UTEP football begins first spring under Scotty Walden: Here are five questions to answer

The first spring under a new football coach does have a resemblance to the first day of school.

There's a new teacher — for the UTEP football team its Scotty Walden — new faces all around, a new curriculum and a bunch of unknowns that make for an exciting time.

This spring figures to be quite different from the last few years, in that it will end with a spring game with tackling, and it will also feature a wide-open quarterback competition largely absent in recent seasons when incumbent Gavin Hardison was mostly locked in.

There are far more than five questions UTEP will look to answer this spring, which begins in the Sun Bowl (another change) with the first of 15 workouts Monday morning at 7:15 a.m., but here is the top of the list.

What is Walden looking to get accomplished in his first spring at UTEP?

The emphasis will not be on schemes and Xs and Os, but rather the fundamentals of his system. This is his third "first spring" as a head coach and he has a good idea of how he wants this to go.

"For us, being year one, we want to do a good job of getting our base foundational teachings crystal clear and laid down," Walden said. "So whatever fundamentals we're teaching, we have to get the baseline fundamentals taught and down and understood.

"Everything for us, the way we do everything football-wise, is a building block. If you don't get level one, it's hard to move on to level seven. We have to build on that. I want to get those foundational teachings in."

Along those lines, cementing a two-deep is not the priority. He wants to get everyone on as much tape as possible.

"I want to see what everybody can do," Walden said. "We have to be creative. I've been a proponent of two-spotting things a lot so we're going to look at doing a lot of that so we can maximize reps and we can watch kids on tape and get a better synopsis of who they are and where they fit.

"There may be some guys who have a unique skill set who played one position last year and we may feel like they can do something better in our system at another spot. Until we get out and evaluate we won't know. We have to assess that."

The first-day "starting lineup" will be based on winter conditioning but won't mean much of anything. Walden said everyone begins Monday with a clean slate.

How much tackling will UTEP do?

Not much, but more than any practices in the last half-decade. A big priority under the previous staff was not risking injuries in spring, but Walden is not going to take that to the extreme.

"We have three different tempos," he said. "There's what we call whiz tempo, where in great athletic tackling position and we're tagging off. That's usual when we don't have any pads on.

"Then we have something we do 85% of the time, even in-season, what we call Thud. A player is in an athletic, tackling position and he is thudding up the ball carrier, but no one goes to the ground. The ball carrier's momentum stops and there is going to be a collision but there aren't two guys going to the ground.

"Then three, which we do very limited in practice, where there's full live tackling to the ground. We will do it. The first day of full pads we do a drill where we're going to see where we're at from a physicality standpoint and we'll go live tackle. There will be certain periods that will be live. Short yardage is always live. All of our scrimmage and our spring game will be 100% live tackling to the ground."

Who will the quarterback be?

Cade McConnell was the revelation of last season. He started as a fourth-teamer, was forced into a starting role because of injuries and played well enough that in a normal year he would be a clear No. 1 coming into spring.

With a new staff, there is no clear No. 1 at any position and Walden said the competition will involve seven players: McConnell and other returnees Jake McNamara, Kevin Hurley, Zach Rodriguez and Seth Mauser, plus newcomers Skyler Locklear and JP Pickles.

"We won't be short on arms, that's for sure," Walden said. "That's a good thing."

Having said all that, Walden is high on McConnell. Reading between lines, he sounds like a favorite when there is no official favorite.

"I'm very impressed with Cade," he said. "If you ask me which way he's trending, he's trending up. He's so smart, he knows where to go with the ball, he's picking up our offense really fast.

"But I tell these guys every day, we don't have a starting quarterback yet. This is a wide-open competition. What they do everyday is being evaluated. They're in a competition, every position group in the building knows that. Every spot is up for grabs, there are no returning starters to us."

He said a starter won't be set until the week of the Nebraska opener.

What other positions are ones to watch?

On a roster that is turning over everywhere, the receivers and defensive backs are in the most flux. What makes those groups most interesting is that Walden describes his offense as "nearly positionless."

In other words, there's no set slot, X, Y and Z at receiver, safeties and cornerbacks are somewhat interchangeable, and while Walden is committed to having size at offensive tackle, the biggest goal is to get the best guys on the field even if that's three natural guards. If the four best pass catchers are slots, they'll be out there together.

As for receiver, "We don't have a lot back but we brought a lot in," Walden said. "It's exciting to see how that meshes."

The new names he mentioned at receiver are a trio of Austin Peay transfers: Ashton Nickelberry, Trey Goodman and Kam Thomas.

What will the spring game look like?

UTEP has gotten away from spring games in recent years, moving from a game to a "promoted practice" to nothing. This year the April 20 spring game will look like a game.

"It's a real spring game, an orange and blue game, it's going to be a lot of fun," Walden said. "We're going to draft teams, make it competitive, make it a real spring game. We're going to let our coaches coach, our players play and cut it loose. It's going to be fun."

That will cap a busy spring, one that invariably leads to more questions for the fall. UTEP will start sorting all that out Monday.

Bret Bloomquist can be reached at bbloomquist@elpasotimes.com; @Bretbloomquist on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: UTEP football begins first spring under Scotty Walden: 5 questions