Photo courtesy of BlueGoldNews.com WVU’s Rodney Gallagher could see time at both receiver and nickle back this fall.

MORGANTOWN — Spring football practice is for experimentation and West Virginia football coach Neal Brown is experimenting with one of his prize players — wide receiver Rodney Gallagher — to see if he might be able to help out as a nickel back on defense in addition to his offensive duties.

“Don’t mistake this for Rodney Gallagher moving to defense,” Brown warned when the subject came up on Wednesday. “That is not what this is about. He’s definitely an offensive player. He’s pushing to be a starter at receiver and we want to get him the ball.”

Gallagher showed why last Friday during the team’s scrimmage.

“He had a great scrimmage on Friday; like really a great scrimmage. I was really excited about his growth at receiver in that scrimmage. But, he’s a guy who potentially, if he stays, could give us some snaps at nickel. Maybe that could take some stress off us from having to go find somebody else.”

Don’t panic over that side remark of “if he stays”, but the portal is open and Brown understands that all his players are aware of it and evaluating what’s best for them. But the secondary isn’t deep with Brown hoping to get some help through the portal.

This, however, is the time of year where you just don’t know which players will stay or leave.

The idea of Gallagher, who came on slowly last season as he adjusted to the idea of being a one-sport athlete, being a potential defensive player in addition to his offensive duties started back during the recruiting period.

“I told him when we were recruiting him — I remember telling big Rod (his father) this — he played corner in high school and I used to give him a hard time over that. He played over there but he never showed up in the picture. He was never getting tackles,” Brown said.

That, though, didn’t mean he couldn’t play there. It was merely a matter of priorities.

“You could see, he could play man coverage. He didn’t spend any time on it. He was a raw football player in general and he played quarterback, which was where his practice time was spent.”

But a coach is always assessing and evaluating, even in the off-season.

“There’s so much … you know, when you play defense in basketball that shows up,” Brown said. “I watched Rodney play basketball close in Uniontown. Whatever the number was, I saw him as many times as I could see him, maybe three times.

“He played man in basketball against good players and would stay in front of them. He had this presence where you got a feel he could play man defense well. He wasn’t one who crossed over, he just naturally stayed there and had a lot of steals.

“That translated to two things to me,” Brown continued. “I knew he had good ball skills, even though he didn’t catch a bunch of passes in high school football because he was throwing them. The other thing was I knew he had a great change of direction and skills where he could go over and play defense.”

So, one day in the hall Brown passed Gallagher and stopped him.

“I just went up to Rodney in the hall and said, ‘Why don’t you go over there and we’ll put you in our dime package and we’ll see how you do,” Brown recalled. “Rodney said, ‘Oh, yeah.’ I said, ‘Remember, I told you in recruiting that we may look at that.'”

There was no reluctance, no argument, not even really a discussion.

The situation is that the receiver room is well stocked and there is a lot of experimentation going on there, Brown having inside receivers take reps outside and outside receivers reps inside to develop depth and versatility.

It helps the offense if you don’t know where Hudson Clement is going to line up on any given play or where, if you have an injury, you can move someone to a different position to cover up.

“We’re messing with Rodney on that mainly because he has really good lateral quickness. He played defense in high school and it will give us some flexibility.

But, it goes further than just an experiment or we wouldn’t be talking about this right now.

“He’s done pretty well,” Brown admitted, even though he says they have done very little coaching of him on that side of the ball.

Could the possibility of having Gallagher become a two-way player such as Travis Hunter in Colorado exist?

“I think it’s doable … I really do,” Brown said. “The kid at Colorado, what he’s doing is special because he’s playing a ton of plays (on both sides of the ball). I don’t think we’re at a point where we need Rodney to do that, but he’s at a point where he could play 6 to 10 plays on defense and not take away from anything he’s doing on offense. We’d just have to watch what we do with him on special teams.”