, good on defense. Fourth down was just the opposite – we were good on offense, bad on defense. We were putting a lot of fourth-down situations out here, as well. If we can merge the two, then I think we'll be where we need to be.
 
On if he is happy with where the team is at currently
Yeah, I'm happy with where we're at right now. The energy's been good, the work's been good. This is the hardest part of what our camp is going to be right now. We have three more days of camp, and then school starts. We tried to have a long day yesterday, and everybody's sore today. But we have to get up and get a lot of work done. Then, the next day has to be the same thing, and the next day has to be the same thing. Then, we have to switch gears a little bit. I'm happy up until this point, but it's a whole other animal when these kids have to go to school. Then, getting them here in the afternoon, after having gone to school, refocusing them, continuing to get work done and going into a game-week situation – that's practice prior to a game-week situation – that's the real deal. It goes fast. It'll be upon us before you know it. At this point right now, I'm good with where we're at.
 
On the differences in playing with two slot receivers compared to one slot receiver and one tight end
There are differences, clearly. It's an extra gap in the run game, so the blocking schemes are going to be different. We can call the same run play, but it's a different scheme based on an extra gap and where somebody is aligned, which always means the defense is going to align differently as well. But with that said, we can call the same thing, it's just that we have to identify what the fronts are, how many are in the box and who is accounting for who. It can change slightly. A lot of the pass-game stuff can stay the same, a lot of the run-game stuff can stay the same; it's just minor tweaks as far as how we're accounting for the extra body and who on offense is going to account for that. It's not always the tight end that's accounting for that extra body just because he's in the backfield. It can change all kinds of fronts and stuff. I like the extra gaps with the tight ends and stuff, because it allows you to scheme some people up a little bit as opposed to it just being spread offense the whole time.
 
On how an offensive philosophy can change from game to game
Pretty much all of it. You just can't have a whole bunch of presentations on the same offense. You just change things up week-to-week based on what you feel like you can do, and what you feel like you can handle. We have a lot of offense, but you can't be good at all that stuff. You can't practice all that stuff, so you just have to try to focus on what you feel like you can handle.
 
On freshman tight end/fullback Jesse Beal
He's learning the game. There are a whole lot of examples. I mean, Brandon Weeden didn't do anything for Oklahoma State for two years, because he was getting back into the swing of things. It's very rare that those guys just pick up where they left off, whether it was junior high or high school. He's learning; he's a good kid. He understands it's a little bit of a process for him. I've been excited with him due to the fact that he hasn't just gotten frustrated, because everything is just so new. I've dealt with a couple of baseball players, I've dealt with a couple of basketball players that come over and try to learn the game. Just because you look the way you look doesn't mean you know how to do anything. You have to start by teaching them how to get into a stance, because they don't know how to get into a stance. They don't know what a five technique is. He's a good kid, I'm glad he's here, but he has a long way to go.
 
On how redshirt senior safety Toyous Avery has begun camp
Good. He's been out there every day, so that's a start. He's been one of my senior leader guys that I'm leaning on a little bit. He's in a leadership role, he knows that. When he played last year, he was one of our better defensive players. He just had the injury bug last year; there's not a whole lot you can do with that. Eight practices into it, he's had really good work, and I like where he's at.
 
On how coaches' kids are different than regular players
I have a soft spot for those kids; you'll see my kid running around here all the time. The point is, they're just always around, so they always see things, they hear things – they probably see and hear things that they shouldn't at that specific age. I remember Logan (Holgorsen) coming to me back in 2011, he snuck his way in to when Kurlav (Bill Kirelawich) was down over there. He came back and his eyes were really, really, really wide, and he was like, 'Dad,' and I go, 'I know. I didn't say you could go down there.' They hear a lot of things, they see a lot of things, they absorb a lot of things. When they get to a situation like this, there's no a whole lot that they can't handle.  
 
On how early the analysts and coaching staff will begin preparing for Tennessee
The scouting report is done. It's been done for about a month. There's a book on my desk – I haven't looked at it yet – there's an offensive book on my desk that thick and a defensive book on my desk that thick and a special teams book on my desk that thick of as much information as they've been able to gather. It's going to be valuable on Sundays after a game. The first game, we get two weeks. We prepare for our opponent two weeks before the first game, which is going to be a week from tomorrow. So, when we come in a week from tomorrow, it's going to be an off day, and I'm going to open that book, and we're going to start diving into it. It's going to save coaches a lot of time; there's going to be information in there that we probably wouldn't be able to get if we didn't have somebody that was constantly doing it all summer and throughout camp as well.
 
On if he expects Tennessee to install a new system or work with its personnel
Jeremy (Pruitt) is a good coach, and what good coaches do is they take a little of both. They take what they believe in, and they implement it, and then they take what they have, and they merge the two of them. So, how much is going to be 100 percent what they do and 100 percent of what they need to fit to the players they have, I don't know yet. We'll do our best to try to figure that out.
 
On how interesting it is to see the opposition's game plan early on during games
It always is. Even last year, we had a pretty good idea of what Bud Foster was going to do and what (Justin) Fuente was going to do. There's still some new stuff mixed in with it that you have to figure out. That's the first game anyway.
 
Closing Statement
Two things, too. Injuries – there are two I want to tell you about. The injury thing, I told you I'd tell you if they're out-out-out. (Freshman wide receiver) Dillon Spalding had surgery on his ankle, he's out for the year. (Freshman tight end/fullback) Mike O'Laughlin had surgery on his knee, so he's out for the year as well. Those two guys, we didn't know what we were getting with them. They are good kids, they'll be back here probably in two days. They went home and had surgery, and they'll be back in two days and roll into school. Other than that, we're in pretty good shape.