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"The biggest thing for us as an offense is to make sure we don't do too much," said Mullen, who also takes over as the Mountaineers' quarterbacks coach. "Clearly, we're going to give our guys a scheme and an opportunity with the ink pen to win, but we will never sacrifice our football players' abilities for a really smart idea in our staff room."

Having served as the quarterbacks coach at Wake Forest for the past four seasons, Mullen knows that talent must be given room to develop. Last season, Demon Deacons quarterback Riley Skinner flourished in coach Jim Grobe's wide-open attack, which places a lot of decision-making responsibility on the quarterback. Skinner led the nation in passing percentage (72.4%), setting a school record in the process.

 

Mullen also tutored former Deacons quarterbacks Cory Randolph, who finished his career in 2005 as the third-most accurate passer in school history, and Ben Mauk, who led the team in passing yards in 2005 before transferring to Cincinnati, where he excelled last season.

 

Of course, none of those quarterbacks were quite as talented as Pat White, who returns for his senior season as the Mountaineers' signal-caller, and none had such a dynamic supporting cast to surround them. In an effort to get more out of that offensive firepower, Mullen has promised to adopt a holistic approach to game-planning which, at least in theory, will give the Mountaineers more offensive balance than they have had in previous seasons.

"From an identity standpoint, we're still going to be a shotgun football team that runs the option," Mullen said. "But we want to give our players a chance, when they do see a box full of defenders, to stretch the defense downfield and with underneath routes. Whether we're pitching the ball backward or pitching the ball forward, we're going to give our kids an opportunity to make plays."

"I'm a guy that believes in balance," he continued. "Without balance, you can still win a lot of football games, but it's very hard to win championships. Our goal here at WVU is to win Big East championships and play for national titles."

That balance act will include taking the Mountaineers' defensive strengths and weaknesses into consideration when making in-game adjustments on offense.

"I'm not a West Virginia offensive coach; I'm a West Virginia football coach," Mullen said. "I'm going to do whatever it takes to win. Whether it's a 3-0 game or a 58-55 game, we're going to call plays that give us a chance to win with regard to how our defense is playing that day and how much we need to help them out. If it's third-and-eighteen from our own ten yard line, and the best thing for us to do is to run the football and use our great punter to change field position, we will have no problem doing that. If we need to get into the two-minute offense early on and run 75 or 80 plays a game, we'll do that as well. We want to call plays from a team perspective."

 

Innumerable offensive coaches have preached the virtues of maintaining a balanced attack. Whether Mullen can execute that plan may be the difference between WVU winning games and WVU winning championships in 2008.