Lance Leipold Discusses Rich Rodriguez's Culture and the High Tempo Offense

The West Virginia Mountaineers (2-1) are on the road to take on the Kansas Jayhawks (2-1) Saturday evening. Kickoff is set for 6:00 p.m. EST and the action will broadcast on FS1.

The differences for West Virginia this season under the direction of Rich Rodriguez

The pace of which they play is extremely impressive.

First of all, a big testament to their staff and their leadership in their program because they had a disappointing loss on the road and then get that group rallied obviously in a rivalry game and to play the way they did is highly impressive.

To be down two scores in the fourth quarter and to keep battling, it’s a physical gritty bunch and it’s a testament to the culture he’s established in his short time there. He’s implemented a lot of new players. I believe he’s still trying to get clearance for other players in additions to get on the field for them and those guys, some of them, have been impactful early. But, again, an excellent coach through his whole career and you can see the ways it’s been, especially the offensive philosophy and how they’re going. So, again, it will be a tough test for us.

Preparing for a high tempo offense

We’ve changed it through the years in fact week talked about it early in the week about different ways you run your scout team, which we do every week anyways – offense versus defense and we run our offensive tempo plays. Utilization of unlimited coaches gets a lot more hands on so you can do a lot more at the line of scrimmage and we run plays where we rotate the skill positions and keep the linemen right at the line of scrimmage. We ran a boat load of plays yesterday in practice. In fact, to the point where we probably have to look and say we can slow this down a just a little to make sure reps and getting used to that.

On game day, it’s a little different – it does move, but I think we got a descent plan to address at least some of that pace of play.

I’ve done it where guys turn their backs to the line of scrimmage. I’ve seen where the defense runs around the goal post and then runs back to get lined up. We’ve talked about all the ways, ever since some of this has come in to play, different ways you try to get your defense hustling, moving, reacting. It’s still going to come back to having a sense of urgency to get lined up, get the call, process, but more importantly, communicate to one another that we’re all on the same page.

Preparing for multiple quarterbacks

I think he said he might have played five in this game or something or maybe do so. There’s film on different guys, you watch what they do., but. again, it’s still going to be, is there package of plays for a guy and West Virginia did that the last couple times we played, even under coach (Neal) Brown where they had another quarterback and another package of plays.

We only have so much time to get stuff practiced. So, you try to get an idea of identity of what they’re going to be with those certain quarterbacks. Kind of find out each one of them do, what throws they’re most comfortable making. Some of those will start to show tendencies.

The close contests between the two programs the last four games

It’s been close games, overtime games. I think it was our last [home] game [versus West Virginia] in ’21 and that was as we were starting to make noticeable improvement on the field – probably really battled and had chances even back then to win games.

You hope its one of those things that personnel-wise it will be a balanced matchup that you got to play well, but again, to open up conference [play] at home and have a chance to play against a team like this is exciting and I think our guys understand that we need to play at our best to have a chance to win and get this conference season kicked off the right way.

The differences for West Virginia this season under the direction of Rich Rodriguez

Preparing for a high tempo offense

Preparing for multiple quarterbacks

The close contests between the two programs the last four games

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