Brown's Back
Jarrett Brown showed everyone Monday afternoon that he is still a pretty good passer for being a backup guard on the basketball team. Actually, Brown returned to his day job at Milan Puskar Stadium for the first time this spring, letting loose a couple of missiles that had everyone oohing and ahhing.
“I told the defense look out guys because the gun-slinger is back in town,” said West Virginia coach Bill Stewart. “Did you see him throw those nice balls, particularly over the middle? He was challenging our safeties a little bit.”
Brown spent the entire second semester with the basketball team up until their NCAA Tournament regional semifinal loss to Xavier last Thursday night in Phoenix. Of course Brown did so with Stewart’s blessing.
“Last night in the team meeting I welcomed him back and I said, ‘Hey, I saw you on TV’ and they all laughed – they thought that was pretty good,” Stewart said.
Although the basic concepts of the offense have remained the same, the terminology is vastly different and Brown is going to have to spend some time on his own this spring catching up with the rest of his teammates.
“We talked a lot last night about Jarrett as a staff because we’re going to have to throw him in there,” Stewart said. “As you see some of the other quarterbacks are helping him with the terminology. He’ll have to cram - which we have three weeks to cram before the Gold-Blue Game on the 19th of April - so Jarrett is going to have to spend some time on his own without coaches looking at film and studying the playbook.”
Brown may still be getting used to Coach Jeff Mullen’s new offensive terms, but it certainly didn’t affect his right arm. Brown unloaded a couple of tight laser beams 25 yards down the field that were right on target.
“We haven’t been getting the ball on the deep-zone throws,” Stewart said. “We’re trying to get the ball down the field in the middle of the field as everyone has been harping on us to throw it down the middle like we did in the bowl game a little bit.
“When they go cover three there are deep seams in the back and we have not been attacking that area and I was really, really pleased to see Jarrett get in there and throw those,” Stewart said. “Pat (White) went in and had a couple of nice throws, too.”
Stewart says the plan at times will be to have both Brown and White in the game at the same time. The two are just too good to have one standing on the sideline the entire game watching the other play.
“You’re going to see Jarrett Brown on the field. Now I’m not going to tell you where he’s going to be,” Stewart said. “And if he’s at quarterback you may not know where Pat’s going to be. But we have a great plan for both Jarrett and Patrick to be on the field together.”
Stewart mentioned that there have been subtle changes in the passing game designed to keep defenses from selling out entirely to stop the running game like Pitt did against the Mountaineers in last year’s 13-9 loss.
“It’s really the same stuff but there is a lot of window dressing with our motion and movement that is new,” Stewart said. “The flood routes we’re doing; getting the ball out on the flanks with the blockers. We’re doing bubble screens with (Jock) Sanders and it’s like we’ve got trucks out there blocking for him. It’s a new screen offense and schematically a flooding zone new offense.”
West Virginia is also working on attacking defenses down the middle of the field past the linebackers and between the safeties.
“Our passing we’ve taken it up a few levels which we had to. That hole we were hitting today with our offense, that’s a hard place to get the ball and that’s what you see the great passing teams in the NFL do,” Stewart explained. “At Louisville with Brian Brohm, they hit that ball in the deep hole in front of the safety and behind the backers. We have not gotten into that area in years and we’ve got to get the ball in that area to be successful. That’s some of the new stuff we’re doing.”
Briefly:
# West Virginia strength and conditioning coach Mike Joseph had a little surprise in store for the team on Monday. Before practice he had them running 80-yard sprints after having the week off for spring break.
“We started practice and kind of shell-shocked them a little bit,” Stewart said. “A bunch of them went home and ate well – and that’s OK, it’s wonderful to go home and eat, particularly during the holy week. But you can spend too much time on the couch eating momma’s and grand momma’s cooking too much and we just kind of had them come back and set a little tempo.
“We wanted to strain them a little bit and make them play when they’re tired. It was a curveball and it was intended to be a curveball and they handled it in fine fashion so I was really pleased,” Stewart said.
# Other Stewart observations following Monday’s practice:
“It’s good to see that the guys are learning concepts. We did a two-minute drill and that was not very good for the offense. The defense just got after them and it looked like me out there trying to play,” he said. “Practice far and large was good because we did the wind sprints, we did some kicking and stressed them out and then went into some individual work.
“The pass skelly I thought was very even, maybe the offense had a little bit of the upper hand in the pass skelly. The team went a lot crisper than I thought it would,” Stewart said.
# The team has Tuesday off and will be in full pads on Wednesday. Stewart said the Mountaineers will begin the Wednesday workout with Oklahoma drills and will also work on some open field tackling. After another off day on Thursday the team will be in shells on Friday in preparation for Saturday’s first full-scale scrimmage. Several hundred coaches are expected to be on campus this weekend taking part in the annual West Virginia coaches’ clinic.
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