Rich Rodriguez press conference summary 10-21

West Virginia head coach Rich Rodriguez addressed the media ahead of the TCU game and WVSports.com provides a summary of what was said.
–Rodriguez said that the quarterback thing he’s had one year similar to this but when your top four quarterbacks are all out and can’t play halfway through the season and now you’re down to your freshman it presents a challenge. You have to do things he can do but also things that fits the offense. This week of practice will be good for Scotty Fox to take another step going forward for this Saturday. It’s his job to get him in position to have some success and more importantly the guys around him have to help him have success. The confidence standpoint is natural you have to flush the bad plays away and it was a terrible game. You also have to learn from it. There are things in that game that are unacceptable that they have to fix and the team knows that.
–Rodriguez felt that the intensity and competitiveness was there even in games they’ve lost but last week it wasn’t and that’s on the coaches. There were a lot of things early in the game and that was the most surprising part of what unfolded last week.
–Rodriguez said West Virginia played awful and UCF didn’t but Rodriguez isn’t going to look at it in totality and say that they can’t fix it.
–Rodriguez said they still have a ways to go when it comes to establishing culture. It’s not as far off as it looks like. He is evaluating everything with the program. He’s still convinced they are going to win big and have success but it’s not happening as fast as he wanted it to. Some of it is bad luck, some of it is missed evaluations and some of it is they have to adapt a little quicker but there isn’t anything he doesn’t question. If this was his first year as a head coach he would be wondering about the answers but he’s done this before.
–There are still fundamental things they have to work with when it comes to young quarterbacks. Scotty Fox has a good skill set and wants to be really good so they’re pushing it along like they want to.
–The obvious thing is they have to get bigger, stronger and faster. They have to get some experience. As coaches he has a better idea of what his team can and can’t do. Roster there are some guys they misevaluated a little bit and some others they weren’t able to get that they wanted to because of the situation they are in. Sometimes people forget about the retention part with how chaotic it was when players were getting in the portal and getting paid and they couldn’t get what they wanted or retain. They have to make sure they evaluate and retain the right ones.
–Rodriguez said that when he looks at some of the recruits that are coming here and some of the recruits they think they can get it gets him a little bit of jump in his step and gets excited. It’s a players game from a recruiting standpoint and the best way to fix your problems is to get good players.
–You can’t change your whole schemes but now they know what they can’t do well and frankly now they can give some other guys a shot. There’s going to be a few guys that have maybe been in the backup role in the past few weeks that could get thrown into a starting role.
–Rodriguez doesn’t know what Khalil Wilkins situation is going to be, Max Brown might be available this week. Scott Kean and Max Anderson will get reps this week. Rodriguez likes the competitiveness of Wilkins but he doesn’t know if he will be able to practice all week which is a hard thing. Nobody played well in that game or coached well in that UCF game.
–Rodriguez said the UCF game is in the past and now it’s time to flush it away and get jacked up about playing. The coaches they look at it as just a job and they don’t enjoy it as much but he’s sensing a trend in college that it’s becoming too much of a job for the players. It’s like they’re checking in for work and checking back out. In college, you may look at it as a job but it still needs to be a game and enjoy it and he needs to do a better job expressing that. They need to get back to having the joy of playing football.
–It was a great idea for the Coal Rush game. Coal mining is part of the fabric of who the state is and what it’s all about. His dad and his grandfather were coal miners and his brother worked in the coal mines. He knows it and has so much pride for the people that worked in that industry. He saw his dad work all different shifts and then work in the garden all day. When they start to think it’s hard, it’s not nearly as hard as going under ground and scraping coal out for a living. This stuff isn’t that hard.
–Rodriguez still thinks you have to have something to build your program around and it has to be the message from day one but his expectation was probably higher or thought it would happen faster than it did. Maybe after the Pitt game it was there, but it really wasn’t with the hard edge. It’s not ingrained in the program it needs to be. When it’s the way it needs to be they won’t have one player loafing or taking a play off or being soft one time. That’s probably the most disappointing thing that has to be corrected as coaches with how they played effort wise and competitive wise.
–It was still a little while the first time here. The first year at Glenville they went 1–7–1 but the culture was set and every year got better after that and the same way the first year here. It was a struggle the first year here the first time but the second off-season it was night and day from the first one. The first off-season here wasn’t that bad but it probably fooled him that they were getting the culture right and obviously they didn’t based off what happened the past couple games. But they will have it.
–Sonny Dykes had a hard job at Cal and his teams were pretty talented. Jared Goff was the quarterback and the one at Arizona was a Hail Mary after they got an onside kick to win the game. He’s known Dykes a long time and has a lot of respect for them. He forgot they played against TCU in the Blue Bonnett Bowl. Rodriguez said he does remember walking off the field after his last college game and he was happy they won but he said it doesn’t seem fair because when he was a freshman he played in three JV games and lost a year of eligibility. He said he wishes it would be nice to have another year of eligibility.
–Rodriguez said he will bring it up that it’s an honor that they get to have to bring that coal mining industry to the state and he hopes they understand how hard that profession is and how they don’t have it very hard.
–Max Brown wasn’t 100–percent ready to go in there so it’s been a unique challenge. Rodriguez thinks that Brown is ready this week but he wants to see what he can do in practice. He has good arm talent, he’s a big physical guy and a tough guy but he likes his competitiveness.
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