West Virginia head coach Rich Rodriguez believes that he’s a smarter coach than the one that was on the sidelines in Morgantown 17-years ago in his first tenure.
And that’s not just in the realm of schemes or how the team practices, but how they approach recruiting and development as well. Some of that is experience, but it’s also easier to get information in this day and age.
One area that this is evident is when it comes to positions and how Rodriguez and his coaching staff will teach them. In the past, Rodriguez was admittedly guilty of pigeon-holing certain body types into certain positions especially at the wide receiver spot.
“You label your guy an outside guy and you don’t give him reps on the inside and that’s a mistake,” he said. “I want all our wideouts to learn our four wide out positions and that will probably take throughout the summer until that can happen. This guy is a taller guy he’s an outside receiver and a shorter guy he’s an inside receiver and I think we make a mistake not teaching them all.”
The same can be said for other spots on the field such as offensive tackles and guards or even the various defensive backs that the Mountaineers plan to play in their defense.
The nickel is going to be more of a hybrid defensive back/outside linebacker so that will require more physicality, but West Virginia also will have packages where the best man coverage options will be on the field at once in order to combat what they will see with opposing offenses.
“We’re going to play man. Everybody has to play man but if we can play man and play man without a lot of help behind them then we’re going to do what we want to do,” he said. “And we’re doing man coverage every day.”
And that positional versatility is going to be more important than ever if the pending House Settlement mandates that roster sizes be reduced to 105 over their current totals.
That would mean that wide receivers would need to learn all four positions, running backs would need to play in the slot and in the backfield, offensive linemen would need to play multiple roles and the same on the defensive front.
That’s because while that 105 number seems like a lot some of those scholarships are already tied up with specialists and quarterbacks so there will need to be some creativity.
“Everybody says the NFL only has 53 but as soon as somebody gets hurt they have somebody on the practice squad they can pull up or they can get somebody off the street in free agency that they can pull up and we can’t do that,” Rodriguez said. “So, once you lose a guy whatever. It’s a different challenge but we’ll manage it like everybody else.”
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