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A New Holgorsen This Season

GoldRusher

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Ok, been a few days so I dont think Mike would mind sharing a little of his "VIP" pre season stuff over at EERSPORTS since he joined so here goes:


The mythology of Dana Holgorsen’s offense took a detour in 2016. For the first time in his six seasons as West Virginia's head coach, Holgorsen didn’t run the ball more often than he did the year before.

The again, he did throw it fewer times than ever before.

Somewhere in between those two extremes is the truth about Holgorsen as he readies for his seventh season in charge, one that begins when players report for their first team meeting Saturday and practice for the first time Sunday.

Holgorsen isn’t one or the other. He’s both because he’s the sum of his experiences, from his playing days at Iowa Wesleyan and his infant days as an assistant at Valdosta State to his time with Mike Leach at Texas Tech and his current role as the black sheep of the fraternal order of Air Raid coaches.

“He’s one of the initial members,” said Texas Tech coach and play card-carrying member Kliff Kingsbury. “He’s always going to be in it. He put up some big numbers early on.”

Holgorsen did that at Texas Tech with Leach, at Houston for Kevin Sumlin, at Oklahoma State for Mike Gundy and then at WVU, where the Mountaineers won the Orange Bowl in his first season. That was a 10-win season. So, too, was 2016. Holgorsen went about it in different ways.



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(Photo: Mike Casazza)


The 2011 Mountaineers ran the ball just 43.5 percent of the time. The 2016 Mountaineers ran on 58.4 percent of their snaps. The former averaged 3.8 yards per carry. The latter averaged 5.2 yards per carry. Holgorsen ran the ball more often in 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015, and though he stepped back last season from 59.2 percent in 2015, he also had more yards, yards per carry and yards per game last season than ever before.

“I learned some good stuff at Oklahoma State and Houston, too, with Sumlin,” Holgorsen said. “One thing we didn’t do at Tech, we didn’t run the ball at all. But at Houston, a lot of the stuff we did was up-tempo with motion and stuff like that. Then we kind of got that stuff going at Oklahoma State a little bit more, and I give Gundy a lot of credit for that.”

Holgorsen was paired there with offensive line coach Joe Wickline, who is entering his second season with the Mountaineers. Together, they created the three-back diamond formation, and that took Kendall Hunter to 1,548 yards and 16 touchdowns. Holgorsen was then off to WVU.

“We took some from that, and then Ron Crook, give him a lot of credit four years ago coming in here and developing a mentality with our offensive line, a lot of gap schemes and Stanford type stuff,” Holgorsen said. “It doesn’t happen overnight. You can’t just make a decision that you want to run the ball overnight. It’s going to take some time. It took us a couple of years before we got good at it, and I think we continue to improve that.”

It’s a departure from his beginnings, when he learned the Air Raid offense as a receiver at Iowa Wesleyan under Hal Mumme.

“He’s the godfather,” Holgorsen said. “Leach was the catalyst.”

Consider the company Holgorsen kept when he was at Texas Tech from 2000-07. Leach, Holgorsen, Art Briles, Sonny Dykes and Seth Littrell coached. Kingsbury, Sonny Cumbie and Lincoln Riley played.

“That tree is pretty big from the early 2000s,” Holgorsen said. “Nobody was doing that, so there’s a pretty strong fraternity there, and everyone’s branching out and doing it on his own.”

Holgorsen is the outlier, though, and Mumme has let him know about it.

“Hal did come to the Baylor game (last season), which was Game 12, and we couldn’t throw the ball at all in that game,” Holgorsen said. “He goes, “I really don’t want to kick you out, but I’m going to have to kick you out.’”

Holgorsen reminded his mentor that WVU won despite completing 10 of 26 passes for 111 yards.

“He goes, ‘That’s why we’re here right now,’” Holgorsen said. “Even though he’d like to kick me out of the Air Raid, he’s still at my house, still watching the game, still having a cold one, because we ran the ball.”

Author
Mike Casazza
 

bbwvfan

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Yours truly has often praised Dana for transforming his offense. While some fans thought the move to running the ball more as some sign he understood what WVU football was all about... pounding the rock and tough defense, I actually thought it might be deeper than that.

Obviously, there has been a boom in Air Raid offenses installed throughout the country. We all know their dominance in the Big 12. DC's aren't idiots, they will find the weakness of the scheme and exploit.

At WVU, we certainly can appreciate this fact as our Air Raid was not as proficient as others in our new conference. IMO, this all came down to our OL's inability to protect the QB in passing situations.

I truly believe Dana is a genius. As HC, he needed to find a way to compete against schools who annually recruit better players coming out of high school. He had to analyze the weaknesses of defenses his offense would face. Big 12 defenses are built to defend the passing game. Smaller... faster... more athletic bodies are put out there on defenses throughout the conference. They're built to rush the QB... built to attack in the secondary. They're not big in the middle... not big at LB.

Big 12 defenses were not built to defend power football. Defenders don't want to have an OL pushing forward... they don't want to take the pounding for 60 minutes.

Why in the world would Dana go out and hire a guy like Crook if he didn't have a plan?

Fortunately, we get to watch the brilliance of such a move in just a few weeks...
 

Slaton10

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Yours truly has often praised Dana for transforming his offense. While some fans thought the move to running the ball more as some sign he understood what WVU football was all about... pounding the rock and tough defense, I actually thought it might be deeper than that.

Obviously, there has been a boom in Air Raid offenses installed throughout the country. We all know their dominance in the Big 12. DC's aren't idiots, they will find the weakness of the scheme and exploit.

At WVU, we certainly can appreciate this fact as our Air Raid was not as proficient as others in our new conference. IMO, this all came down to our OL's inability to protect the QB in passing situations.

I truly believe Dana is a genius. As HC, he needed to find a way to compete against schools who annually recruit better players coming out of high school. He had to analyze the weaknesses of defenses his offense would face. Big 12 defenses are built to defend the passing game. Smaller... faster... more athletic bodies are put out there on defenses throughout the conference. They're built to rush the QB... built to attack in the secondary. They're not big in the middle... not big at LB.

Big 12 defenses were not built to defend power football. Defenders don't want to have an OL pushing forward... they don't want to take the pounding for 60 minutes.

Why in the world would Dana go out and hire a guy like Crook if he didn't have a plan?

Fortunately, we get to watch the brilliance of such a move in just a few weeks...


For some reason he has caught on a little faster than his Big12 peers outside of Charlie Strong..and maybe Stoops..Big12 defenses got lean and fast...if you put an over sized offensive line up against them they will fold more times than not..I think he saw the evidence of that as they finally wore down KSU...and it could be that he was forced into expanding what he had done before because of the average ability of QB he had to work with over the past few seasons...it will be interesting to see just how much Grier can stretch the playbook now...
 

bbwvfan

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I will be interested to see how tough Grier is this fall. He will take a pounding, so how will he handle it? Geno didn't handle pressure from the rush very well... couldn't handle the zone blitzing scheme from SU for god's sake.

Grier loves to stay in the pocket. Dana is excited to see how going back to having a pocket passer will go with Grier there. Once Grier has his head nearly knocked off a time or two... how much trust will he have in his OL after this happens?

Even HOF QB's like Brady... Manning... Rodgers... look like shit when facing a steady stream of pressure.
 

Slaton10

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I will be interested to see how tough Grier is this fall. He will take a pounding, so how will he handle it? Geno didn't handle pressure from the rush very well... couldn't handle the zone blitzing scheme from SU for god's sake.

Grier loves to stay in the pocket. Dana is excited to see how going back to having a pocket passer will go with Grier there. Once Grier has his head nearly knocked off a time or two... how much trust will he have in his OL after this happens?

Even HOF QB's like Brady... Manning... Rodgers... look like shit when facing a steady stream of pressure.

Not sure I lump Rodgers into with the other two..Rodgers is at his best when in scramble mode...

I think Grier has better wheels than you think...his HS numbers...

2,955 career rushing yards and 31 rushing scores

Looks like he is about a 4.6 40 guy...that's enough to make a defense play honest.
 

bbwvfan

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Not sure I lump Rodgers into with the other two..Rodgers is at his best when in scramble mode...

I think Grier has better wheels than you think...his HS numbers...

2,955 career rushing yards and 31 rushing scores

Looks like he is about a 4.6 40 guy...that's enough to make a defense play honest.

No doubt, Rodgers can scramble and keep a play alive. Grier will be forced into similar situations. You make a great point... I probably shouldn't have used him.

Grier played in a middle of the pack high school division. Not sure his competition was worthy of note.

With only 2 QB's this fall, I can't imagine he'll rush much unless it's in a scramble situation.
 
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Slaton10

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No doubt, Rodgers can scramble and keep a play alive. Grier will be forced into similar situations. You make a great point... I probably shouldn't have used him.

Grier played in a middle of the pack high school division. Not sure his competition was worthy of note.

With only 2 QB's this fall, I can't imagine he'll rush much unless it's in a scramble situation.

Really excited to see how the backfield performs..I think when it's all said and done what #25, #4 and #32 put up this year could perhaps break Wv all time rushing season..one thing I left out of the other post..Dana's style looks something in between Rich's and Sumlin's offense...I like that combo.
 

bbwvfan

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I love our RB's... different styles... different skill sets. I hope they all can stay healthy!

I am hopeful our WR Corps can have a good year. Have some real inconsistency issues there for the returners, and a bunch of young... inexperienced kids with a ton of potential.
 

Slaton10

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I love our RB's... different styles... different skill sets. I hope they all can stay healthy!

I am hopeful our WR Corps can have a good year. Have some real inconsistency issues there for the returners, and a bunch of young... inexperienced kids with a ton of potential.

Was looking at their depth chart ..not sure how this team is picked in the middle of the pack...they stay healthy they could have a monster year..
 

GoldRusher

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Was looking at their depth chart ..not sure how this team is picked in the middle of the pack...they stay healthy they could have a monster year..

Looks like Dana might agree with you:



"Look at all the projections out there, we’re supposed to stink," said Holgorsen. "I think we’re in a pretty good spot. I think our depth is pretty good. Putting together our special teams stuff, we got a lot to choose from. Our depth is really good. We’ve built this team to the point that our second team guys look just like our first team guys."
 

WVUDAD

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WVU picked to be lousy is usually a good thing!!! Historically we seem to always be better as underdogs, so it MAY just turn out to be a good season
 

Slaton10

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WVU picked to be lousy is usually a good thing!!! Historically we seem to always be better as underdogs, so it MAY just turn out to be a good season

Just like how their schedule sets up...they beat the Hokies that first weekend, they could be unbeaten by the time they head to Baylor..then come home to Okie State and then try and win a tough one in Manhattan...thenit gets interesting
 

bbwvfan

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We will be ready for our local troll to call out the HC if WVU has another late season collapse this year... right?

LOL!!
 

WVUDAD

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We will be ready for our local troll to call out the HC if WVU has another late season collapse this year... right?

LOL!!
Dad talks about WVU sports, BBW talks about dad, you want to rethink who is the troll?
 

bbwvfan

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Dad talks about WVU sports, BBW talks about dad, you want to rethink who is the troll?

No... we're all good. I've admitted to trolling you.

I'm just prepping the board for what we know will happen if the scenario plays out as I painted...

Equally part of the message board experience is dealing with the posters who participate.
 

Anotherwvufan

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#20 in the preseason coaches poll. Getting a bit of respect with new QB and few returning starters on Defense.

The Big 12 has half the conference ranked this year. Not bad for a start
 

bbwvfan

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You know WVU never gets any national respect.

And, the Big 12 is the weakest of all the P5 conferences. The Big 12 deserves no respect as well.
 
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