Inside WVU's First Scrimmage: QB Play, Strong Tackling, O-Line Concerns + More

Today marked an important date on the fall camp calendar for the West Virginia Mountaineers, with it being the first live intrasquad scrimmage. Head coach Rich Rodriguez and his staff were able to get a good bulk of plays in that should help them get a better understanding of who can help them in three weeks and who can't.

Here's what the head ball coach said about today's scrimmage.

Opening statement

“Got done scrimmaging, got about a hundred plays in. Everybody was getting reps which was good to see. Everybody was live including the quarterbacks, so they all got hit a little bit. I thought it was a productive day from a head coach standpoint. You got to see the defense win some and the offense win some — that’s probably a pretty good thing.”

How the QBs looked running the ball

“I thought our quarterbacks ran competitively, but I also think their eyes were probably in the wrong place at times. There’s a lot of decisions for them to make, so we’ve got to get that corrected.”

The defense and penalties as a team

“I didn’t see a lot of missed tackles. We tackled okay. The one thing we did have is we had too many penalties. We had a full Big Ten crew here, and we had four of five procedure penalties, which should never happen and are self-inflicted. I think we had three or so holding penalties, and those are like turnovers; we can’t have that. We had one critical jump offsides on 4th and 5, that should never happen. They’ll all learn from it.”

The offensive line

“We’re still not getting enough push on the o-line up front. Short-yardage situations, I think we’re stalemating too much. We’re not getting off the ball and changing the line of scrimmage, particularly a lot of short-yardage situations.”

If there’s still a battle at kicker

“It’s really a three-man battle there with Kade (Hensley), Ethan (Head), and RJ (Kocan). We’ve got three guys battling pretty good right there. It’s all going to be earned. I should have done it today, but I need to put some pressure on my field goal kickers at the end of practice. I’ve only done it one time. I’ve got to do that more often.”

How the pass catchers looked

“Tight end-wise, Ryan Ward made a big catch. I think they had a pretty good day blocking. All the slot receivers had some big catches today. I don’t know if we had much on the perimeter. We had some decent runs.”

If the scrimmage went how he thought it would

“I think the penalties, as unhappy as we are with them, probably should have been expected. I think we put the ball on the ground twice, which is totally unacceptable. We’ve got to get that part fixed. Defensively, I don’t think we attacked the ball as much as we can. But for our first scrimmage, there’s going to be plenty to teach off of.”