— By Bill Cornwell
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — Marshall football coach Charles Huff has worked at some high-profile programs around the country, including Alabama and Mississippi State.
Nearly a week into his team’s fall drills in Huntington, Huff believes he’s seeing a standard of preparation seen at earlier stops in his career.
“I’ve seen that type of practice before, but I’ve never seen it here,” Huff said. “When I saw this type of work at Alabama, you saw it day after day and now our guys are learning what it means to practice the right Veteran leaders on both sides of the ball are driving teammates to make strong improvements daily.
“We’re different on defense because we’re a little more athletic and a little faster than last year,” Huff said. “The offensive line is probably the most improved unit on the team and both lines are competitive. The offensive and defensive lines are calling themselves ‘Jurassic Park’ and there are times that I don’t get near them.”
With early progress made in practices, Huff is hopeful the Herd doesn’t get ahead of itself mentally. Instead, the head coach preaches patience as offensive and defensive schemes are introduced and execution is taught.
“I tell the guys to just improve each day,” Huff said. “Don’t look at where or when a game is, just look at improving each day and we’ve done that.”
Huff and the coaching staff are using a different approach in fall drills this year. In 2022, the staff set weekly goals for workouts, but the approach is almost the opposite in 2023.
“We just want to make overall improvement,” Huff said. “We still have goals and we talk about things in our team meetings at night to kind of build on what we need collectively and culturally for this season, but we just want to keep improving.”
There are position groups on Marshall’s offense and defense not short on depth. Those include the quarterback room, tight ends, linebackers and defensive backs and a revived receiving core that has new faces joining veterans in Talik Keaton, Jayden Harrison and Chuck Montgomery.
“As a receiver, you’ve got to make a play when you get in there or compete a high level or you know the guy behind you is going to do that,” Huff said. “We haven’t always had that and right now we have enough depth in that room that guys can’t get comfortable.”
Marshall practices six days this week, including the first scrimmage of fall workouts Saturday afternoon. That scrimmage is closed to the public.
Albany comes to Huntington for the season opener, which will kickoff at 6 p.m. on September 2.