West Virginia offensive line coach Jack Bicknell has become known as a “player’s coach,” over the course of his long career.
The veteran offensive line coach has always placed an emphasis on caring for his players, but at the same time, pushing them hard to get the best out of them.
It goes back to a piece of advice that his father gave him when he took the head coaching job at Louisiana Tech earlier in his career.
“Treat every player like they’re your own son. And I always try to keep that in mind,” he said.
Now, that doesn’t mean that Bicknell always tells them what they want to hear and doesn’t demand excellence out of his position, but it’s always clear that he cares for his units.
“But also, we're going to push you to be the highest level you can be, and we're not going to accept anything but your best,” Bicknell said.
That matches the expectations out of head coach Rich Rodriguez as both don’t want to accept less of what any player could be. It also helps Bicknell’s case that he has already coached at the NFL level for seven years and if players want to eventually make it there, he understands exactly what that takes.
“Motivation is not a thing in the NFL. You come motivated. You come ready to go. So, as long as you do that, and we play hard every snap, then I'm just going to coach you up just like I did at that level, you know,” he said.
Bicknell has been around the game for almost his entire life and while a lot of things have changed about the game, the game itself hasn’t and for the most part neither have the players.
“I think there's still competitors. It still teaches the same lessons. It's still the great game,” he said.
Bicknell believes that many of the same lessons can still be taught and the fundamentals such as blocking, tackling, leverage and hand placement are the same as when he played the game.
But there is a difference in how you connect with certain players depending on how they prefer to be coached. For example, if a player is going to go in the tank if you raise your voice at him, there isn’t a lot of benefit in doing that, while others that could be what motivates them.
“There’s a certain way of doing things,” he said.
Still, even now Bicknell enjoys the bonds that he forges with his players and the influence that he can have on a young man’s life. He treats it as a blessing that he still is able to do that even if it isn’t always the easiest thing or what they always want to hear when he’s coaching them.
“There’s a very distinct way of doing things. That’s the way we’re going to do it and we’re going to do it with a hard edge and strain,” Bicknell said.
Thus far the offensive line coach has seen a lot of great attitudes in his position room, and he is eager to see how they continue to develop as things proceed forward.
“It's a process for us. Each day we've got to go get things fixed. And like Coach Rod says, like, we can't miss a day and, like, not fix that because then we've got something else to fix the next day. We've got to get everything fixed, you know. And you can make mistakes, but let's get it fixed, and then we can move on to the next thing,” Bicknell said.
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