The game of College Football has changed drastically over the past decade. The game many fans grew to know has completely changed and evolved. As for Rich Rodriguez, he has had to adapt his coaching style and offensive schemes to any change that college football has seen in the last decade.
In a recent press conference Rich was asked in particular about how his offense has evolved since the last time he coached in Morgantown. “the base elements are still the same,” said Rodriguez. “We use the quarterback a lot in the run game, you know the pass game has changed a little bit.” Rich is right, the past couple of years college football has seen a switch on the offensive side of the ball where most teams rely more on the passing game and the quarterback run over the traditional establishment of the run game.
With these changes come different schemes and play styles. Each is different based on the coach, and Rich Rodriguez draws inspiration from other schools to use to his team’s advantage. “We study what we do then study good stuff some other people do,” said Rodriguez, “to see if it fits in without being too complicated.”
“I think one of the problems too many coaches do, they try to be the smartest guy in the room,” explains Rodriguez “they want to come up with all of these elaborate schemes.”
Rodriguez goes on to explain that not only the younger coaches on his staff have a habit of doing that but young coaches all around college football do the exact same thing. “they got a lot of great ideas,” said Rodriguez, “its not what you call it’s what you can execute.”
According to Rich Rodriguez, the most important thing that he makes sure is right with both the defensive and offensive staff is being able to “find out what we can execute, then make sure we do a good job evaluating our guys too.”
It seems that Rich Rodriguez has stepped up to the plate and has evolved to the current landscape of college football, if he can get his offensive and defensive staff to evolve with him and have the same visions, the Mountaineers could be a scary team to face in the Big 12.
