WVU football head coach Rich Rodriguez is in the middle of his second week leading his first preseason camp back in Morgantown since 2007. The team had their first practice session in full pads on Tuesday, but Rodriguez cut it a little shorter than he would have liked. What is the reasoning behind the decision?
"I probably would have gone a little longer, but then I got mad at something and I just made them run," Rodriguez told the press on Tuesday.
It's the type of grumpy, baby boomer quote from an old-school coach that earns some laughs and maybe goes viral on social media. But when he gets into exactly why he got mad enough to cut live reps short and indulge in some good old-fashioned punishment runs, it hints at an issue Rodriguez is having getting his players quite where he wants them to be mentally through the first week of preseason practices.
"There's way too many moments of softness," Rodriguez said of the team's sixth day of practice. "It's not everybody all the time, and it's not the same guy all the time, but it can't ever be allowed. Sometimes, our guys don't even realize that they're being soft. I don't want to say it's in their DNA, it's just that their version of going hard and ours hasn't quite measured up all the time."
WVU HC Rich Rodriguez on Day 6 of camp: "There were way too many moments of softness."
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So what is it exactly that about the team's approach that has Rodriguez so fired up he's lamenting "moments of softness" in practice? Well, he went into a little detail about what he'd like to see in terms of aggression.
"There should be some collisions, or sounds of collisions. And up front, the o-line and d-line, it looks sometimes like they're tango dancing instead of playing football," he said.
It did say he still "likes his team" and overall, seems to be optimistic that the aggression and intensity he wants to see from his team will come along sooner rather than later. And how will he know for certain that the team is there?
"When I ain't got to yell," he said.