Saturday brought the first day in pads for West Virginia and some mixed results.
While head coach Rich Rodriguez saw some good moments out of his football team where they were playing with an edge, there were some other times that it’s clear there is a lot of work left to do.
“I saw too many periods of softness and we’ll have to get that fixed,” he said.
That takes time and often Rodriguez said that it often spans the entire spring to establish some of what he wants to see out of his football team on that front. That’s because with any regime change there is a lot of shifting going on and you’re trying to juggle multiple things at once such as teaching the system, schemes and techniques as well as how he wants his football program to operate.
West Virginia plans to tackle in scrimmage situations throughout the spring when the Mountaineers go live, but the bulk of the padded work will be thudding and tagging. That is essentially playing football while staying up high and not taking guys to the ground. There are no cut blocks or tackles, either.
“I didn’t see any of that today so that was good but we still have to learn when you’re doing thud it’s not half speed. I think when you don’t go live sometimes you don’t go as full speed as you need to so the key is to teach our guys to go full speed but not always tackling,” Rodriguez said.
Still those live situations will be critical for the ongoing evaluation of the football team.
When it comes to special teams, West Virginia does not plan to do any live kickoff or kick returns but the Mountaineers will focus on punt, punt block, field goal, field goal block and other areas. However, when it comes to kickoffs, Rodriguez believes that the key will be a specialist that can boot the ball into the end zone for touchbacks which is why the staff recruited transfer kicker Ethan Head.
One area that West Virginia added a lot of pieces was in the secondary with nine transfer additions due to the fact that the unit struggled last season. The competition is good there, but they’re still in the process of sorting out just where certain players fit into the picture.
“Do we have a solid eight or nine right there? I can’t tell you that,” he said.
Two players that already have experience both playing for Rodriguez at Jacksonville State as well as under coordinator Zac Alley two years ago are safety Fred Perry and cornerback Derek Carter. Both understand the mentality needed to play for Rodriguez and the coaches are plenty familiar with what both of them bring to the table from a skill set perspective as well.
“That’s the reason we kind of brought them in, they’re kind of proven. They’re not handed a spot here, they have to earn that but at least they have a little bit of an advantage,” Rodriguez said.
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