Photo by: WVU Athletic Communications
Mountaineers Hit the Ground Running on Monday
August 01, 2022 04:58 PM | Football, Blog
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The West Virginia University football team hit the ground running on day one of preseason training camp on the Steve Antoline Family Practice Field Monday morning.
Coach Neal Brown put his team through a workout that lasted approximately an hour and 40 minutes under overcast skies and cooler than normal temperatures for August.
Brown said his team had good energy and its knowledge of what to do and where to go was much farther ahead of where it was at this time last year. He credits a new NCAA rule permitting organized team activities (OTAs), popularized by the NFL.
"This summer was the first summer we could have OTAs, and we were able to hold a number of those," Brown said.
He explained the OTAs are structured in a way that players don't go against each other from a competitive standpoint but rather it's used as a window to teach the players assignments and alignments. The OTAs were done mostly in June and early July before the coaches took their summer vacations.
In today's climate, with players transferring so frequently, OTAs give college programs the ability to introduce basic schemes during the summer in a non-competitive, learning environment.
Brown said the two sessions per week in June lasted about 50 minutes each and were made up of fundamental and low-speed installation work on offense, defense and special teams.
Consequently, the team was able to immediately get right into the basic principles of offense, defense and special teams this morning.
"Today, we didn't go out there and say, 'This is where you line up.' The NFL gets a lot of things right. This is something I think you will see staying as long as staffs don't abuse it," Brown said.
OTAs are particularly helpful now that rosters have become so fluid as a result of the transfer portal.
"This is the 130th team in Mountaineer history, and we made a point at the start of the summer to tell our guys, 'This is our team.' That's not the way it used to be," Brown explained. "It used to be you turn the page in January and this is our team. You might add some freshmen and they may or may not be in the mix in the summer.
"But in the spring, we were really clear with our group that there were going to be a bunch of players added to the mix," Brown continued. "When we got to the summer, we were like, 'Hey, this is team 130. This is the team now.' When we started on Memorial Day, this is who we had."
Brown said the offseason is basically broken down into three different sections – the winter phase, the spring phase and the summer phase.
"We have a winter phase that goes for eight weeks and the first four weeks is really all strength and conditioning. We have spring ball, which is five weeks, and then the guys get a break during May, which is needed," Brown said. "Then, we come back and have eight weeks in the summer, which lasts nine weeks."
Brown said his team will have 12 practices before the start of the fall semester on Aug. 17, but the team will remain in camp mode until Thursday, Aug. 25, one week before the season opener at Pitt. Therefore, the team will have its major scrimmages on Thursdays to line up with the Thursday night season opener.
"How we've set up our camp is we never practice hard more than three days in a row," Brown explained. "We want to do a buildup. We have practices that are low, moderate and high, and we have to build up to those high levels. We want to be on a path where we play our fastest and be our most fresh on Sept. 1."
Practice work resumes on Tuesday morning.
Briefly:
* Brown said Monday his team's scholarship number is at 81 right now, and they will keep their eyes open in case a player pops up in the transfer portal at an area of need. "We're not closed," he said.
* Tight end Will Dixon, who reclassified to the 2022 class, was on the field practicing this morning, according to Brown. He is a 6-foot-5, 230-pound freshman from Blair Academy in Hillsborough, New Jersey. Safety Saint McLeod is not with the team.
* Quarterback Will Crowder was a little bit under the weather today and sat out this morning's practice, according to Brown. Tight end Mike O'Laughlin was excused from practice work this morning to complete some class work on his MBA. Brown said when he returns he will still be limited but is "cautiously optimistic" of his progress. Outside linebacker Exree Loe, who is still recovering from last year's knee injury sustained in the Kansas State game, practiced this morning in a limited capacity.
"I wouldn't say he is full speed yet, but he's getting close," Brown said.
* Veteran strength and conditioning coach Mike Joseph has been pretty pleased with the work put forth by his players this summer. A number have improved their body compositions since last season.
"Talking to Mike, he really feels this has been a successful summer, and this isn't something he just says every year either," Brown noted. "This is the first time in my four years he came to me and said, mentally and physically, he feels really good about where our guys are."
Guys Brown singled out for their summer work include wide receiver Kaden Prather, offensive tackle Ja'Quay Hubbard, running back Justin Johnson Jr., offensive guard Jordan White, defensive backs Aubrey Burks and Charles Woods and linebacker Lance Dixon.
"Some time over the summer, it clicked for Kaden. He understood what it took from a nutrition standpoint, a strength and conditioning standpoint, and I thought he did a really nice job today for day one. His body looks better," Brown said.
Hubbard has slimmed down to 318 pounds and is in the best shape of his life. The coaches anticipate a strong battle between him and Brandon Yates for the starting right tackle job. Brown said White, pound for pound, is one of the strongest players on the team, and Johnson has continued to build off his strong spring.
Burks, a 5-foot-11, 201-pound sophomore safety from Oakridge, Florida, has "firmed up his body" and is playing with more confidence and is more under control out on the field, according to Brown.
The coach also indicated senior cornerback Woods has gotten considerably stronger and sophomore outside linebacker Dixon is carrying more weight.
* One personal observation - junior Lee Kpogba looks like a Big 12 mike linebacker. He's listed at 230 pounds on the roster, but he might be closer to 235 or 240.
* Team work this morning was two-spot, meaning two full units were running the same plays simultaneously on the offensive field.
"All 110 that were out there got reps today," Brown said. "I thought our energy was good, our knowledge of what to do was far ahead of what it has been, and I thought we handled the workload in a really good fashion."
* There were four quarterbacks on the practice field this morning and all four got quality reps. Brown said there was some good and bad, as is to be expected.
"They throw on their own during the summer, and the good thing is they get repetitions, but the bad thing is sometimes they are not the exact same repetitions they would get if the staff was out there," he said. "You get a few bad habits, and I think that's where we are at. We were a little bit late on some balls today so we've got to get the ball out. They knew what to do and we operated well, but our timing was not where it needed to be at that position."
* Brown said the overriding goal for preseason camp is finding ways to get better as a football team.
"One way we need to get better is running the football against the upper teams in our league," he admitted. "At times last year, we ran the ball successfully against the middle and the bottom of our league, but we didn't run it very well against the top."
Coach Neal Brown put his team through a workout that lasted approximately an hour and 40 minutes under overcast skies and cooler than normal temperatures for August.
Brown said his team had good energy and its knowledge of what to do and where to go was much farther ahead of where it was at this time last year. He credits a new NCAA rule permitting organized team activities (OTAs), popularized by the NFL.
"This summer was the first summer we could have OTAs, and we were able to hold a number of those," Brown said.
He explained the OTAs are structured in a way that players don't go against each other from a competitive standpoint but rather it's used as a window to teach the players assignments and alignments. The OTAs were done mostly in June and early July before the coaches took their summer vacations.In today's climate, with players transferring so frequently, OTAs give college programs the ability to introduce basic schemes during the summer in a non-competitive, learning environment.
Brown said the two sessions per week in June lasted about 50 minutes each and were made up of fundamental and low-speed installation work on offense, defense and special teams.
Consequently, the team was able to immediately get right into the basic principles of offense, defense and special teams this morning.
"Today, we didn't go out there and say, 'This is where you line up.' The NFL gets a lot of things right. This is something I think you will see staying as long as staffs don't abuse it," Brown said.
OTAs are particularly helpful now that rosters have become so fluid as a result of the transfer portal.
"This is the 130th team in Mountaineer history, and we made a point at the start of the summer to tell our guys, 'This is our team.' That's not the way it used to be," Brown explained. "It used to be you turn the page in January and this is our team. You might add some freshmen and they may or may not be in the mix in the summer.
"But in the spring, we were really clear with our group that there were going to be a bunch of players added to the mix," Brown continued. "When we got to the summer, we were like, 'Hey, this is team 130. This is the team now.' When we started on Memorial Day, this is who we had."
Brown said the offseason is basically broken down into three different sections – the winter phase, the spring phase and the summer phase.
"We have a winter phase that goes for eight weeks and the first four weeks is really all strength and conditioning. We have spring ball, which is five weeks, and then the guys get a break during May, which is needed," Brown said. "Then, we come back and have eight weeks in the summer, which lasts nine weeks."
Brown said his team will have 12 practices before the start of the fall semester on Aug. 17, but the team will remain in camp mode until Thursday, Aug. 25, one week before the season opener at Pitt. Therefore, the team will have its major scrimmages on Thursdays to line up with the Thursday night season opener.
"How we've set up our camp is we never practice hard more than three days in a row," Brown explained. "We want to do a buildup. We have practices that are low, moderate and high, and we have to build up to those high levels. We want to be on a path where we play our fastest and be our most fresh on Sept. 1."
Practice work resumes on Tuesday morning.
Briefly:
* Brown said Monday his team's scholarship number is at 81 right now, and they will keep their eyes open in case a player pops up in the transfer portal at an area of need. "We're not closed," he said.
* Tight end Will Dixon, who reclassified to the 2022 class, was on the field practicing this morning, according to Brown. He is a 6-foot-5, 230-pound freshman from Blair Academy in Hillsborough, New Jersey. Safety Saint McLeod is not with the team.
* Quarterback Will Crowder was a little bit under the weather today and sat out this morning's practice, according to Brown. Tight end Mike O'Laughlin was excused from practice work this morning to complete some class work on his MBA. Brown said when he returns he will still be limited but is "cautiously optimistic" of his progress. Outside linebacker Exree Loe, who is still recovering from last year's knee injury sustained in the Kansas State game, practiced this morning in a limited capacity.
"I wouldn't say he is full speed yet, but he's getting close," Brown said.
* Veteran strength and conditioning coach Mike Joseph has been pretty pleased with the work put forth by his players this summer. A number have improved their body compositions since last season.
"Talking to Mike, he really feels this has been a successful summer, and this isn't something he just says every year either," Brown noted. "This is the first time in my four years he came to me and said, mentally and physically, he feels really good about where our guys are."
Guys Brown singled out for their summer work include wide receiver Kaden Prather, offensive tackle Ja'Quay Hubbard, running back Justin Johnson Jr., offensive guard Jordan White, defensive backs Aubrey Burks and Charles Woods and linebacker Lance Dixon.
"Some time over the summer, it clicked for Kaden. He understood what it took from a nutrition standpoint, a strength and conditioning standpoint, and I thought he did a really nice job today for day one. His body looks better," Brown said.
Hubbard has slimmed down to 318 pounds and is in the best shape of his life. The coaches anticipate a strong battle between him and Brandon Yates for the starting right tackle job. Brown said White, pound for pound, is one of the strongest players on the team, and Johnson has continued to build off his strong spring.
Burks, a 5-foot-11, 201-pound sophomore safety from Oakridge, Florida, has "firmed up his body" and is playing with more confidence and is more under control out on the field, according to Brown.
The coach also indicated senior cornerback Woods has gotten considerably stronger and sophomore outside linebacker Dixon is carrying more weight.
* One personal observation - junior Lee Kpogba looks like a Big 12 mike linebacker. He's listed at 230 pounds on the roster, but he might be closer to 235 or 240.
* Team work this morning was two-spot, meaning two full units were running the same plays simultaneously on the offensive field.
"All 110 that were out there got reps today," Brown said. "I thought our energy was good, our knowledge of what to do was far ahead of what it has been, and I thought we handled the workload in a really good fashion."
* There were four quarterbacks on the practice field this morning and all four got quality reps. Brown said there was some good and bad, as is to be expected.
"They throw on their own during the summer, and the good thing is they get repetitions, but the bad thing is sometimes they are not the exact same repetitions they would get if the staff was out there," he said. "You get a few bad habits, and I think that's where we are at. We were a little bit late on some balls today so we've got to get the ball out. They knew what to do and we operated well, but our timing was not where it needed to be at that position."
* Brown said the overriding goal for preseason camp is finding ways to get better as a football team.
"One way we need to get better is running the football against the upper teams in our league," he admitted. "At times last year, we ran the ball successfully against the middle and the bottom of our league, but we didn't run it very well against the top."
Players Mentioned
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WR
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CB
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OL
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