Rich Rodriguez Radio Show Summary 10-27
West Virginia head coach Rich Rodriguez made his weekly appearance on his radio show Monday night and WVSports.com provides a summary of what was said.
–Rodriguez said he was really appreciative of the crowd and it was a great atmosphere. Rodriguez hints they have a big one coming in tomorrow for an official visit without naming any names and Colorado game they will have 10 official visitors and about 100 unofficial visits.
–Rodriguez said they can’t have mistakes against football good teams and win. West Virginia has to be able to move people better up front. They need to be able to get first downs to have their tempo to take effect. If they would have gotten any of those short yardage firsts downs they would have hit their target number of 25 in order to win.
–Rodriguez put the ones against the ones in practice Thursday and Friday and they’ll probably do that in order to compete. He can’t stand to be around players or coaches that don’t want to compete. They had lost some of that but got that back a little last week.
—Scotty Fox was good passing the ball. He had a couple snaps he dropped, and a couple freshmen moments in the pass game but he was accurate with the ball and saw the field well. He’s a good competitor but you have to be able to run the football better. The coaches limited some of the RPOs with him in the game and tried to make the decisions simpler not just for him but the wideouts. As the players grow up in the system you can expand that. He did a good job with that and they probably found a little bit of their best things they can do moving forward. They ran him less because of the situation at quarterback and while they don’t want to play scared they have to be aware. Max Brown should be better this week and there is a chance that Khalil Wilkins should be able to dress but that’s doubtful. It will be a couple weeks until Jaylen Henderson is ready.
–Safety Jordan Walker broke his arm and he’s out for the year after he had been playing well. Offensive lineman Malik Agbo has a high-ankle sprain and he’s doubtful.
–Rodriguez said his team competed hard but the goal is to win. The expectation is to play hard and it’s the standard. They solved one problem but now they have to play hard and play efficiently. They had to get that playing hard piece out of the way first.
–Rodriguez felt that the defense tackled better and they weren’t hesitant to trigger. They want to blitz and pressure the quarterback but he gets it off so quickly but they were able to hit him early. They have to do that defensively in order to get some momentum and for the most part they played well. TCU took some deep shots and tested their corners and they held up pretty well. When you bring pressure the guys in the backend have to cover.
–Rodriguez said he has never gotten a 15-yard penalty but he’s deserved about 20 of them in his career.
—Willie Fritz is a long time winner and has moved up the ranks. He didn’t know him, he knew of him back in his day at junior college but when he got the Tulane job they got to know each other. He knew that when Houston hired him that they would have success. Fritz is involved a little bit in everything they do a lot of things defensively and are aggressive. They are really well coached and fundamentally they are very good. They have a spread offense.
–Rodriguez said it’s not like the NFL where they’ll call a penalty when you don’t look back at the ball as long as you’re in phase. It’s usually they’re chasing a guy and if they look back they’ll lose two steps so you don’t want to do that. You got some fast guys, you have to play the hands more than the ball. Everybody wants a corner that can play press man and not get beat. Their corners are doing a solid job with it but ideally you want those guys to be lengthy too because those wide receivers can high point the ball. Rodriguez said that you have to be able to run, have to be able to watch a corner play press man coverage to see if he can do that. Everybody can play off coverage but you hope you can see that. The competitiveness is a missed thing at times but you want the corners that want the ball thrown at them but the physicality is often missed, too. He doesn’t want anybody that’s O.K. with losing. You better be a 4.5 guy to be a starter at this level of football.
–Rodriguez said that Saturday was a better step than before but the week was more of a turning point with how they practiced and how they got more competitive but he’ll let you know after this week of practice. He felt it during the week and during the game that they’re better than what they’re playing.
—Donovan Haslam has shown some things that he’s going to be O.K. Curtis Jones is a guy that’s playing all special teams and 20 snaps on defense and they might even play him at some short yardage at running back.
–Rodriguez said that he evaluates everything and what they do in strength and conditioning and he thinks all of the injuries are 100-percent bad luck. The medical staff is top notch. He stays involved with what they’re doing in the strength staff and he thinks the guys are doing a great job. You look at how the quarterbacks got hurt it’s just freak things and if they were getting a lot of soft tissue injuries or pulled muscles you think that something isn’t right but these are freak things and there is nothing they can do in the weight room. But they have to get bigger and stronger. All the other positions what they test at the combine in the NFL they need to test and they need to work it.
–Rodriguez said that he does view these games as an evaluation of everybody on the team but that’s not because of where they’re at, it’s what you have to do every year. With the revenue sharing thing coming up they’re not just going to throw money to a guy that’s not earned it, you have to earn success so it’s a great opportunity for guys to do that.
–If Rodriguez made a mistake in evaluation and paid him more than he’s worth then that’s on them, too. If you’ve shown the right stuff mentally they will ride it another year but if you didn’t do anything well or aren’t working hard it’s not personal, it’s strictly business. Rodriguez wants to try to sign players to at least a two year deal and if they leave they have to pay it. He jokes he knows all about that.
–Rodriguez said you’re never going to change a call but you can let them know you’re disappointed. He thinks you can review things, but you can’t review judgement calls but you should have at least one challenge flag for a judgement call and say I think you’re judgement might have been off on this one. Rodriguez thinks it will take some of the pressure off the officials.
—Jimmori Robinson missed some reps due to a personal issue during the week but the coaching staff did not think he was ready to play with the plan they had. He has to make himself ready to play.
–Rodriguez always felt they had a chance to win it until two minutes left in the game last week.
–There’s a lot of people around the state that look up to the players with how they act, how they play. You are on West Virginia’s team and there is a certain responsibility with that.
–Rodriguez said all the pain they’re going through will be remembered. And before you know it, it will be a different beast when you come in here there will won’t be a seat not filled and they will keep their foot on the gas and when the twos come in they’ll look like the ones.
–Rodriguez said they can kick it right or left on the onside kick but the two teammates blocked the guy in front of them and the kicker will recover it themselves in the middle. It bounced into the kicker’s chest, but then into their guys. It was a pretty good kick.
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