While Rodriguez is adapting to the times, his offensive roots remain the same
West Virginia head coach Rich Rodriguez returns to WVU for the first time in almost 20 years as he is once again the head coach of the Mountaineers.
While Rodriguez has certainly seen it all in college football, he makes sure to continuously learn on the offensive side of the ball, while he still sticks to his roots.
“There’s a lot of trends in football. It used to be, it would start at the NFL level, then to college level, then high school level. And now you’re seeing pro teams take high school concepts or college concepts and put it in there,” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez started to modernize the no-huddle offense, focusing on going fast and running the ball, not allowing defenses to keep pace.
“It was more fun 20 years ago when not as many people were using tempo or spread formations, because you were unique, now it’s not as unique. But at the same time, I think you gotta be who you are, you know, and also be able to adapt,” Rodriguez said.
Being who he is for Rodriguez means going with a lot of tempo and focusing on running the ball. Last season at Jax State, Rodriguez’s offense was third nationally in rush attempts per game, third in rushing yards per game, and fourth in team rushing play percentage.
“We’re running a lot of the same stuff that we ran 20 years ago, but we’re doing some of that stuff better, and we’re doing some other stuff that other people have done better than us and copied them. I enjoy that part of it,” Rodriguez said.
No matter the scheme on the field, Rodriguez said it’s always going to come down to getting players to play hard, and understand what their role is for a given play.
“I still think getting players to play really, really hard, and harder than they ever thought they could play, is part of coaching as well, that we take pride in. But the scheme part of it, I don’t go into every game and say, well, we’re gonna out-scheme these guys, and we’re gonna be the smartest guys on there. It’s not what you cause, what you can execute, so I’ve probably become simpler as opposed to more exotic, if that’s the word from a scheme standpoint, but the playing hard and playing physical aspect is never going to change,” Rodriguez said.
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