With West Virginia’s season opener against Penn State on Aug. 31 rapidly approaching, the Mountaineers are taking it up a notch this week.
WVU is in its second full week of fall camp and head coach Neal Brown is starting to narrow down who will play. Fall camp runs through Aug. 21 with scrimmages and practices helping the Mountaineers prepare for the season.
“I think this week, it’s a big prove it week,” Brown said Monday. “This is the hardest week, that we’ll have this season. It’s the most physical week we’re going to have this season and can we do hard things better.”
By challenging his players, Brown is looking at who is willing to step up as a player and as a leader. At about the midpoint of their fall camp, players will be tested, with some rising above.
“Who can we count on, who are the newcomers that are going to play, who are the guys that are kind of stepping up from maybe a backup or a special teams guy, now they’re going to step to the forefront, can we count on them? Prove it this week,” Brown said.” Who our go-to guys going to be, like who are we going to call a blitz for? Who are we calling a line movement for to create a play on the defensive line? Like who can we count on to play some man coverage? Who can we count on? Offense, who we going to call plays to who are we trying to get the ball to on third down? Like who are we trying to get touches to? Who can we run behind? You know who are the leaders on the team?”
With a hard week of practice ahead, Brown and staff are attempting to make their players stronger both mentally and physically. Players will be expected to give it all they got and essentially ‘prove it’.
“We had a nice cool day today (Monday). I wish it was 95 (degrees), you know I wish we can make it as as hard as possible because I think that’s when the leadership really shows up. And so it’s a prove-it week. It’s the second week of camp everybody in the country is going through the same thing. How can WE do it better than the people we got to play and so that’s the question,” Brown said.
