MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia coach Neal Brown said Tuesday that he saw some improvement from his secondary during day two of his split-squad fall training camp.
 
The first group hit the field at 9:30 a.m. followed by the second group at 11:30. The second practice finished up right on schedule a little after 1 p.m.
 
"I thought our secondary did a lot better job in what we were asking them to do in our match coverage," he said. "Our communication in the back end with both groups was much improved, even more improved than it's been in our OTAs and definitely yesterday."
 
Brown thought the stamina from his defensive linemen was much better today than yesterday, although it was much cooler with a steady breeze this morning.
 
"We were able to play multiple plays in a row and some of that was because it was not as hot," Brown noted.
 
Offensively, Brown said the morning group did a much better job throwing and catching today and the afternoon group wasn't quite as sharp, but did overcome some adversity toward the end of practice.
 
"We didn't play very well but finished," he said.
 
Brown specifically mentioned the work put in today by place kickers Casey Legg and Evan Staley. He thought they performed well during pressure situations.
 
"We got some really good fundamental work in on special teams, which is something that our kids are buying in to," he said. "Early on in camp, we worked special teams in segments, really not a whole unit, and they are buying into that drill work because they are starting to see it show up in game situations like it did at the end of last year."
 
Today was day two of installation with another day of installation scheduled for tomorrow. The process will repeat on Friday following Thursday's recovery day.
 
"We kind of go day one, two, three and then we will be in a situation where we throw it all at them at a real slow tempo," Brown said. "We will walk and talk and go through all of it to make sure we've got it all checked and then we just add to it. 
 
"We will do an install one again but it will be a B and then we will go back and do an install two with a B version and as we get into camp we'll do the C and D versions as well," he added.
 
Work was done again today in only helmets, and Brown still isn't sure when he will put them into shoulder pads.
 
"We are going to kind of evaluate it. I've got a couple of experiments I'm doing while we've been in shorts here, and I'm going to get all of the data from the GPS units and then from watching the video we will make a decision on that tomorrow," he said.
 
The rest of this week's schedule includes field work on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday with an off day on Sunday.
 


Briefly:
 
* The hardest work being put in right now is probably from the coaching staff. The way these split-squad practices are set up with two different practices and two different walk-throughs, the coaches and staff members are being required to be on their feet upwards of eight hours a day.
 
You can already see it showing with some of them.
 
Graduate assistant coach Tyler Orlosky, whose playing weight was listed in the vicinity of 300 pounds, is now 56 pounds lighter and looks like he could compete in a triathlon.
 
Some of the younger coaches such as Jahmile Addae look like they are in good enough shape to take some practice reps.
 
"It's a lot (of time on their feet), but I think it's the best situation," Brown said. "We kind of conditioned ourselves during the OTAs because this is the way we handled the OTAs as well, so we really got the coaches prepared for this. 
 
"One benefit that I really didn't think about because we made all of these decisions based on COVID and social distancing and small groups, is it's really helped our young kids," he said.
 
The way the split-squad practices are structured a young player is being paired with an older player so he can observe and learn, but also get more practice reps than normal.
 
"Our newcomers are probably farther along mentally than we've ever had," Brown said.
 
Patrick Johnston, football's director of operations, had a lot of input in the split-squad practice model the team is using right now, and he talked to a lot of different people to get ideas of what they are doing.
 
He said the particular model West Virginia is using is unique. The only other program he is aware of doing this type of split-squad practices is Boise State.
 
The others doing split-squad practices are doing so based on depth chart considerations. This is one of those rare instances when the practice plan is based on medical considerations first, followed by coaching considerations.
 
"A couple of NFL teams were staying split and then coming together in the middle of the day, but we wanted to truly split them and make it work based on times," Johnston said. "Really, it's a pretty good schedule for the guys."

The team will continue to use the split-squad model for at least another week before bringing all of them together to start doing team work.
 
That's when personnel and depth-squad decisions will be really scrutinized.
 
* Coleman Barnes, Neal Brown's righthand man as his associate athletics director for external affairs, told me today he has read 47 different books since spring practice was shut down because of the pandemic.
 
He said he is currently working on four more right now.
 
That's roughly two books per week!
 
And he's not doing light reading either. He recently completed J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye and is currently working on Sun Tzu's Art of War!
 
I asked him about Tolstoy's War and Peace, but he was non-committal.
 
Practice continues on Wednesday.