Rich Rodriguez press conference summary: 8-16
West Virginia head coach Rich Rodriguez addressed the media Saturday following the second scrimmage of fall camp, and WVSports.com provides a summary of what was said.
–Finished the scrimmage was around 80 plays. He felt the effort was good at first view. Had some unforced errors and mistakes. And they played a lot of young guys to get some film on them. Going to have some long meetings tomorrow with the coaches and plan for the upcoming week.
–Rodriguez hasn’t seen a bunch of mental mistakes in practice and they’ve handled it pretty well on the defensive side of the ball. Even the guys from high school are getting coached really well now and while they haven’t been coached in the scheme, they are hoping to add to that fundamentally. Still need to do the basics and fundamentals of playing defense at this level.
–Rodriguez felt the tackling was OK. He doesn’t know if they weren’t explosive enough to make them miss but there was a lot of people around the ball when they practiced. He is looking for effort on both sides.
–The start of it, they had a couple unforced errors and not lining up right in the formation at wide receiver, there is no excuse for that. The offensive lineman was lined up in the backfield and he was warned by the official and still did it. That can’t happen.
–The offense and the defense were about the same in terms of progression. They are going to run their stuff and they’re not worried. Mostly, younger guys they completed a lot of young touchdown passes. He saw some of the back and forth that he wants to see.
–Rhett Rodriguez has five or six of the quarterbacks on helmet communication daily. Rhett will be the guy doing that on game day. They work on it every day.
–The total practice structure will stay the same but who and what they will hone in on could change depending on what happens in the meetings with the coaches.
They could go quick huddle and not use signals, but they change it up and change the guy that is signaling and they have a variety of different signals for the same play. If there was a Michigan situation, they would be ready. If you’re going fast it’s hard to pick up on what they got.
–Rodriguez said he told his guys the town is going to be packed and they need to be respectful with students coming back to town. Every player represents every other player on the team.
–Rodriguez thinks it’s a pretty mature team with a whole lot of seniors when asked about being worried about players going crazy with students back. He said they’re mature and want to stay focused.
–By next Wednesday, when school starts, you can’t get 50 or 60 guys ready to play a game, there isn’t enough time to have reps. They’re going to start having scout teams by next Wednesday and Thursday and he’s going to explain the importance to them.
–The perimeter guys did stretch the field and make some plays today. There were a couple guys that made catches. He doesn’t even look at individuals as much instead of just offense and defense. Jordan McCants, Christian Hamilton and Cyrus Traugh made a couple of really good contested catches. And there was some really good balls thrown.
–If you have a guy clearly separate, he would know that himself but there’s no reason for him to stay that or even include anybody else in that decision at quarterback. He is going to have to evaluate all week to find the true order at the position. He has an idea where they’re at and he wants to see if somebody will separate in the next six or seven days at quarterback.
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