West Virginia nickels and Sams coach Henry Weinreich went to Rhodes College in Memphis to play Division III football. At the DIII level, there are no scholarships, so the goal realistically isn’t to play football, but to pursue a career in a certain field. Weinreich’s mom, who moved from Thailand at 28. wanted to be a doctor, and he did, eventually pursuing a degree in chemistry.

Weinreich fell in love with football, though, and wanted to keep competing, so he decided to go into coaching.

“My mom was so mad, though,” Weinreich said. “I was a substitute teacher, right? I just had this chemistry degree. She was like ‘What are you doing with your life?’ I was like ‘Mom I got to chase the dream’ because right now you don’t have any kids or anything, right? That’s the best time to do it. I didn’t want to look back 30 years from now and say, ‘Oh, I should have tried to coach football.’ So start off small, show up in a suit, volunteer, and then just work your way up.”

He started as a volunteer assistant at Washington University in Missouri coaching the defensive line. He then coached the same position at Rhodes, then to West Georgia as a defensive graduate assistant coaching linebackers, eventually landing at Jacksonville State under Zac Alley, who’s the current West Virginia defensive coordinator. Weinreich coached linebackers as a graduate assistant, while he finished his masters in sports management.

Alley landed the co-defensive coordinator job at Oklahoma, and he took Weinreich along with him to be a defensive analyst. Alley, again, brought along Weinreich when he took the DC job at West Virginia.

Weinreich’s learned a lot from Alley over the years.

“Zach’s incredibly detail oriented,” Weinreich said. “He’s one of the smartest guys in the room, if not the smartest guy, and he’s always thinking ahead. Whatever answer you have for his defense, he’s trying to make sure we have an answer for that. What drives him is he just wants to be the best. I think it kind of drives all of us in our defense, and we just want to compete and be the best defense in the country. I think just from his detail and his experience with some of the best defensive coordinators out there, Brent Venables and other guys like that, it just makes him an amazing guy to learn from.”

Weinreich’s room is pretty niche because most of the players in his room can play other positions. However, he does have a core set of players in his room. Fred Perry, Chris Fileppo, Zae Jennings and William Davis are all in his room.

Perry was one of the big additions in the transfer portal, following Rich Rodriguez from Jacksonville State. He posted 110 tackles, three sacks, 10 tackles for loss, two pass breakups, two forced fumbles and a fumble recovery. Perry should make an immediate impact in the secondary.

Weinreich’s been telling Perry the jump from FCS to FBS isn’t too different.

“The caliber of athletes you’re playing are going to be a little better, but as a long as you give me your best, that’s all I need. I don’t need you to go crazy, strain yourself any harder, just keep putting the same work you’ve been putting in, and play fast.”

The chemistry degree hasn’t completely gone to waste. There are similarities between chemistry and football. Photon particles bounce back and forth, living in both phases of time, and sometimes being in the middle or the gray. It might sound confusing, but Weinreich’s tried to use that concept to teach his players.

“Football isn’t just black and white,” Weinreich said. “Sometimes the block is going to be a little bit iffy, or the route is not going to be truly defined. You have to win the gray. I try to use it now and then.”

Alley’s defense might seem complex on the outside. There’s a lot of different blitz packages, and moving parts, so it could be confusing, especially for a lot of the new players on the defense. It could be hard to memorize for players.

Chemistry and biology could be hard to memorize, too. If you think about it, chemistry and biology is a lot of concepts that are used in different ways. That’s how Weinreich has broke down the defense for his players to make it easier to learn.

The chemistry degree has come in handy after all.

“If you just try to vaguely memorize everything, it will stack up on you and feel like a lot,” Weinreich said. “The way to make it less complex is you tell the kids it’s easy because it is easy. It’s an easy defense to learn, you just have to put the work in and conceptuatlize what we’re putting in.”