Those that follow the West Virginia football program are already familiar with what head coach Rich Rodriguez wants to do on the offensive side of the ball.
Rodriguez previously coached the Mountaineers from 2001-07 and led the program to a 60-26 record with his run-based spread offense. And in many ways a lot of the elements remain the same.
“We still play with 11 and use the quarterback a lot in the run game. The pass game has changed a little bit. A little bit more different concepts and a few things,” he said.
But like all good coaches Rodriguez has continued to evolve what he does on the offensive side of the ball. Every year the head coach and his staff study that his team does and then some of the other stuff across the college football landscape to see if it fits into what they’re doing.
It’s a natural process but it comes down not to what you call on any given play, but what the players on the roster can execute at a high level.
In terms of personnel changes, the biggest from his first stint in Morgantown is the use of the tight end position within the offense. Rodriguez used to employ more 10-personnel looks and occasionally some 11-personnel with a tight end, but that has shifted quite drastically in recent years.
“Now we’re 11-personnel with one tight end in the game probably 70-percent of the time and sometimes two tight ends and then sometimes three tight ends,” Rodriguez said. “We have evolved to using those guys a lot.”
When Rodriguez took the job in December, West Virginia added a pair of experienced tight ends from the transfer portal in Jacksonville State transfer Jacob Barrick who played in the scheme last year and Iowa transfer Johnny Pascuzzi. That was a sign of what was to come.
Barrick played 372 snaps last season, while another tight end on the Gamecocks roster in Sean Brown played a total of 542 proving the change when it comes to the utilization of the spot.
The biggest reason for the shift is because the Mountaineers want to continue to play at a tempo and be able to get into different things with versatile bodies on the roster.
“Be able to use the tight end in different ways in the run game. It was kind of shifting to where you could get those 240, 245-pound guys that can play in space,” he said. “Before they were big blocker types, and you never split them out. Our tight ends will be split out as much or more than they are in tight.”
It’s just another way to present problems for opposing offenses and the position gives Rodriguez and his offense an extra element in what it can do.
“It’s certainly given us a different dimension offensively, but it’s also allowed us to play with the tempo we want at times,” Rodriguez said.
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