By Bob Hertzel
MORGANTOWN — When this season started, everyone knew about South Florida defensive end George Selvie, a pass-rushing machine who had bypassed a chance to go to the NFL last year to return for another season of harassing Big East quarterbacks.
What they didn’t know was that he was coming back to join up with a player equally as special, bigger and just as quick, named Jason Pierre-Paul, to come from the other side of the line.
Ask Selvish Capers, West Virginia University’s right offensive tackle who will be paired up most of the time with Pierre-Paul, about the 6-6 junior from Haiti with 81-inch wing span, and this is what you hear.
“He’s active. He goes hard to the whistle. He has quick hands and feet,” Capers said, then thought about it for a moment, and added, “He’s like a motor. I’ve got to be the brakes.”
Make no doubt that Selvie and Pierre-Paul present formidable problems for the offense.
This is especially true for quarterback Jarrett Brown, who has spent far too much time running for his life against pass rushers far less accomplished than these two. In fact, were it not for this special talent Brown seems to have to make a pass rusher miss, escaping so that he can either run or throw on the run, WVU would not be looking at a 6-1 record when it goes into South Florida’s Raymond James Stadium on Friday night.
You ask Brown the secret to making the first man miss and he smiles sheepishly, then says:
“It ain’t no secret. You just react to danger,” he said. “All I can do is worry about myself and let those guys take care of what they do up front.”
Coach Bill Stewart has spent a good deal of time marveling at Brown’s ability to escape, especially when a Connecticut team threw caution to the wind in an all-out blitzathon. But it wasn’t the first time Brown was blitzed, nor will it be the last.
“Remember the Auburn and East Carolina games, Jarrett got loose, and Colorado, on the first play of the game, he escaped the blitz,” Stewart said. “He just makes you miss, and I hope and pray he can do that down there. If he does, he is a big man that can track and cover a lot of ground.”
The blitzing won’t stop.
“It’s kind of annoying,” Capers said, as if he were readying himself to swat away a fly.
This is different from other teams, however, because Selvie and Pierre-Paul can cause as much havoc by themselves as an all-out blitz. It’s not something Brown wants to think about.
“I don’t want to talk about the rush. That will throw my whole game off as a quarterback. I want to go through my reads and make my protection calls,” he said.
And then it’s up to Capers and his left tackle partner Don Barclay, who will spend his Friday night battling Selvie for the most part.
“It definitely gets me more hyped up, more focused,” Barclay admitted. “I like that kind of challenge. Why not? You came here to play against this kind of player.”
There are, of course, things you can do against players like Selvie and Pierre-Paul to neutralize them.
You can run draws or screens, you go out of the I more than the spread, utilizing a fullback and a tight end to help protect. You can throw quick passes that are gotten off before they can cause havoc in the passing game.
And, of course, you can give the ball to Noel Devine, who is running red hot at present.
“You’d like to say you’re going to run away from one of them, but there’s the other guy on the other side,” said offensive coordinator Jeff Mullen.
Mullen says the one thing he can’t allow these two skilled defensive ends to do is change the philosophy of the offense.
“We will never change who we are. Certainly we will adapt to matchups; that’s what college football has become,” he said.
“We are going to give them the full gamut, and do what we do,” Stewart added. “We have to run at them. You cannot play on your heels. That is what people do that have success, they come after them. We need to be aggressive, go out there and play Mountaineer football.”
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
