Rich Rodriguez press conference summary: 4-13
West Virginia head coach Rich Rodriguez met with the media following spring practice Monday and here is a summary of what was said.
–Finished practice 12 today in shells and didn’t go live but did some thud. Rodriguez thought it was O.K., but his message to the team was as coaches they take great responsibility in increasing everybody’s value. Now, the value is monetized so much and their job as coaches is to make sure they get better every day every time they are with them. The coaches are going to coach them and collectively they have gotten better and individually have gotten better. They have two more practices to do that.
–Rodriguez said that you must get first downs to play with tempo and they didn’t get nearly as much first downs as they need to. When they’ve had successful offenses and are scoring a lot of points they are controlling the tempo. His team needs to be in great shape and play with tempo. Practices are mixed.
–Rodriguez started doing the tempo at Glenville State. He took over and they didn’t win a game the year before. When he got there he was still only a few years into his coaching career but had worked on the defensive side. When he got to Glenville he thought about what scheme he would do and he said as a defensive player the hardest thing to do was go against a team’s two-minute drill. So he wanted to try that. It was different so he wanted to back the quarterback up for his vision. It was shotgun, spread out and fast no huddle and it fit them. It was new and different and the genesis of what he does today started there.
–When Rodriguez got to Tulane with Shaun King they started reading the defensive end and running zone read and counter read and that part of it took off there and then Woody Dantzler at Clemson.
–Rodriguez said that they’re going to have a depth chart but it won’t be finalized until the end of August camp. They split the team up into blue and white and he liked the intensity and competitiveness of it. They had some guys they thought would be ones on each team.
–Live special teams on Wednesday. Hardest part about it is you have to teach them and you don’t want them to go live before they’re doing what you want.
–They’ll do field goal, punt and punt block and they’ll do a lot of special teams in August camp. They aren’t ever going to neglect special teams because it’s too important but at times special teams coaches will do too much. It’s still just 11 guys you’re playing checkers not chess. Rodriguez made the defense hone down their play list and the offense do the same and they still have to evaluate what they have and what they do and not worry about the latest trends.
–Rodriguez said they have to evaluate and teach fundamentals. Whether a guy is transferring in and out or high school kid. The scrimmage was way better because they honed it down and split them up.
—Jack Cassidy has put the ball into the back of the end zone according to his special teams coaches.
–Practices are so spread out over spring. Tomorrow they will have meetings to review what happened today with the young guys. So the freshmen aren’t hitting a wall. They have time to teach them over the summer. If a high school guy is good and wants to play baseball or basketball he wants them to do that. He wants them to play multiple sports and do that if they want to.
—Scotty Fox has played some but he’s still young. Mike Hawkins has been progressing well and he works hard and is here all the time watching film. Max Brown has done some good things. Jyron Hughley is very coachable and they have Wyatt Brown that will be here in the summer.
–Rodriguez thinks that Jaden Bray is set to have a big, big year.
–The coaches wanted to get more athletic at certain spots and bigger on defense and he does think that once you become unsoft you never want to go back to being soft. He can see that shaping on defense. It wasn’t that last year it was bad but it wasn’t to the level that we all expect as far as hard edge every player, every play and every time. There is not one time that a guy is loafing or soft that it isn’t addressed. There can not be one time that happens. They have to be in great shape and know what they’re doing.
–Rodriguez said that everything has changed. The festival they’ll have a lot of activities and things to do for fans to come and enjoy. Saturday they look at it as a scrimmage but it’s a lot more than that. Rodriguez doesn’t know about playing a game against somebody else in the spring. The players are really looking forward to it and the fans are excited to come up and see the new guys and the activities they have. He invites all the fans to come up and see it and bring their family and kids.
–On the offensive line, the communication has to be good and understanding the offense and what needs to be done. Having guys like Cam Griffin and Amare Grayson that have played with Rick Trickett has made a big difference. They have progressed quicker with the communication piece because of coach Trickett and the pieces they’ve brought into the program.
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
