Coach Rod Sees Improvement in His Football Team Monday Morning
August 04, 2025 04:08 PM | Football
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By: John Antonik
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Rich Rodriguez thought his transfer-laden West Virginia football team took a step in the right direction this morning on the Steve Antoline Family Practice Field.
Monday morning's workout in shells ended with individual one-on-one competitions to determine which team had to do push-ups to complete practice.
"We took some steps today, and there is a lot of healthy competition at a lot of spots," he said.
Dusty Rutledge, the team's senior associate athletics director and chief of staff, keeps track of offensive and defensive points during the seven-on-seven and team portions of practice and announces them over the public address system. Each good play is assigned a point value with more points going for touchdowns and turnovers.
Following the final period of practice this morning, the two units were within one point, so Rodriguez had to settle it with a goal-line competition featuring an offensive lineman versus a defensive lineman.
"As a coach, you hope it usually winds up being pretty close, which it did today so being within one point, we had to end it with the big fat guys doing one-on-one on the goal line," he joked. "I call them fat, which is a term of endearment, but we had the O-linemen running routes, which it took quite a bit of time for them to get there, even on the 2-yard-line, and our D-lineman was guarding them press-man.
"Surprisingly, we had two O-linemen make big-time, SportsCenter highlight catches to win the day," he said.
Nick Krahe's impressive catch to conclude Monday's football practice up on the Steve Antoline Family Practice Field (Raquel Rodriguez/Mountaineer Football photo).
The first one, made by 6-foot-6, 305-pound sophomore offensive tackle Nick Krahe, was a sight to behold. His twisting, one-handed grab in the back of the end zone with his feet landing in bounds had everyone on the practice field "oohing and awwing."
The catch that followed, by 6-foot-4, 294-pound junior center Landen Livingston, was just as impressive in tight coverage. Although it was just for fun, those two plays demonstrated that West Virginia has some fairly athletic players up front blocking on offense.
Tuesday morning's practice will be the first in full pads and Rodriguez is anxious to see how his team performs.
"As I told the team, "We might look a little soft in shells because we might not know how to 'thud' and it's not really live tackling to the ground, so hopefully tomorrow we'll get that taken care of," he said.
"When we go live, we're going to find out more about everybody," he added. "Who is going to finish a run? Who can really tackle to the ground? Can you sustain a block? I'm kind of excited for it, and I think our players are, too. We're not doing the Junction Boys thing and wearing them out, doing 'Bull in the Ring' for two hours – just beating the hell out of each other. You can't even do the Oklahoma drill anymore, which was actually a good drill, so we're going to play football. Part of our meeting tonight will be talking to our players about how to play good, hard, physical football, but not being stupid or silly with it."
Also taking part in the full-contact portions of practice will be the five quarterbacks currently taking reps. One of them, junior Nicco Marchiol, visited with media this afternoon.
"Any change is scary at first, but this offense I feel fits me so well," he said. "I really enjoy playing in this offense, and I feel like I'm getting a better grasp of it every day we go out there and that's what camp is for.
"The biggest thing is going to be the tempo," Marchiol noted. "You know what a fast offense is, and you can talk about being fast and everybody wants to be fast, but you come out here and there is a difference jogging up to the ball and sprinting up to the ball on every play."
Rodriguez admits he's still trying to figure out what this team does best, which is what he is ultimately going to do offensively this season.
Last year's Jacksonville State team could really run the football, so Rodriguez ran it 646 times, one fewer time than he ran it in 2023. When he took Arizona to the Fiesta Bowl in 2014, quarterback Anu Solomon was a gifted passer who averaged 40.3 pass attempts per game. The team was basically a 50-50 split that year, attempting 564 passes and 563 runs.
Do you get the picture?
"The first year you are still trying to figure out what your guys do best on both sides of the ball, and in particular the quarterbacks. You're like, 'Okay, this guy does this better' and you want them all to be able to do everything, but inevitably, some guys do some things better than others," Rodriguez explained. "Because they're all new to us, except for a couple of guys at Jax State, we're still evaluating what they do best."
"Everybody has a system, but you gear it to what your players do. We've got time to sort that out," he said.
If it hasn't already, the clock begins speeding up on Tuesday when the full pads go on, particularly for the quarterbacks.
"You can play two receivers, two tight ends or two running backs at a time, but it's hard to play two quarterbacks at a time and when you've got to get five guys reps … I think (quarterbacks coach) Rhett (Rodriguez) has done a good job managing them and the days in pads, we'll probably be more live with our quarterbacks than I ever have in training camp simply because we've got to find out who can do what," he explained.
"Now, we've got to be smart about it, and I've told our (defensive players) about this," Rodriguez added.
"Rhett, Pat (White), myself and Travis (Trickett) we'll probably be talking about these guys every day and what the rotation is. To give them all a chance, we're rolling them all in there and seeing where they're at. You can see that Nicco and Jaylen (Henderson) have got some experience. (Nicco) is quicker to grasp things because he's played football, and he's a sharp guy."
Rodriguez said he will be patient with his quarterbacks, to a degree.
"I always like yelling at quarterbacks anyway," he laughed. "What's my hobby? It's not working in the garden, as you know; it's yelling at quarterbacks!"
Marchiol and the others are getting used to it. What has been surprising to Marchiol is Rodriguez is an equal-opportunity coach when it comes to getting playmakers the football.
"There are ways to get everybody the football," he said. "The tight ends are getting just as many touches as the receivers, and the running backs are getting just as many carries as the quarterbacks."
Briefly:
* Rich Rodriguez isn't against running the same play over and over if the other team can't stop it. He said that was the case last year during one of Jacksonville State's victories.
In football, there is nothing quite like hearing a coach yell, "Run it again!"
"We have a lot of things we can do in our offense, but sometimes it might look like, 'Oh, all they do is run the same play over and over.' I was accused of that last year. An opposing coach said, 'Well, they ran the same play 28 times.' I was like, 'We would have run it 28 more if we had to,'" Rodriguez said. "I don't worry about having variety for the sake of having variety, but inevitably, you want to have answers to certain situations."
* Rodriguez would never turn down a great football player, but he said this afternoon that if he was ever forced to make a choice between signing a great offensive lineman versus a great pass rusher, or a great wide receiver versus a great lockdown cornerback, he would pick the defensive player every time.
"If they don't score, we're not going to lose," he explained. "Maybe I will tell that to Zac Alley."
* As I was walking up the hill to the practice field one day last week, I could hear football's chief of staff, Dusty Rutledge, singing Olivia Newton-John's "Let's Get Physical" over the practice field public address system just ahead of a period change.
"That song will not leave your head now," he told me as I walked by.
He's right, it's now living rent-free in my brain!
* After quarterback, Rich Rod said the most difficult position to master in his system is probably tight end because they are required to do so much these days.
That's somewhat of a surprising answer considering offensive line is usually the stock response typically given by football coaches.
"The things we're doing with our tight ends now in 11-personnel, he's got to block with the strength and power of an offensive lineman and then he's got to be able to run routes in space like a wide receiver," Rodriguez explained. "That's the guy who lines up all over the place for us. The tight ends have the most to learn other than the quarterback."
* Rodriguez said he has no update on the four players Jimmori Robinson, Jeffrey Weimer, Tye Edwards and Justin Harrington who are continuing to wait on their NCAA waivers, although 247 Sports reporter Mike Casazza mentioned to the coach during today's news conference that they have filed a case in federal court seeking injunctive relief.
The legal action was first reported by Sam Ehrlich of The College Sports Litigation Tracker.
"Outstanding," was Rodriguez's response. "I'm hopeful. Those guys have been around, but they have to work out on their own. They can help our program, and those guys have attorneys, so we will see where that goes."
* Marchiol, during his 10-minute visit with media today, said there is carryover from some of the things that he learned during his first two years of college football playing in Neal Brown's "Air Raid" offense.
He specifically listed footwork, precision dropbacks and throwing mechanics. Reading defenses and understanding coverages are also extremely useful.
"Defenses are defenses – one-high or two-high (safeties) – and you've got to know what you are looking at and know how to beat it," he explained. "Decisions have to be made a bit quicker and that goes back to the tempo, which is what we're trying to do. Pre-snap, you've got to know what you're doing, and you've got to have a plan pre-snap more than the other offense (he played here)."
He believes any game experience is helpful.
"With the games I've played, it's always something that I can go back on and have something to compare to," he admitted.
* Senior linebacker Chase Wilson, a Colorado State transfer, was the other player picked for media interviews by the Athletics Communications Staff today.
Wilson, a 6-foot-1, 230-pounder from Arvada, Colorado, was a team captain and an all-conference performer in 2024 for the Rams.
"I was really grateful for my time at Colorado State," he said. "I had a lot of great teammates and a lot of great coaches there. They kind of formed me into the football player and the man that I am today."
So why leave a good situation?
"I just felt like, long-term, my goals as a football player were for me to go to a Power 4 conference," he explained. "It was really quick when I hit the portal and coach Alley reached out to me and his mindset of how he likes to play defense and just his aggressive mindset was something I could really get behind."
Wilson, here last spring, has now had about 20 practices or so facing Rich Rodriguez's up-tempo, spread offense. Our Tony Caridi was among those listening in today, and he asked Wilson what it's like defending Rodriguez's spread.
"One of the younger guys asked a similar question the other day and I kind of equate this to we played Air Force every single year and Air Force is a triple-option team," he said. "Well, you have to be disciplined every single snap because they are reading four guys to one side every single play, and that's similar to Coach Rod's offense.
"You have to be disciplined in your fit with what your job is, or else they are going to exploit that," he added.
And when you insert a Steve Slaton, a Pat White, a Noel Devine or some of the other explosive playmakers that Rodriguez has had in the past, those effective plays that Air Force is running for first downs can turn into long touchdown runs in a snap of a finger!
