LANDOVER, Md. — This past Thursday night the Green Bay Packers pulled off as slick a fake field goal for a touchdown as you’ll ever witness, and the key block in the play was thrown by one Don Barclay, a rather sizeable young man who once knocked people over as an amateur with the West Virginia University Mountaineers.

Before Barclay left WVU after last season, the Mountaineers really had a rough time blocking people dressed in shoulder pads and plastic hats, a condition that lasted all the way until the Orange Bowl, when some mystical epiphany took place.

It was so bad, in fact, that looking back on it, Jeff Braun, who today serves as a body guard for quarterback Geno Smith when he’s not burying defenders trying to tackle Shawne Alston when he has the football, described it this way:

“The beginning point had to be the Orange Bowl because before that those few games — Pitt, Cincinnati, South Florida — as an offensive line, we did not play well. I can say that because I did not play well.”

Ah, but in the Orange Bowl, the offensive line seemed to grow from a tiny sapling into a giant oak tree, standing tall and strong as the WVU offense put 70 points on a Clemson team that really never knew what hit it.

Until then, those men who made up the O-line had been ridden rather hard by the media and the fans, people who felt WVU had underachieved but didn’t quite understand how long it takes for an offense to come together and how fragile it is to have the right people in the right places.

It wasn’t easy for these behemoths to take, but there it was out there in the newspapers, on the television and on the radio talk shows.

“You hear it. At this level, you are going to hear it. At this level, you just have to take it for what it’s worth,” Braun would admit.

And when you hear it there are only two ways you can react.

“You have to go out there and make yourself better. It’s either going to make you or break you. Are you going to get better from the criticism, or are you just going to shut yourself down? We took and ran with it,” Braun said.

Indeed they did, and their position coach, Bill Bedenbaugh, noticed it happening.

True, it took some changes to make it happen. Braun was moved from left guard to right guard as the veteran leader Josh Jenkins, out the previous season with knee surgery, returned for his final year, and Quinton Spain’s sizeable talents grew to match his sizeable body at left tackle.

“I told the guys we had 29 practices before the first game and none of them were bad,” Bedenbaugh said in the week off following a 69-34 victory over Marshall in an opener that proved to be a showcase for the offensive line. “Some were better than others, but none bad and I’ve never had that happen to me. I felt confident going into the first game.”

What came out of it all was the belief the Orange Bowl was no fluke, instead an indication of things to come.

“It’s was huge,” said Braun. “We’ve been through some of the lowest lows around here. There was a lot of expectations between the Fiesta Bowl and the Sugar Bowl. I got recruited between all that. It was good to be there and be able to build everything up and set a new standard.”

And that new standard was met in the opener, especially by Braun, whose play certainly had reached high gear for, even before he saw the film, coach Dana Holgorsen had offered high praise for his performance.

Now Braun, Jenkins and center Joey Madsen, the seniors who joined by Spain and Pat Eger, had confidence to move forward.

All of a sudden they can dream of joining Barclay in the NFL, just as, perhaps, some in the NFL are beginning to dream about when they can get Spain to join them once he gets beyond this sophomore season.

“I always talk about ‘Planet of the Apes’ with Spain,” said center Madsen. “You know in ‘Planet of the Apes’ how they would beat people up? Well people come off from the side with Spain and try dip under him, and he just crushes them with that big body. It’s hilarious.”

“He played physical,” Bedenbaugh added. “He’s a big, athletic guy who, when he plays up to his potential and plays nasty, he’s pretty good. He’s so athletic; he’s so massive; he’s so strong; he throws guys around.”

Test No. 2 comes today against a solid FCS team in in James Madison, and rest assured, the NFL scouts will be there looking not only at Geno Smith and Tavon Austin.

Email Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com or follow him on Twitter @bhertzel.