Rich Rodriguez: It starts with me
West Virginia head coach Rich Rodriguez didn’t look to pass off the blame following his team’s 17-10 loss on the road to Ohio.
“I was very disappointed. It starts with me. I told the guys I failed them this week. I thought we had a good week of practice. I thought we were ready to play and we weren’t,” he said. “We didn’t execute and a lot of things to work on. I knew there would be some growing pains. I’m going to do a better job.”
The Mountaineers struggled in their second game under Rodriguez’s second tenure mustering just 10 points and 250 total yards. The offense was just 2-13 on third down, while failing to capitalize on three forced turnovers in the second half.
There was a general lack of execution and again the head coach didn’t try to hide from the fact that it falls at his feet.
“The guys were playing hard. The guys went in there and battled. But as I said I want it to hurt. If it’s going to hurt all of us. I think it really does for the next 20 hours or so,” he said.
Adding to the issue is the fact that West Virginia had several players go down with injury during the course of the game including starting running back Jahiem White. Rodriguez confirmed after the game that the injury didn’t look good from the sideline but he had not consulted with the medical staff.
Rodriguez made it clear that win or lose, the Mountaineers have 24-hours to put the game away and move forward.
“But the losses you’ve got to learn as much as you can from it,” he said. “Like everybody – players, coaches and everybody in the program.”
West Virginia started redshirt junior quarterback Nicco Marchiol but went to Jaylen Henderson in the second half for two drives which was done primarily to try to create a spark with the quarterback run. The performance of the two ultimately falls at Rodriguez’s feet but he isn’t ready to make any sort of declarations on how the position will be managed moving forward.
“We’ll evaluate the film and try to see what went wrong and what we can fix to get better,” he said.
West Virginia now must prepare for Pittsburgh and it’s a game that everybody is aware of on the team given what it means.
“We know who’s next so we’ve got to get to work. I’m going to get these guys ready to go. They’ll be ready to play next Saturday,” he said.
Offer Alert
Fall camp is here and there’s no better time to sign up with us to get all your WVU intel! Sign up today – $1 for the first week, plus a complimentary year of access to The Athletic included. Join – http://gowvu.us/Join
__________________________________________
• Talk about it with West Virginia fans on The Blue Lot
• SUBSCRIBE today to stay up on the latest on Mountaineer sports and recruiting
• Get all of our WVU videos on YouTube by subscribing to the WVSports.com Channel
• Follow us on Twitter: @WVSportsDotCom, @rivalskeenan
•Like us on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok
