Rich Rodriguez press conference summary: 8-11
West Virginia head coach Rich Rodriguez addressed the media Monday and WVSports.com provides a summary of what was said in his press conference.
–Practice today was in shells they will go full pads Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. They got some situational work in place and have one more week of a lot of evaluation and install. After this week they got to pair down their install and try to get somewhat of a tentative two-deep if they can.
–The jump from group of five to power four is a jump but not as much as you think. But also those four power transfers are more expensive. You want to move up in competition at the group of five level and a lot of the guys they signed is they wanted to be in a bigger stage and some of them got paid a little more.
–Rodriguez said the practices are a little bit different but it’s not that different from everybody else’s structure. It’s a shorter practice and a little more intense than people are used to.
–Effort was pretty good in the scrimmage but the physicality wasn’t where it needed to be up front. Tempo was OK. The biggest takeaway is that they still have a lot more decisions to be made on who will be the first guys running out there at positions. It didn’t clarify it as much as they thought. Football is a physical game and it’s not natural to do some of the things. It’s hard to do it all the time and you don’t want to beat the heck out of each other but at the same time they’re trying to make the guys understand how physical that the games are going to be.
–Rodriguez sees signs of his team potentially being a special group, but it’s still too early. He still has to blow his whistle and they’re not there yet.
–What they feature and try to be really good at they might not figure that out until the season starts. They are still figuring all of that out. All of the quarterbacks can really throw the ball. There isn’t a pass play that’s out there or route package that’s out there where they say they can’t do it because they don’t have the arm strength to make that throw.
–Rodriguez said the faster the guy is at quarterback the more dynamic they’ll be in the run game. They have some guys that are really next level fast, but the other ones run pretty good. Tyler Huff who they had last year was more of a competitive runner. He ran pretty well but he made you tackle him. You don’t have to be Pat White fast to get 1,000 yards rushing but you need to be able to see the space and be willing. All of the quarterbacks run well enough to run the ball in the competition.
–There is some thinking going on up front which led to some penalties and the holding penalties is getting lazy in their technique. They can’t have 10 or 11 penalties like they did on Saturday.
–Rodriguez said that they will pair down the plays in terms of what they can execute. He would rather run 10 plays really, really well than 40 that they run half-ass.
–Rodriguez said they have little experience on the offensive line. He was more concerned about that in the spring before they added a few pieces so he now thinks they have enough bodies but it’s almost like they’re all new. They think they have the guys that have the ability to do it, but they have to do it.
–Rodriguez said that the tight end group is really athletic and they have to do a lot of different things. He thinks they have a pretty good group there.
–Rodriguez said that this team could “probably,” end up throwing the ball more than people think. They are putting more pass plays in than run plays because he’s still figuring out their strengths. That’s certainly a thought for us going into the next two weeks because when they pair it down he isn’t worried about 50-percent run plays or 50-percent pass plays but just the way they can execute it.
–Rodriguez thinks that fullback is going to come back much like the tight ends have in a different way. He’ll be a big running back, a tight end and on occasion you’ll split them out.
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
