Everything Rich Rodriguez Said on His Radio Show Monday Night Following Kansas Loss

Things didn't go as planned for West Virginia over the weekend in Lawrence, and while everyone feels down and out about the situation, head coach Rich Rodriguez is trying his best to remain positive through the struggles.

He discussed a lot of things Monday night during his coaches show at Kegler's with Tony Caridi, ranging from reviewing the tape, development of certain players/positions, recruiting, and much more. Here's everything he said.

How he/team are handling the loss

“That was a tough one. Everybody takes it hard if you follow or love West Virginia football — nobody harder than the coaches and the players. Didn’t think we were physical, didn’t think we coached well. There’s a lot of things we can get better at, and that’s the good side, I guess. We can get better in a hurry. I thought our guys’ attitudes are pretty good. They turned the page last night, and they know what we have at stake — a Utah team coming to our place, so we’ll be ready to go.”

Why the offense is struggling so much

“It can be any number of things. It can be that the call doesn’t match the defense you’re playing, or just one guy makes a mistake in protection. Or one guy makes the wrong read, or one guy runs the wrong route. And when you’re not dominant, I don’t want to say everything has to be perfect, but everything has to be aligned right. Now, there’s going to come a point in time where we don’t have to have everything aligned right, and then you’re still going to be okay. We’re not there. We’re not going to be there all year, so we might as well face it — we have to be better executing than we did on Saturday.”

Injury update

“Well, our starting center (Landen Livingston) is going to be questionable because he got banged up, and he was out. Thankfully, it wasn’t a high ankle sprain; it was more of a deep bruise, which is probably the better outcome. Cyncir Bowers has got a concussion, so he’s questionable. Big guy, Tye Edwards, he traveled, but he didn’t dress. He’s still questionable because he’s got that hip pointer. We got a couple of other guys banged up, but I probably won’t know their status until tomorrow.”

Message to the team following loss to Kansas

“If ain’t bothering us because of the way we played, then you’re not who I think you are. But after last night, we’ve got to move on. We got to get ready to play the next game, and I thought their response was good.”

Rebuilding the program

“It’s not my first rodeo. I’ve done this 28 years, and this is what? The sixth or seventh time I’ve been a head coach? Every first year is similar in that regard. This is my profession; I’ve done this before. I know what the hell I’m doing. It’s just painful. It’s painful for us to watch. It’s painful for our fans to watch. It’s painful for everybody that loves our program, but the stuff will get right. Hopefully sooner rather than later. I’m not one to say, it’s going to get right next year. Hell, I want to get it right right now. Is there going to be some inconsistency? I hope not much more than we had the last couple weeks.”

What he sees on tape from offense

“Not nearly as many missed assignments as you’d think, which is a good thing. I think they know what they’re doing, but the physicality of it and the execution of it is another thing.”

If Jaylen Henderson showed some promising signs

“Yeah, I thought he ran okay. He had a couple decent runs. I thought he was seeing the field. I really liked his demeanor. It’s hard sometimes when you come off the bench cold in a situation like that, but when we put him in, he acted like a veteran.”

If they’ll make any changes on O-Line

“Well, we might have to. We don’t know yet about Landen (Livingston). And then we’ve got a couple of other younger guys we’re trying to motivate, see if they can get into the rotation. Usually, the o-line is the first people to blame if you have a problem running the football or whatever, but like I said, there’s a whole lot of folks to blame, starting with the coaches. If he’s not playing well, trust me, if somebody can play better, we’re going to put them in there. We like winning too much to not play the best guys.”

Scotty Fox's development

“Scotty was a little bit banged up. He still took some reps, but he’s still progressing well. I really like him, and he’s going to be just fine. This game, we didn’t get a chance to get him in, but he’s going to be in our plans for sure. I think the easiest thing for him (to get past the Pitt performance) is for him to go in there and play well and kind of erase that part of it. You’ve got to have a short memory as a quarterback because not everything is going to go perfect for you. He’s still learning, and he’s going to get plenty of time to get that good feel back. I think the biggest thing (for him) is not understanding what we do, but understanding what they do. Like a lot of times, you stare at our guys and you don’t look at their guys, and when you throw the ball as a quarterback, it’s all about your eye discipline. I think when you’re a young guy, that’s the thing you struggle with, you’re looking at your guy when you should know where your guy’s going to be. You’ve got to look at their guys. That’s a process he’s going through.”

Why building through HS recruiting is still important for WVU

“Part of that is not just to get your guys and develop them, but it’s the finances part of it. Everybody thinks everybody is at the same salary cap, somewhere between $12-15 million, but that’s not counting NIL. You could still have a $40-50 million roster through NIL. They thought this new AI company they’re using would manage that a little bit, but it’s the same. If you got the money to have a $40 million roster next year, you’re going to have one. We’re hopefully going to have some NIL to help augment our salary cap, but we’ve got to evaluate the right guys. High school guys are maybe less expensive than portal guys, so you’ve got to make sure you evaluate the right ones and pay them the right amount. That’s the tricky part of this whole thing.”

Ability to compete in recruiting

“There’s not as many as those hidden gems as there used to be, but that doesn’t mean there’s not good players that we can get. We can get really good players here. We’ve got a great environment, a great fan base, great facilities. We’re going to have enough in the rev share to compete, and hopefully we can have enough in the NIL, so somebody don’t one, take our best players, and two, this guys we really want money is not going to be a factor. We may not compete with an Ohio State or Texas Tech or that kind of money, but we can compete with the rest of them, or at least that’s what we’re aiming to do.”

If he’ll be more comfortable position next offseason knowing the team’s needs

“Oh s***, hell yeah. You knew a little bit, like well, you wanted to retain all these guys that started, well, hell, all the starters were gone. The top eight offensive linemen were gone — they were either seniors or they left before I could even make an offer. One of the guys I wanted to get had an offer, and then it got tripled, so I’m like, what are you going to do?”