MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Treylan Davis was pretty much born to be in a three-point stance.

Davis’s father, Eric, played MAC football for the Ohio Bobcats, and his grandfather was a coal miner in West Virginia. If their offspring were going to play football, it would be the old-school kind.

“I was raised to be a big guy,” Davis said.

As he grew through the pee-wee football and travel basketball ranks, Davis had the size, but his frame was leaner than his father’s. He tried pretty much every position on the field before settling in at tight end.

Likely to his father’s avail, Davis’s most eye-popping high school stat from his time at Jackson High in Massillon, Ohio, was that he recorded 170 career pancake blocks.

In his first two years at WVU, he saw plenty of action on special teams as a blocker before tallying a handful of receptions (5 catches / 51 yards) later in his sophomore season. Now a junior, Davis will still frequently have his hand in the dirt pre-snap, but his role as a pass-catcher looks to be expanding.

For starters, he slimmed his frame this offseason, something tight ends coach Blaine Stewart noticed over the summer. Stewart has only been in the role since January, but he’s seen Davis positively transfigure his body in just eight months.

“It’s really transformed his game,” Stewart said. “He’s moving well. His physicality and blocking is obviously still there, but we’ve found a couple ways to get [him] involved in the passing game.”

It makes for more entertaining practices when your responsibility changes nearly every play. It also can be highly educational.

“It makes it a lot of fun,” Davis said. “You learn a lot more football that way. One play, you’re out in the slot running for a ball. The next play you’re blocking down-lineman that are 300-pound guys. So, you get a lot of it. A lot of motion, so you’ve got to know everything too.”

Davis’s style of play and body type are naturally complementary to other tight ends – like LSU transfer Kole Taylor – who are viewed as pass-catchers before blockers. Davis will be the first to tell you that he is not the best downfield threat himself, but his blocking and Taylor’s skillset are creating buzz within the position group.

“[Taylor is] a stand-up guy,” Davis said. “He’s a leader. He’s seen big-time football. He’s experienced. I mean, he played at LSU. It doesn’t get much crazier than that on game day. He’s good in pressure situations, and he’s a great downfield guy. He’s went up and made plays that not even a lot of receivers are making.”

This season will be Taylor’s first year in head coach Neal Brown’s offensive system, but both he and Davis are working under Stewart for the first time. With former tight ends coach Sean Reagan moving to the quarterbacks coach role, Davis is on his third position coach in as many years.

“It’s been a great opportunity really to take different ways of learning from these guys from different standpoints and viewpoints and opinions,” Davis. “It’s really been more beneficial than anything.”

Stewart – who has four years of NFL experience with the Pittsburgh Steelers – introduced a fair amount of NFL film to the tight end room this offseason. From the Cleveland Browns’ three-tight-end sets to Patrick Ricard fullback tapes from the Baltimore Ravens, the Mountaineer tight ends are learning next-level applications to some of the concepts they are seeing in practice.

“[Stewart] knows what he’s talking about [with] his technicalities of the game,” Davis said. “He knows the game well, especially with this position. A lot of little things that I’ve kind of overlooked in the past, he’s brought to [my attention].”

It all could not have come at a better time. Though his receiving numbers were limited last year, he had the most production out of any returning WVU tight end. By working the system over three years, he now is one of the two clear-cut options for tight end this fall.

“He’s put in the work,” Stewart said. “So now he’s starting to see the benefits.”