There’s still a lot of value in going live.
West Virginia head coach Rich Rodriguez has learned that the hard way over the years especially when it comes to seeing what players at certain positions can do.
“I do think as much as you get everything out of them without going on 11 on 11 scrimmaging or whatever I think you have to have those moments when you’re playing football,” he said.
That is especially true at the quarterback position where you don’t often get to see them live to see if they’re a little different and how they handle the role. Especially in terms of running the football as the Mountaineers want to always play with 11.
That was something that Rodriguez was able to see first-hand last season at Jacksonville State when transfer Tyler Huff showcased an ability to run that wasn’t there in practice.
“Until we played Louisville the second game of the year he was live and making a guy miss and running over DBs and I was like ‘holy cow, this guy is a whole lot better than we thought’,” Rodriguez said.
That was the case with Pat White when he was in Morgantown as well and jumped into the game against Louisville when Adam Bednarik went down with an injury.
“He goes in there and leads us to a comeback win. He was live in practice but he was sure as hell a lot faster in that game than I remember in practice,” Rodriguez said.
Those examples are things that Rodriguez has used as a learning experience over the years in order to put more live opportunities in practice. That is something he certainly plans to do this spring.
“We’re going to try ro get our guys in those live situations but not doing so much that you’re beating them up or taking too much risk,” Rodriguez said.
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