MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Tuesday marked West Virginia’s first fully-padded and contact practice of preseason camp.
The Mountaineers didn’t make it the allotted time head coach Rich Rodriguez intended for.
“I probably would have gone a little bit longer,” Rodriguez said, “but I got mad at something, made them run for 10-15 minutes and ended practice.”
Coincidentally enough, his disdain for what transpired toward the end of practice wasn’t what drew the most ire from Rodriguez after it.
“That wasn’t the reason I got upset at the end, but there are way too many moments of softness,” Rodriguez said. “It’s not everybody all the time or the same guy all the time. It can’t ever be allowed. Sometimes our guys don’t even realize that they’re being soft. I don’t want to say it’s in their DNA. Their version of going hard and ours hasn’t quite measured up all the time.”
Rodriguez estimated 20-25 minutes of Tuesday’s session was a live football-like setting. Quarterbacks were held out of live activity until Thursday and Rodriguez anticipates amping up their workload in the near future after he said Monday, “the days in pads, we’ll probably be more live with our quarterbacks than I’ve ever been in training camp, just simply because we have to find out who can do what.”
West Virginia will not have a fully-padded practice Wednesday, but Rodriguez is eager to see the response from his team come Thursday ahead of what he feels is an important weekend.
“We don’t tackle or cut block low, so everything is up high. I don’t want cheap shots and the guys understand that,” Rodriguez said. “But there should be some collisions or sounds of collisions. Up front, the o-line and d-line sometimes look like they’re tango dancing instead of playing football. I didn’t eat a big breakfast and that’s good, because there are certain things that might make you lose your breakfast.
“I still like our guys. I like our team. They’re very conscientious. Tomorrow, we’ll be in shorts. Thursday, when we go full pads, I think it’ll improve a notch and then Saturday we scrimmage. Saturday is when we really have to get after it and take another step.”
Rodriguez noted getting his team to cut back on what he labels egregious football mistakes is one the toughest challenges the WVU coaching staff faces at this point.
“I wasn’t yelling the whole practice, but there are some moments where you almost have to overemphasize things, not just for that particular player, so all the players at that position or that have that role understand it,” Rodriguez said. “The last thing you have to do and the guys understand this, we can’t make the same mistakes tomorrow as we did today. Some of the things that are egregious in a football sense, we really have to make a point out of, because everybody has to understand that part of it. Running a route at the wrong depth or something like that, but if you run the wrong route because you’re lazy and don’t do a particular technique in that route, that is a different type of dynamic to get corrected.”
Rodriguez believes much of what he’d like to eliminate moving forward pertains to the latter.
“You either didn’t know what you’re doing, which that’s typically not the case, or you’re too lazy to do it the right way,” he said. “Typically, the thing I get most upset about is they take the easy way out. They take the lazy way out. I said a couple days ago, everything is made for them to be easier. Unfortunately, sometimes they take that to the football sense and take the easy ride during a technique when the hard way is the better way.
“But our guys are very conscientious, so the next day in pads we’ll be a little more physical up front and in-tune to the details when going live to not be lazy with techniques.”
The challenge of figuring out what does and doesn’t work best is enhanced by having a largely new-look roster working under an entirely new coaching staff, though that’s not altogether uncommon for Rodriguez.
A year ago, in his third season as head coach at Jacksonville State, Rodriguez was in a somewhat familiar position with 60 new players on the Gamecocks’ roster.
Jacksonville State started 0-3, losing to Coastal Carolina, Louisville and in double overtime at Eastern Michigan, before rebounding to win eight straight games and finish 9-5.
Rodriguez has vowed to learn from what may have gone wrong in his team’s 2024 preseason camp to prevent the Mountaineers from getting off to a slow start in his second tenure as WVU head coach.
“I keep my notes. If I look back at my notebook from last year after practice 6, I probably had the same notes on there,” Rodriguez said. “It was probably around the same spot. A lot of new guys, a little frustration here and there and a little optimism. That’s kind of where we’re at. I have a little frustration [and] some optimism.“
Rodriguez has consistently expressed confidence in the work ethic across West Virginia’s roster as well as players’ ability to learn from mistakes.
Both now come into focus more so than at the start of this week.
“If I’m doing the same rant a week from now,” Rodriguez said, “I’m going to have some serious concerns.”