Editor's Note: The original headline for this article, still appearing in Google's search results, indicate Rich Rodriguez was "discouraged" with his team's performance in practice. The actual term Rodriguez used was "disappointed," and the author of this article mistakenly flipped the two words around as Rodriguez used both words in short succession while speaking on Thursday. We apologize for the mistake, which has since been corrected.
WVU football has only made it through two practices during fall camp, but head coach Rich Rodriguez is already a bit wary of some things he’s seen from his team.
The Mountaineers have limited time with fall camp to prepare for the season – WVU opens their 2025 campaign in just 30 days when Robert Morris visits Milan Puskar Stadium in Morgantown. With a roster that includes over 70 new players but returns just 17 lettermen, urgency is key.
“I didn’t think we took great steps today. I thought we were a little bit soft at times. We got some good in, but it wasn’t the step that we probably needed to take. We got to get better tomorrow,” Rodriguez said after Thursday’s practice. "I'm disappointed, but not discouraged."
Rodriguez enters the season with over a quarter-century of coaching experience, but putting together a new coaching staff and overhauling a roster means that you will inevitably run into moments along the way there the staff hasn’t fully adjusted to the exact approach needed with their new team, and the players aren’t quite yet in a place where they fully understand what’s expected of them.
According to Rodriguez, he doesn’t believe it should be the players’ job to figure it out, either – he accepts responsibility for the coaching staff needing to get the team to that point, and that they need to continue to figure out how to push their athletes to a point that prepares the team for success this fall.
“I addressed it with the team, and there’s not a whole lot of experience in that group so I’m not expecting, like, a handful of guys to, like, grab ahold of it and be leadership, that’s our job as coaches…we got to make sure we’re pushing them to the point where they learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable, and they’re not there yet.”