Today WVU scrimmaged for the first time this spring. The team spirits were not discouraged despite the rain as both the offense and defense were fired up to be going full contact. Besides regular play the team went field goal team live, but no other special teams. Both the offense and defense improve with every practice, but of course there is plenty need for improvement.
Offense: Geno Smith was able to handle to the pace of the no huddle offense well, for it being just spring practice. Adding to the multiple trips formations, in Holgorsen's offense, a shotgun formation with 3 backs was featured multiple times today. The formation usually consisted of a RB and 2 FB's or 1 FB and a TE to go with the RB. Besides Ryan Clarke being at the FB position, redshirt junior, Matt Lindamood saw time at FB with the one's today. Despite being a TE, Tyler Urban is being use a lot and is producing. Urban is able to get open by running routes right down the seam or on the hashes of the field. Everytime Urban ran down the seam he was open and did not drop a pass today. If this continues Urban will cause multiple miss matches come this fall. In the ongoing RB competition, no one really separated themselves,but freshman RB, Vernard Robers threw is name into the competition as he had a 27 yard run, the longest of the day. Roberts, Shawn Austin, Daquan Harqrett and Trey Johnson all saw pt with the first string today. Trey Johnson had the majority of the carries and showed a lot of shiftyness in between the tackles. The WR's continue to enjoy this new spread offense. Tavon Austin had the most catches out of the receiver core and as we saw last year, Austin is dangerous once he gets the ball in space. One surprising stat is the amount of runs Holgorsen called today, the ratio was 40 passes to 34 runs. Somewhat different to his air it out offense at Oklahoma St and Houston University. The offense had two fumbles and one pick on the day
Defense: The defense had a little bit more lumps than the offense. Most notable was CB Keith Tandy. Since the start of spring practice, all of the coaches had been signing the praises of Tandy. That didn't show today as Tandy was beat bad by Ivan McCartney multiple times today. Tandy had 6 int's last year, but has shown inconsistency the past two years, which is not good since Tandy is slated to be the #1 corner this year. Overall as a unit, the defense was flying to the ball on running plays led by senior LB Najee Goode and sophomore LB Doug Rigg. At least 7 defenders were gang tackling the ball carrier all the time. The D continues to have problems stopping the crossing routes form the offense, which is a cause for concern since Marshall, LSU, Cincy and Shittsburgh run spread offenses. Another thing that I've always begged Jeff Casteel to do is blitz more. Once again today, there were a lot of cover 4 and cover 3 sets, but not a lot of blitzing. Usually in a 3 man front defense you blitz more with LB's and nickelbacks to get that pressure on the QB. But they were the #3 defense in the country, last year, so I guess Casteel knows what he is doing. Bruce Irvin continues to be unblockable as he had 2 sacks on the day. Irvin seems to be only playing on the weak side as he and Jorge Wright would be lining up according to the strong and weak sides. The starting defense included Bruce Irvin, Julian Miller, and Jorge Wright on the line. Casey Vance, Najee Goode, and Doug Rigg for the LB core. Travis Bell, Terence Garvin and Darwin Cook were the safeties. And Keith Tandy and Brantwon Bowser at corners. The early read on the D is that it will be nowhere near as good as last year's team, but should be at least a top 50 squad if they can learn to stop the short passing routes.
The team will scrimmage one more time before the Blue-Gold game on April 29.
No comments:
Post a Comment