In Saturday’s loss to Arizona State, WVU football was a mere couple of yards away from the end zone on more than one occasion, yet were unable to cross the goal line. This, by far, appeared to be the most frustrating aspect of the game for head coach Rich Rodriguez based on his comments from his postgame press conference.
“You’ve still got to be able to run the ball… when everyone knows you’re going to run it.”
The irony of the Mountaineers having these short-yardage struggles on Saturday comes from the fact that Rodriguez basically foretold of the upcoming struggles earlier in the week during his weekly radio show. While speaking on that program to begin the week, the WVU coach expressed his interest in adding fullbacks into the offense to help with the aforementioned short-yardage situations.
“I want a fullback, believe it or not. I want an Owen Schmitt type of fullback and I think I want two of them.” Rodriguez would continue on the topic by explaining why he wants to see the position added.
“We need one, they could play the role in short-yardage and that kind of stuff… When Owen Schmitt would play, he would break his facemask and hurt himself, but he would hurt them more often. That’s like going into a boxing match with someone that throws punches nonstop. You hate to find that guy. That’s what I want to be, I want to be the team that you hate to play.”
Essentially, Mountaineer fans had the chance to hear these comments earlier in the week, and then, had the opportunity to witness exactly why the WVU head man feels this way in real-time on Saturday as the Mountaineers struggled to convert in multiple short-yardage and goal line situations.
Of course, it should be mentioned that a fullback alone will likely not rectify these short-yardage woes, as some of that still falls on the offensive line as well. The lack of an ability to get push up-front has been a pretty consistent problem throughout the 2025 season for WVU. Saturday’s game marked the third time this season that the West Virginia rushing offense failed to pick-up even 100 yards total as a team.
Offensive line improvements will certainly be a high priority for WVU football this offseason, and we could see multiple changes there before 2026. However, it remains to be seen if Rodriguez will try to employ a fullback at some point in the final regular season game, as he has stated they have been repping some defensive players to potentially be blocking backs. After Saturday’s short-yardage struggles though, you have to believe there is a decent chance of seeing a fullback lineup in the Mountaineers’ backfield in a couple of weeks against Texas Tech.
Regardless of when it happens or how it happens, the WVU offense must find a way to turn these short-yardage struggles into short-yardage successes as the rushing offense will be a major key to the Mountaineers success moving forward in the Rich Rod 2.0 era.
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