MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Sometimes, the best way to find out about a football team is to go directly to the players. 
 
Players know players, right?
 
Of course they do.
 
So the other day I dropped my fishing line into the water hoping to latch my hook onto something good when I approached sophomore linebacker Josh Chandler, who happens to be one of the more cerebral guys on the team.
 
"So Josh," I began, "who are some of the guys beginning to emerge on the team?"
 
Chandler put his hand to his chin and thought about the question for a moment. 
 
"Hmm," he said.
 
"Well, there's the two freshmen corners (Nicktroy) Fortune and (Tae) Mayo, Winston Wright, Tykee Smith, Kerry Martin, Josh Norwood, Keith Washington, Hakeem Bailey, Dylan Tonkery, Taijh Alston, Reuben Jones, Darius Stills, Dante Stills …" he continued, pausing to catch his breath to get ready to rattle off some more names.
 
Before he could continue I interjected, "You've already named just about everybody."
 
"Everybody's been working," he explained.
 
Josh Chandler is either a great politician or he's really high on his teammates. Actually, it's probably a little of both.
 
At any rate, Chandler's defensive coach, Vic Koenning, is certainly high on him. Earlier this fall, Koenning labeled Chandler as the one Mountaineer defender opposing teams are going to have to locate on the football field. That's pretty high praise.
 
But getting Chandler to expand on that is a lot more difficult to do.
 
"I'm more of a guy who prefers not to say that, really," he admitted. "It is what it is though. It's going to come out at some point. I've put the work in, and I'm very confident in my abilities. If it comes it comes because I'm ready for it."
 
Chandler was recruited out of Canton McKinley High in Canton, Ohio, to be David Long 2.0 in Tony Gibson's 3-3 stack defense. The plan was for Chandler to take over Long's willie linebacker position when Long moved on.
 
It turns out not only did Long move on a year early, but the whole defensive system went out the door with him as well when Gibson and the defensive coaches departed soon after Dana Holgorsen took the Houston job. 
 
But immediately, Chandler became a guy Koenning identified as a playmaker at weakside linebacker in his new 4-2-5 scheme that is similar to what Gary Patterson runs at TCU. We saw Chandler make play after play during spring ball and he's continued to make plays this fall.
 
Josh admits he's got a little Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde to him. Off the field he's fairly soft-spoken, quiet  and reserved, but when he gets onto the football field he turns into another person.
 
"It's like two different people; I can't even tell you," he laughed. "The person you see on Saturday is not the person you see right now. You've got to be somewhat crazy, especially to play defense."
 
Which is exactly what Koenning is looking for to make his aggressive, attacking defense work - a bunch of Bobby Bouchers running around out there. 
 
Chandler calls it organized chaos.
 
"We have a lot of movement, a lot of stunts, and we have a lot of free will to go out there and just be us," Chandler said. "The scheme is molded a certain way, but it kind of adjusts to whomever the personnel is, and we've gotten comfortable with it."
 
Chandler continued, "You can put many people in different places, but it's a basic skillset of speed and aggressiveness. Once you have that, you can be tall or short, but as long as you get familiar with it and know your role in the defense you will be fine."
 
Chandler says the schemes may be different than what they were used to, but the aggressiveness isn't.
 
"Last year, our defense was assignment-based," he explained. "If one person missed his assignment that kind of throws it off, but this year it's causing chaos.  You can make up for certain things if other people are in the right places."
 
What he means when he says that is Koenning has established a system of "aggressors" and "protectors" in his system. When some guys are being the aggressors others are responsible for protecting those exposed areas. And those roles are constantly changing throughout the game, which makes the defense so difficult to decipher.
 
Koenning is also a big proponent of creating turnovers, something that actually comes from the very top.
 
"That's coach (Neal) Brown's main emphasis," Chandler said. "We have a program period, which is our turnover circuit, and we try to work on strips while the offense works on ball security. That's probably coach Brown's No. 1 thing - ball security. He always says 'the ball is the program.' We implement that every day, no matter what we do."
 
Soon after that, our conversation veered back to some more of Chandler's teammates.
 
He talked about emerging freshman safety Kerry Martin from Capital High in Charleston.
 
"Kerry had a good spring, but you can tell he's really starting to get comfortable out there and is coming into himself," he said.
 
He mentioned former East Carolina defensive end Taijh Alston, who spent last season at Copiah-Lincoln Community College.
 
"He's got a high motor. He can do anything for us down on the D-line," Chandler explained. "He's showed up a lot in the spring and has been consistent ever since."
 
Michigan transfer Reuben Jones? Yes, he talked about him too.
 
"He's been able to provide the veteran leadership we need on the team because most of us are so young. We're 19-, 20-years old and we don't have that veteran leadership and that's where Rueben, coming in from another program and has seen success, can show us things to do. Reese Donahue too," Chandler said.
 
Finally, I asked Josh to give me the name of the one dude on the team that has everyone talking about in the locker room after practice - the one guy on the team that everyone goes, "Wow."
 
"Dante Stills," he said immediately. "When he shows up, you can tell. It's different."
 
So, how do you get him to show up like that all of the time, Josh?"
 
"We've been working on that with him. I believe he's going to be one of our best players," he predicted. "Darius too. Darius is starting to change his mind set and is becoming more of a leader. That's kind of dragging Dante along because that's his older brother, obviously.
 
"The key was to get Darius to pick his level of play up, which he has done. Darius is almost like a completely different person. He's made plays in the past, but now he has a different motor to him, which is bringing Dante along," Chandler concluded.
 
That pretty much sums up the Mountaineer defense a week and a half before the now-sold-out season opener against James Madison on Saturday, Aug. 31.
 
Any more questions?