Rich Rodriguez will use camp to better learn changing roster
West Virginia head coach Rich Rodriguez opens his first fall camp in his second stint over top the program facing a lot of change.
While there are over 70 new players on the roster from last season, in actuality it’s quite different for all involved, even those that spent the spring with the program.
“It’s starting a new job with 115 new players. They’re all new to the scheme we’re doing right now,” Rodriguez said. You have to have an idea of how you’re going to teach it.”
To prove the newness of his team, Rodriguez brought a sheet to the first practice which outlined the year, position and number for each of the players on the roster. And while he can now recognize faces and positions he still doesn’t know his team as well as he needs to.
That comes with time and the next 20-days will be critical in accomplishing that including what Rodriguez refers to as “fireside chats,” where he and players will sit down to get to know each other.
“I love doing that because all of these guys have unique stories,” he said.
Some of the challenges are helped by the fact that being able to work with players in the month of June in off-season training activities provides a better base than in the past. But still, there’s still work to do.
Fortunately for Rodriguez he has over 30-years of experience as a coach to handle the offensive side, while he trusts his defensive coordinator Zac Alley to do the same on defense. Then it’s Rodriguez’s job to put it all together and be as efficient as possible in the process.
But even with that experience there are still some learning curves. Rodriguez points to last season at Jacksonville State when he was pleased with how camp unfolded but his team started the year slow so is looking at things to tweak and improve heading into this year.
“Ninety-percent of our team has not played a lot of football at this level so we have to have in our mind the lack of experience but if you can play, you can play and it’s our job as coaches to get them ready to play,” Rodriguez said.
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