WVU football: Mountaineer staff believes safety Burks can be special

Jun 19, 2023 MORGANTOWN — Based on what West Virginia’s coaching staff saw from Aubrey Burks down the stretch last season as a sophomore, they believe he has an opportunity to be a special player. The safety will enter his junior season this fall with a full year under his belt and is expected to be one of the leaders in the Mountaineer secondary. “[The safeties’] best football last year was at the end of the year, from about game six on,” safeties coach Dontae Wright said after a practice this spring. “Especially Aubrey, because Aubrey really turned and showed you that he’s got a chance to be special. If he continues to develop, he’ll continue to prove to people that he can be special.” Burks, a 5-foot-11, 202- pound Oakridge, Florida, native, saw some action in his freshman season after coming out of Auburndale High as a three-star prospect, but his time on the field was limited to six games because of a season-ending injury. Last fall, he was thrown right back into it. Burks was WVU’s second-leading tackler — behind linebacker Lee Kpogba — with 66. He had 4.5 tackles for loss, a sack, an interception, a forced fumble and a pair of pass breakups. Wright is now expecting to see “light-years difference” with Burks as he enters his junior season with the Mountaineers. “You’ve got to think, Aubrey Burks was really a first-time player last year,” Wright said. “His first year he played in six games, I think it was, but the majority of that was special teams. Then the last five or six games of the year, he was out with surgery, so he really had never played before. Being able to come back and double down this spring has just added to what he can do.” Burks said he learned from older players like Alonzo Addae, Sean Mahone and Scottie Young when he arrived in Morgantown about such things as game preparation, going through treatment to help prevent injury and the importance of getting extra training sessions in. The full year of game action taught him even more. “If I would’ve known what I know now — I’m not saying that I know a lot, I know the game — but I learned a lot of things from last season until now,” Burks said. “I feel like from the start of the season, I would’ve been playing really good and it would’ve just went super great toward the end of the season. I’m not mad about the way I played last year, but I definitely left some plays out there. I definitely could’ve done better at the beginning of the season, but as far as the way I finished — I think I finished pretty good.” As a whole, WVU returns more in its secondary than it did a year ago, when transfers and injuries left the Mountaineers shorthanded and giving up more big plays than they would’ve liked for much of the 5-7 campaign. Marcis Floyd is back for his redshirt senior season after serving as the team’s primary cat safety last fall, and WVU also brought in versatile Buffalo transfer Keyshawn Cobb to add depth at safety. The staff has seen an increase in leadership from cornerback Malachi Ruffin after he got significant action in 2022, and also expect Jacolby Spells and Andrew Wilson-Lamp to be much improved from a season ago. The Mountaineers signed Kent State redshirt senior transfer Montre Miller at cornerback and, after the spring session, announced the signing of veteran defensive back Beanie Bishop, a Minnesota transfer that started his career at Western Kentucky. The Mountaineers believe with the experienced players returning, plus the veteran newcomers WVU has added this offseason, the understanding and communication in the defense, especially the secondary, will improve from 2022, when the Mountaineers finished ninth of the 10 teams in the Big 12 in scoring defense with 32.9 points allowed per game. “With us being young and then no chemistry together kind of hurt it a lot,” Burks said. “I can say, as far as the safeties, we weren’t fully invested in just trying to be better each and every week, and toward the end of the season we fully committing [ourselves]. That’s one thing we’re trying to get better at — just investing and watching film together and doing everything we can together to be on the same page.” With his experience in 2022, the staff believes Burks will become a natural leader on a defense. “Aubrey was, I thought at times last year, he played at an elite level and now he’s more confident, he feels really good about knowing the whole structure of the defense,” WVU head coach Neal Brown said this spring. “Now, as someone that’s had success and is a really hard worker, I think he’ll naturally go into that leadership role as well.” The safety sees that happening, too. “It definitely feels like I’m becoming a veteran,” Burks said. “My coaches tell me, ‘This year you’ve definitely got to step up and take that role, be a leader,’ so I’ve been working on that. “What I learned from last year going into this year is my preparation. You’ve got to carry yourself as a veteran, come in early. If you’re banged up, get treatment. Lift weights extra. Just do little small things and show the young guys how to become a veteran when their time comes.” Burks will likely be a key piece of WVU’s defense when the team opens the season Sept. 2 against Penn State at Beaver Stadium in University Park, Pennsylvania, but the staff believes he has the potential to go beyond that. “[He can be] as good as he wants to be, as good as he wants to be,” Wright said. “He can be an NFL player or he can be a great college player. That’s his choice. That’s his choice. He’s going to have to work to continue to keep developing his body because he’s got to continue to put on muscle so he can hold up. ... “He can be as good as he wants to be. What he decides and what he puts into it, that’s what he’ll get out of it. If he puts it all into it, he can play on Sundays.”