West Virginia football head coach Rich Rodriguez is known for his ‘hard edge’ mentality when leading a program. So his thoughts on changing certain special teams rules in college football might come as a surprise to many people.
When asked during a spring football press conference this past Saturday about how he handles practicing special teams during this time of the year, he mentioned that there are a couple specific plays that he doesn’t touch in practice -- and that he wouldn’t mind seeing the NCAA change the model used altogether.
“We don’t do the kickoff and kickoff return, because those are the most dangerous -- I hope we change it to the NFL model,” Rodriguez said.
When further pressed on the subject, Rodriguez went into detail on how dangerous kickoffs are in football, and how often they result in a fair catch -- essentially negating the point of the play.
“Yeah, it's the most dangerous play in football, that’s why they changed it in the NFL. Yeah, I know it can kind of be exciting, but even in the NFL, there’s still what, 70-something percent of them are fair caught,” Rodriguez said.
He also potentially prepped fans not to expect the kick return to be a big part of his team’s identity at WVU during this go-round -- while he did note that his team has some good potential kick returners, he also referenced some of his team’s return stats from last season at Jacksonville State that suggests he might not put a ton of focus onto bringing back kickoffs.
“We [Jacksonville State] were second in the conference last year in kick returns -- we only had one,” Rodriguez said. “We didn’t bring a lot of them back.”