Rich Rodriguez Takes Accountability For Early Struggles With WVU Football

WVU football head coach Rich Rodriguez is certainly taking some accountability for his team’s struggles so far.

The Mountaineers have started the football season 2-5 and are still winless through four games in Big 12 play. Fans are unhappy with the effort being put on the field by Rodriguez’s team.

But one thing you can’t do is say that Rodriguez isn’t deflecting the blame for the poor start, or refusing to take accountability. Many fans and pundits will choose to attack a coach regardless of what they say when the performance isn’t up to standard, but you won’t find Rodriguez trying to kick the can down the road on answering for the early troubles. 

“I'm evaluating anything and everything to do with our football program, including myself,” Rodriguez said during his weekly press conference on Tuesday. “We're putting the pieces together, but it's been painfully obvious it's taking longer than we hoped.”

“Some of it is bad luck. Some of it is missed evaluations. Some of it is we [as coaches] need to adapt quicker to certain situations,” Rodriguez added.

This comes one day after Rodriguez talked about how he sees the team has had a lack of intensity and lack of identity this season. It shows he knows there are issues inside the program at the moment and he’s working to get them fixed. He even talked at one point about feeling like it was time to make sure younger players get a shot, which he’s been hesitant to fully commit to yet this year. 

"Frankly, we're going to give some other guys a shot. We're not going to be insane here and try the same thing and hope for different results.... there are going to be a few guys who will get a new shot."