Rich Rodriguez focused on what his team does best
West Virginia head coach Rich Rodriguez understands that he’s about a week out from when he has to start trimming down his installation and get somewhat of a tentative depth chart together.
The Mountaineers were in shells Monday and will be in full pads Tuesday and Thursday with another scrimmage set for Saturday inside the stadium.
It’s still relatively early into fall camp but Rodriguez believes that his team has made progress since the spring even with a bunch of new players on the roster but they haven’t gotten to the point where he doesn’t have to blow his whistle in practice.
“So, we’re not there yet,” he said.
One of the biggest things that still needs to be determined is figuring out exactly what this team is good at and paring down the calls based on that information. While there are a lot of plays that Rodriguez could run, you have to gear it toward what your players do best.
And that isn’t just the quarterback, but the entire offense as a whole. During his career, Rodriguez has had teams where that was apparent until once the season began, but he’s still trying to nail that down.
One thing that is apparent to Rodriguez is that each of his five quarterbacks competing for the starting job can really throw the football. So much so, that Rodriguez believes that he’s never had as many in the same room at once that check those boxes as far as arm strength.
That doesn’t limit anything they can do in that department.
“Every quarterback for every route package can make every throw. So, now we just have to see which ones we can be the most accurate with. That’s kind of a fun thing to have,” he said.
To that point. Rodriguez said that it’s possible the Mountaineers could throw the ball more than his teams are typically associated with, given their strengths and they’ve put in a lot more pass plays than run play at this stage of fall camp.
“I’m not worried about 50-percent run plays, 50-percent run plays, I’m worried about these are the plays that we can execute,” Rodriguez said.
But on the same token, Rodriguez has been encouraged that all of his quarterbacks run well enough to handle that aspect of the offense as well in playing with 11 at all times.
That execution aspect is the priority and while Rodriguez might love a certain route package, his team has to be able to handle it from all aspects, from the quarterback to protection to running the routes the right way with the correct depth. He is a firm believer that he’d rather run 10 plays really, really well than run a lot of different plays at an average level.
It simply boils down to while you might develop some tendencies if you don’t have tendencies, then your team probably isn’t good at anything.
“Every time we call it, somebody screws up, OK take that one out,” he said.
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