Slaton-White duo best Herd coach Snyder has seen
September 5, 2007
By Doug Smock
HUNTINGTON — Perhaps nobody can be fully prepared for the onslaught of West Virginia’s offense, featuring the one-two punch of Steve Slaton and Patrick White.
At Marshall, coach Mark Snyder briefly thought back to some of the offensive duos he had to face as an Ohio State defensive assistant. At Wisconsin, there was receiver Chris Chambers and bruising runner Ron Dayne. A bit later at Michigan, running back Chris Perry and receiver Braylon Edwards.
But did they stack up to WVU’s dynamic duo?
“Not as good as these two. These two are the best,” Snyder said.
Such is the most obvious, most daunting challenge for the Thundering Herd when it greets third-ranked WVU at 11:02 a.m. Saturday at Joan C. Edwards Stadium. Slaton and White are as fast as ever, the zone-blocking scheme of the front line remains in vogue and White has a few weapons when he decides to throw.
“They spread the entire field,” Snyder said. “They make you defend vertically and horizontally. It’s a horizontal offense, and all of a sudden it goes vertical, and it makes you defend the entire field. And if you have talent to do that, it makes it very, very difficult.”
Slaton and White pretty much diced up the Thundering Herd last year in Morgantown, particularly in the first half of the Mountaineers’ 42-10 rout. Slaton galloped for 203 yards and two touchdowns, while White ran for 48 yards and threw for 168 yards and two scores. He completed 10-of-14 attempts.
Only one pass went to Darius Reynaud for 11 yards, but Snyder expects him to be more of a threat this time.
“He’s playing with a lot of confidence,” Snyder said. “I think he’s pretty good, and not enough people are talking about him.”
The Herd was hurt last year by a whopping 30 missed tackles. If you’re going to slow down the Mountaineers, you must bring them down on first contact. Ask East Carolina coach Skip Holtz, whose defense played respectably last year in a 27-10 loss to the Mountaineers, who rushed for “only” 153 yards.
“They’re going to get those great backs in some one-on-one matchups, and you’re going to have to challenge your defense and run to the ball and gang-tackle,” Holtz said. “Because when they get some one-on-one matchups, they’re pretty good at making you miss in the open field.”
That was one area of encouragement for Marshall last week at Miami. Snyder didn’t necessarily want to see his top three tacklers be defensive backs (C.J. Spillman seven, Ashton Hall and Aaron Johnson six each), but they did get the runners down.
“The key for us is, when they do get to the second level, which they’re going to do, we have to tackle them,” Snyder said. “We did not do that last year. And that’s why I said after the game last week, we’ve tackled better than we’ve been tackling. And some of that has to do with athleticism.”
Which, apparently, Marshall has more of than it did a year ago in Morgantown, and it’s keeping Snyder upbeat about his defense’s chances this week.
“We’re better than we’ve been. We’re faster than we’ve been,” Snyder said. “The good thing about going down and playing a team like Miami, we had a chance to match our speed with last year’s speed. And I said it after the game, we’re a faster team, and we didn’t look out of place Saturday.
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