Rich Rodriguez calls out negative mentality surrounding West Virginia program

There was an incredible amount of excitement surrounding the West Virginia Mountaineers program heading into the season. After all, with legendary head coach Rich Rodriguez returning home and a new-look roster, there was plenty of reason to hope. Except, it hasn’t been great on the field this season.

In their last game, West Virginia lost 45-13 to UCF in Orlando. That was notable because of the parallels the two programs seemed to have coming into this season. Both have a first year coach in their second stint with the program, have flipped their rosters, and were looking at rebuilds. They were both also winless in Big 12 play going into that game, so the blowout loss was a shocker.

That prompted a question during a recent press conference for Rodriguez, wondering what that result meant for the program in the big picture. However, Rodriguez didn’t want to hear about that result and pushed back against the negative mentality he feels is building around the West Virginia program.

“You’re leading down a negative way,” Rich Rodriguez said. “Which is the exact problem that you have. When you’re like this is so negative and this. No, I’m just telling you. I know where you’re leading, and that’s the problem. It’s like, oh gosh, they’re struggling, we’re struggling. They’re first year, we’re first year, and look what they — yeah, we played awful, and they played better.”

West Virginia now sits at 2-5 overall and 0-4 in Big 12 play to open the season. That includes an upset loss to Ohio out of the MAC, which the Mountaineers responded to by winning the Backyard Brawl. Since then, though, they’ve ripped off four Big 12 losses in a row. The closest of those games was a 38-24 loss to BYU.

“We’ve got a lot of things to fix,” Rodriguez said. “But I’m not going to look at it in totality and say that we can’t fix our problems and that we’re that far behind them. You can think that way, but I’m not, and our players won’t, and our program’s not.”

There have been plenty of issues for West Virginia this season. However, none is more glaring than the issue at the quarterback position. Rich Rodriguez has been forced to start four different quarterbacks this season and play a total of five for the Mountaineers. Redshirt junior Nicco Marchiol is out for the season. Then, redshirt senior Jaylen Henderson and redshirt junior Max Brown have also been banged up. That left redshirt freshman Khalil Wilkins and true freshman Scotty Fox to take on UCF, though Wilkins left that game with his own injury.

Rich Rodriguez knows that it’s going to be hard to see better results without more consistent quarterback play. That’s difficult when so many players playing are so young, though.

“Unfortunately, it looks like it’s happening again but we’ve got other guys to play and whoever it is it’s your time to step up and give us a chance,” Rodriguez said on his weekly radio show. “It’s not like there’s veteran experience around them that they can lean on. I thought they went in and competed. Did they play great? No. They did some things positive which is a good thing to grow off of but both of those players are going to be really good players eventually.”

West Virginia is back home this week to host TCU, looking for a bounce-back performance and something to be positive about. Kickoff for that game is currently scheduled for 6:00 p.m. EST.