MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Many years ago, West Virginia once had a quarterback who played so poorly in games that Mountaineer fans used to compare him to Billy Graham.

As the story goes, the quarterback and the famous American evangelist were the only two people who could make a stadium full of West Virginians stand up and cry, "Good Lord!"

Last year's Mountaineer secondary could have qualified for the comparison, too, because it was so bad.

How bad?

Safety Jordan Walker, who played college ball last year at Chattanooga, some 500 miles away from Morgantown, heard about them when he began meeting Mountaineer fans last January after transferring here for his final season of eligibility.

He made the mistake of telling them that he is a defensive back.

"I wasn't aware until I got here," he said recently, chuckling. "People in this town are very highly involved in WVU football, so I would go around to certain places in town, and they would ask me what position I played, and I'd tell them DB, and they would kind of get to talking a little bit."

One can only imagine.

Like how times they saw wide receivers running wide open, or how 50-50 balls always seemed to wind up in the other guy's arms, or how passes into triple coverage managed to get completed, or how they would take a quick bathroom break and return to the sight of the other team in the end zone celebrating another touchdown on their big-screen TVs?

How did they score so fast?

Nineteen times last year, the secondary gave up pass plays covering distances of 40 yards or longer - nine of those going for touchdowns. Pass breakups and interceptions happened so infrequently that they were a cause for celebration.

There were 134 teams playing FBS football last year and all but six of them were more efficient than West Virginia's secondary. The Mountaineers ranked 118^th in overall pass defense, 118^th in interceptions, 117^th in turnovers gained and 111^th in turnover margin.

Third downs were converted nearly half the time, making West Virginia's defense the fourth-worst in the country at getting off the field.

There's more that can be told, but at some point, it just becomes piling on.

Therefore, one can only imagine what Walker and the other new guys in the secondary brought in after last season heard from disappointed Mountaineer fans. Any improvement the secondary makes this season will be viewed favorably.

In Walker, the Mountaineers are getting an experienced field safety who has played 43 career college football games, starting 33 of them.

He started all 12 games last year at safety for the Mocs, earning second team All-Southern Conference honors, and his four-year career there included 147 total tackles, nine tackles for loss, nine pass breakups and four interceptions.

The 6-foot, 190-pounder didn't make an interception last year because he wasn't picked on much. So far, the Lafayette, Alabama, resident indicates the jump up to power conference football has been basically what he expected. 

"I won't say it's been a huge difference for me because I've got a lot of snaps under my belt and a lot of experience," he admits. "My main adjustment was getting the playbook down and playing at the same speed I have always been playing at.

"You've got a couple better athletes, skill-wise, on this level, and some bigger players on the line of scrimmage," he adds, "but other than that, it's the game of football and football is football."

What has been different for him are the schemes he's been required to learn in new coach Zac Alley's multiple Mountaineer defense. 

It's forced him to spend a considerable amount of time studying it.

"Coach Alley is a smart defensive coordinator; a genius," Walker explained. "He's got a lot of different things he likes to throw at people. At my old school, it was more about being simple and going out there and out-executing (opponents). Here, it's a deeper playbook with more options.

"It's a little challenging (to learn), but once you get it down it's fun," he noted. "Coach Alley is going to put you in the best position to make plays. If you love the game, you are going to go home and study as hard as you can to try and get the plays down so you can go out there and be yourself."

Walker is confident this year's defense is going to perform better than last year's because of the amount of time and effort they have put forth so far.

He explains.

"For one, just having conversations with coach Alley, he's just giving me the why behind everything that he does and him just sitting down and breaking everything down and you can see that it's going to work," he said. "You've just got to go out there and execute it at a high level. He's going to put you in a position to make plays, and he kind of takes the thinking off of us a little bit with having such a thick playbook by just telling us where we need to be to make the play."

Walker's football background includes once playing quarterback at Lafayette High in Lafayette, Alabama, about 20 minutes from Auburn's campus. He said he grew up watching the Alabama-Auburn rivalry, and he took sides with the Tigers because he lived so close to the school.

"Growing up in Alabama, you know the rivalry between Auburn and Alabama, and you are either on the Auburn side or the Alabama side, and I was on the Auburn side," he explained. "Growing up and not being able to play for those schools, I won't say it had like a big impact on me, but growing up and you go to the games, and you say to yourself, 'Yeah, I want to go here one day.' But I was just happy to be able to go to school for free."

Coming to West Virginia to play for Rich Rodriguez and Zac Alley in the Big 12 Conference is probably the next best thing for an Alabama kid.

Walker said those two made a big impression on him after getting to know them better on his official campus visit last winter.

"When I came on my visit and sat down and talked to them, I saw what their vision was for this program, and I saw how coach Rodriguez cares about ball," he said. "He wants you to go out there and play hard, fast and physical. He likes to win, and I like to win as well. That had a big factor on me coming here. 

"Then, coach Alley, just knowing what type of defensive coordinator he is and how versatile he is, I wanted to expand my game a little more and be more versatile on the field," he observed. "Being in coach Alley's defense will help me do that."

Walker isn't into making predictions, but he does believe enough talent has been assembled in the secondary this year to make a difference. 

There will be many new names and coaches for Mountaineer fans to learn.

"We've got a great back end. Keep an eye on everybody," he said. "We've got a lot of competition going on back there, and it's going to be exciting.

"One thing about this group we have now, we've got some ballers here and a good amount of experienced guys that have also been playing for a while," he noted. "We've got some players out there who can learn the game fast and go out there and play fast. 

"Every day people are getting better, even if a person wasn't coming along, they are coming along now because they see that we've got a lot of talent in the defensive back room and everybody wants to play. Everybody has been picking up their game and matching the man in front of them," Walker concluded.

Perhaps this year, that stadium full of Mountaineers can stand up and say something positive about the secondary when it makes a play – or prevents the other team from making them.

At least that's the hope.

West Virginia had its final practice this morning in shells before the start of classes for the fall semester on Wednesday. No media is scheduled for this week and the next opportunity for Mountaineer fans to listen to Rodriguez will be on his weekly radio show at Kegler's beginning Monday night, Aug. 25.

His weekly news conference starts on Tuesday, Aug. 26, at noon in the Milan Puskar Center team room.