Rich Rodriguez looking for improvement moving forward
West Virginia head coach Rich Rodriguez keeps his notes from fall camp and where his current football team is at likely matches up pretty well to where his Jacksonville State team was last year at this time.
“It was probably around the same spot. You know, a lot of new guys, a little frustration here and there. A little optimism,” he said. “And that’s kind of where we’re at. Like I got a little frustration, I got some optimism so I’m like O.K. that’s probably where it was at the year before that,” Rodriguez said.
And that’s likely extends to every other year of his time as the head coach over a program.
Each team is different, but Rodriguez can use some of his notes from last season to help mold how he will prepare this one for the season.
“I also want to make sure that the notes I wrote down we probably should do this, try to do that, and I’m looking at those because again, I don’t want to, I want to be better coming out of the gates especially with not only, a lot of new guys, but almost no experience,” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez is always admittedly overly ambitious with the installation process on the offensive side of the football but inevitably he often trims down what is being asked in terms of the plays being called.
“All we got to do is run 10 or 12 of them really good and have options off of them. So that’ll be part of my discussions with the offensive staff,” he said. “I’m there, I’m responsible for it so I’ve got to make sure that we got enough plays to have success, but we got to be able to run those plays really, really good.”
And from there things can branch out although Rodriguez readily admits that his team isn’t there yet.
At this point of fall camp Rodriguez likes his team and how they are conscientious about what he says but right now he doesn’t feel any better about depth at any position.
“I like my team, but I just don’t feel better about where we’re at. So, we got time,” he said.
Rodriguez firmly believes that it’s part of his responsibility to teach his players to get up and put in a great day of work each and every time on the practice field. Rodriguez does believe that his team is equipped with a good work ethic but it’s the coaches job to push them up to the standard.
“Have a sense of appreciation for their opportunity and work really, really hard to make the most of it,” Rodriguez said. “And then when they graduate or move onto whatever career they’re going to have, they’re going to outwork somebody in the same field so they can have success.”
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