Quick Hits: A Step in the Right Direction, Mobility of QBs, Importance of Defense + More

Week two of WVU fall camp is underway. Following Monday morning's practice, head coach Rich Rodriguez met with reporters to discuss how things went.

Below are some of the notable quotes from today's press conference.

Opening statement

“Last day we had to be in shells. Thought we got a little bit better today, a little more competitive. Tomorrow will be the first day of pads. And like I told the team, we might look a little soft in shells because we’re not sure how to thud, and it’s not really live tackle to the ground, so hopefully tomorrow we’ll get that taken care of. But we took some steps, and I think there’s a lot of healthy competition at a lot of spots.”

If he’s learning what his players do well

“Yeah, we’re trying to make them do all our stuff. Defensively, we do a whole bunch, and then offense, there’s a whole lot we can do, but inevitably, I don’t do because this is who we’re going to be this year, and you focus on that. I don’t have variety for the sake of having variety, but you want to have answers to situations.”

What steps he saw taken today

“The end of practice it was a little bit more competitive when we went team. We kept score. And I know all these guys play video games and all that, so we kind of kept score in practice in our 7-on-7 and our team stuff. It usually as a head coach, you hope it ends up pretty close, which it did. Being within one point, we had to end it with the big fat guys doing 1-on-1 in the goal line.”

Jaylen Henderson and other QBs are running the ball

“All of our quarterbacks have been running pretty good. I think they’re all in pretty good shape. And that’s going to be the hardest thing to sort out. We’ve got plenty of guys that are able to play, but it’s hard to play two quarterbacks at a time. I think Rhett’s done a good job of managing them, and the days in pads, as I’ve mentioned, we’ll probably be more live with our quarterbacks than I’ve ever been in training camp. Just simply because we’ve got to find out who can do what.”

The importance of defense

“I’ve always kind of been maybe defensive mentality. A lot of people that are spread, shotgun type-oriented are like just give me the ball back, and I don’t care what you do. I’m in tune with everything we’re doing on defense. I love what Zac does on defense, and I trust him, so I don’t have to get in his room, but I’ll still get in his room. I’ll still watch film, and I’ll still coach guys on defense because I like that part of it. But you’re right, when we had really good teams here or if I had good teams somewhere else, we were pretty good on offense, but we were really good on defense. When I was here, our defense was unique. I like being different. We were different with the odd stack, and Coach Casteel was here. And Zac is different, and he’s different than a lot of folks.”

The position that has the most to learn in this offense, aside from QB

“Typically, you would say center, but our schemes aren’t that complicated. I’d say the guy that has the most variety of things to do is the tight ends. What we do with our tight ends now, 11 personnel…he’s got to block with the strength and the power of an offensive lineman. He’s got to be able to run routes in space like a wide receiver. That’s the guy that lines up all over the place for us.”

The four players taking their eligibility cases to court

“I’m hopeful. Those guys have been around. They got to work out on their own, and obviously, they can help our program. I know they’ve got attorneys, so we’ll see where that goes.”