Today marked day four of Spring Practice for Rich Rodriguez and the rest of his football team. Even though it is still early and many mistakes were made, Rodriguez still has already seen things from his players that he really likes.
Rodriguez started off discussing what he particularly liked in different areas of the game. The first part discussed was the learning aspect of football. “Whether they are a new guy transferred in or a guy that was here, it is all new terminology,” said Rodriguez, “you know, every coach has different terminology and some different methods.”
That is a part of the learning curve, no matter where you go, each coaching style and coaching method is completely different. For Rodriguez he really likes how his revamped roster has worked at learning things as quickly as they have to learn his schematics.
“I think they’ve done a good job of trying to learn as quickly as they can,” said Rodriguez, “you know offensively is a little different pace so the learning curve is not slow.”
As many fans know, slow is not a word in Rodriguez’s vocabulary. He likes to not only play the game fast but work fast as well. This sets Rodriguez apart from many coaches around the country as a lot of coaches will teach their guys slow and speed up as time goes on but for Rich Rodriguez he starts you off fast and then keeps you moving fast which is a unique play style many people are not used to seeing. Meaning when it comes to game time, Rich Rodriguez hopes to overwhelm to opposing team with the speed at which his guys are expected to play at.
“A lot of coaches will tell you to teach it slower and then speed it up later,” said Rodriguez, “But you know we do just the opposite, we are going to teach you as fast as we can and hope it sinks in.”
Overall, Rodriguez likes what he sees from his players, there is some sloppy play but, he understands that that is a part of the growing pains and learning curves of undertaking a new program. If he can get his running backs to run with authority, as he mentioned in his press conference, and clean up the mistakes over the coming weeks, the Mountaineers will be in great standings with the rest of the Big Twelve.
