MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – There will be lots of teaching and learning in store for the West Virginia University football team when it begins spring football practice on Tuesday, March 22.
 
New offensive coordinator Graham Harrell will be installing a new offense with new terminology for the players and coaches to learn. What the offensive players were taught in the past may or may not apply when they hit the field next Tuesday morning.
 
"We want to get the plays installed and make sure our guys know what to do," West Virginia coach Neal Brown said earlier this month. "We will probably be a little bit slower than the previous spring in 2021. We really worked a lot of situational football, and there will probably be less of that offensively and more of just getting some reps with the plays and trying to create some muscle memory."
 
Brown said there will be a lot of emphasis placed on fundamentals this spring, particularly up front in the run game. Brown also said Harrell will have complete control of the offensive scheme.
 
"What he's done is he's evaluated what we've done here – and there were some things we did well. Now, it wasn't good enough as far as the total package, but I think he's going to add some new wrinkles," Brown said. "What he's going to do is look and see what he feels really good about what we're doing and hold on to those and then add the things he's been really good at in the past and install those. 
 
"As far as terminology, it's going to be his."
 
That means the guys probably ought to take their playbooks with them wherever they go, including to dinner and to bed.
 
"The NCAA allows you two hours a week, and he's done a good job getting with the quarterbacks, and we're now (four weeks in) to really using that meeting time with our team," Brown explained. "We're not necessarily starting at ground zero when we have our first practice on March 22."
 
Despite learning new terminology and plays, West Virginia is actually going to be ahead of where it was at this time last year.
 
Unbeknownst to everyone outside the program, Brown said the team last year experienced a COVID outbreak in late February that impacted about 30 players. That essentially wiped out about three weeks'-worth of team winter workouts before the start of spring practice.
 
For a developmental program such as West Virginia, that was a major setback. 
 
"We never had a shutdown, but we went to those small workout groups again kind of like we did in the summer of 2020 so we weren't able to do our team workouts," Brown said. "In our team winter workouts you're trying to put your guys under as much pressure to overcome things mentally and physically as you possibly can."
 
What Brown learned is that it's difficult to recoup the lost time during the year. He said each season follows a pattern, beginning with winter workouts and continuing into spring football practice. Once spring practice concludes, the team then transitions into summer workouts leading into fall camp when game preparation mode begins. 
 
Losing any part of this process puts the program behind.
 
"We tried to overcome that and do some things in the summer we normally wouldn't do because we missed those workouts, but you don't get that time back," he admitted. "We missed a significant piece of that winter, and I think it showed up as far as some detail things and some mental toughness things that we weren't as good at as we hoped we'd be in the fall."
 
Now that winter work has wrapped up with Mike Joseph and his strength and conditioning staff, the offensive guys can turn their full attention to learning Graham Harrell's playbook.
 
Following spring break this week, the team will have 14 uninterrupted practices leading up to the annual Gold-Blue Game to be played on Saturday, April 23, at Milan Puskar Stadium.