ESPN Big East Blog

Posted by ESPN.com's Brian Bennett

Imagine if you were given the keys to FAO Schwartz as a 10-year-old and told to go nuts. That's a little bit like the situation Jeff Mullen is in. He was hired in the offseason to become West Virginia's offensive coordinator, which means he gets to draw up plays for Pat White and Noel Devine. I caught up with the former Wake Forest quarterbacks coach on Wednesday night, and here's what he had to say:

What's it like to step into a place with so much talent already on hand?

Jeff Mullen: It's difficult, because you want to get a system in place, but you don't want it to be one that confuses anybody. We had to change what we're doing schematically in order to call plays during the game. It's a system that I was taught by some very smart people long ago, and it served us well at Ohio U. and at Wake Forest. So it's difficult to come in and know you have great players, but you've got to teach the system and make sure they understand it.

The thing I was blessed with was, they're not only great players, but they're really smart kids. That doesn't get talked enough about, you know, Noel Devine and Pat White, how quickly they pick up the nuances of a system. So I'm very, very lucky, as a first-year coordinator, to not only have that kind of talent but the brains to go with it.

How much do you come in and try to change?

JM: I don't want to change post-snap, if that makes sense. They were very successful in what they did in the past, and I want to continue that with Pat, Noel and those guys, in terms of being a shotgun team, playing with speed and a hurry-up mentality, running the option out of the gun, being that spread offense. We're going to continue to do that, but the way we call it, we'll use different words and terminology than what they're used to. Getting them on the same page with the same terms was the hard part. But after they understood that we're running the same football plays, it became a real quick learn for them.

You ran a lot of motion and misdirection at Wake Forest. Are you going to incorporate some of that here?

JM: It's tough, because what they were last year was primarily a hurry-up team. They like to play fast. "Spot the ball" was their motto, and they were really good at it. And if you're going to do that, you just can't be a shift and motion team. It slows the game down. So what's been a big challenge for me is trying to mesh the two.

What I've found, and it's been pretty good so far, is we've been able to maintain what they've done in the past as far as being a speed team. But at times in the game we can slow the game down a little bit, and when we do that, get real tricky with it. Go ahead and shift and motion. Basically we're giving the defense a curveball to go along with the fastball they've already had in years past.

Coach Stewart has talked about spreading the wealth and having Pat pass the ball more. Tell me about your receivers.

JM: We've got plenty of talent. I think a lot of people are going to find out about Jock Sanders this year. I think he's a really special football player. He'll play our slot. Then we've kind of had to add depth. We've got Wes Lyons, a big 6-7 kid. We've also got Tito Gonzales, who caught the post in the [Fiesta] Bowl game, and he's a fifth-year senior. We moved a quarterback out to the wing, a kid named Bradley Starks who's 6-3 and can flat fly. And then we've got a kid named Alric Arnett who I think might be the best of them all. He came here last year from junior college but got hurt and wasn't able to play. I think if he stays healthy and continues to do the things he's showing us in practice, he could have a big year. And we've got Dorrell Jalloh, who caught 55 balls for them last year.

So we feel like we've got four guys who can play out there on the edge. It's a little bit thin. If one or two of those guys gets dinged, it gets really thin.

Noel Devine starred in what was limited duty until the end of the season. What can we expect of him now in a full-time role?

JM: He averaged seven carries a game last year. Certainly, the public will remember the last game, when he blew up against Oklahoma, and yet he only averaged seven carries a game. Now, the kid's tough as nails, a 400-pound bench-presser and one of the strongest kids by weight I've ever seen. He plays so low to the ground and has such flexibility that, knock on wood, he should have the ability to stay away from injury.

But having said that, he's a little guy. Can he take 20-to-25 carries a game, take those hits for a 13-game season? That's yet to be seen. We're going to try and be real smart in terms of how we handle that. But clearly he's got to touch the ball a ton for us to win.

White and Devine get a lot of the pub, but how about your offensive line, where you've got four starters back?

JM: That's the deal right there We've got a very salty group of O-lineman. That's where my comfort zone is, that and of course Pat White. At the end of the day, I think that's going to be our strongest suit.

A lot of kids I've talked about --- Noel Devine, Jock Sanders, a kid we've moved to H-back named Will Johnson, Alric Arnett, Bradley Starks --- all these kids we're counting on didn't play a whole lot last year. It was Owen Schmitt, Steve Slaton, Darius Reynaud and of course Patrick White. Three of those four are gone. We feel like we've got the ability to replace them, but it's just not proven. It's young. It'll be a first-time look at those kids in the first-string offense. So we've got a lot of questions we've got to answer.

But our O-line, those guys have proven that they're big, tough, mean ornery kids that love the game, and that's where my comfort is.

Overall, it's got to be a lot of fun drawing up plays for these guys.

JM: It is, and we've got a great coaching staff and those guys are a lot of fun to be around. But I can't say we're a dead ringer. We've got young kids and we've got a new staff and we've got to go make it happen. We're feeling the pressure a little bit. But it's self-motivated, self-imposed pressure, and I think that's a good thing. We've just got to get the games rolling and find out.