The beauty of the thing is its simplicity.......

This was line from my favorite movie The Big Lebowski. For those poor souls who have such busy lives that they can't take the hour and a half to watch the movie, the context of the line is basically summing up a plan to overtake some bandits who have something "The Dude" wants.

I bring this quote up because it reminds me of the offensive line at WVU and how the line used to be and how it is now. Last years much maligned unit was in a transition phase, that was getting used to their third coach in three years and a whole new system. Their lofty pre-season ranking was never lived up to and many consider them to be the biggest disappointment from last year. This was the first time since 2004 that the line was not among the nations elite and the first time that WVU did not zone block almost exclusively. Last year, under new offensive line coach Dave Johnson, WVU tried their hand at a more traditional, Nehlen like approach. Now the simplest thing to do would be to ask why a team that had so much success would go from a scheme that was working to one that wasn't. I agree, since the guys that were on the line last year had only known zone blocking, but for the future.....I think a change was needed. You see the zone blocking spread option was made for guys like Pat, Owen, and Steve. Two speedsters and a battering ram to run through the hole with either the ball or on a mission to absolutely kill the guy in front of him. Either way, you probably don't want to be that guy that met him first. That was great but we only had one piece of that puzzle last year and the offense looked much more like it did in 03 and 04 than o5-07 because of it. The roadgrading blocking with the occassional zone scheme is much more conducive to being a balanced team. Just look at what started to happen in 07....athletic defense like Pitt and South Florida simply ignored the threat of the forward pass and played "sick em" D. These are the growing pains WVU will have to suffer in order to transition. The thing that gets me are the same people who used to sit up in the stands and complain about us never throwing down field are now bitching about how WVU has changed something that worked so well. You can't have both

Something else that gets on my nerves is when people bring up that WVU is the winningest program to never have a national championship. This is nothing to boast about IMO, and its kind of like bragging about winning the shortest pecker contest.