MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Among his preseason teaching tactics, assistant coach Mark Scott presented West Virginia’s kickoff units a best/worst comparison from 2015.
The good? Shelton Gibson ripping off a 100-yarder at Baylor.
The bad? Kansas State’s Morgan Burns racing 97 yards to deflate the Mountaineers in Manhattan.
“You don’t want to focus on the negative too much,” warned Scott, “but you’ve got to show them why it didn’t work.”
The consequences proved overtly game-changing at K-State—and left WVU fans wondering why Burns was allowed to touch that kick at all—yet Scott says even trivial returns reveal missed opportunities and narrowly avoided catastrophes. It’s all about knowing where to look.
Last season the Mountaineers led the Big 12 and ranked No. 11 nationally in kickoff returns by averaging 25.63 yards.
Their kick coverage unit settled at the opposite end of the list, finishing 108th out of 127 FBS teams at 23.81 yards.
Though the rankings offer a quantifiable comparison, the statistical margins don’t seem very striking. Only 36 teams limited opponents below 20 yards per return, which means WVU could have jumped into the top 40 by shaving off 3 yards per runback. With Mountaineers’ opponents returning about 4.5 kicks per game, that difference of 15 field-position yards per game scarcely would’ve been noticed by casual fans.
Scott isn’t casual about the margins.
His film sessions reinforce the every-man-matters credo, pointing out how a moment’s hesitation can leave a crease, like the one Burns exploited in the regular-season finale. Or the 59-yarder Arizona State’s Tim White produced in the Cactus Bowl.
Even where West Virginia returners prospered last season, Scott spotted numerous near-misses for more explosive plays.
“We’re one block away, or a returner reading the return right, from potentially getting huge returns on six, seven or eight other kicks,” he said.
“So we show our guys that if we have one breakdown, we’re backed up inside the 20. Whereas if you finish your block, we’ve got a returner on the kicker.”
Kickoffs on closeout?
After recent news that college football might soon eliminate kickoffs, West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen suggests the change is inevitable.
An NCAA oversight panel and the American Football Coaches Association are compiling injury data to evaluate whether kickoffs—with their high-velocity smashups—are disproportionately perilous to player safety.
“There’s a lot of talk with our sport being in trouble because of concussions, and a lot of talk of reducing practice time from a contact perspective,” Holgorsen said.
“The less practice time we have, the less time we can teach how to do things right. So something’s got to go, and the first thing that’s going to go is the kickoff team. I think it’s only a matter of time.”
This would no doubt upset traditionalists who have long scoffed at the so-called wussification of the sport, along with removing an exciting component for special-teams coaches like Scott.
“Selfishly, I hope kickoffs stay in the game, otherwise it diminishes my role a little bit,” he joked. “But, with the way player safety rules are changing, that may be the next phase of it. You’ve already got guys in the NFL calling to get it taken out.”
Even if kickoffs disappear, a move that’s unlikely to occur before the 2018 season, NCAA rules-makers must accommodate for the strategic consequences, such as how to stage onside kicks.
“Yeah, there’s a lot of things tied to it,” Holgorsen said. “A lot of things that they would need to figure out.”