Rich Rod Admits He Got 'a Little Conservative' vs. Coastal

Things were moving along nicely for West Virginia in their season opener right out of the gate. Cam Cook exploded for a 72-yard run on the first play from scrimmage and scored one play later, setting the tone for how things would go in the first half against Coastal Carolina.

The Mountaineers' defense gave up some easy pitches and catches, but never really allowed the Chanticleers to get into rhythm and limited them to just 114 yards of total offense through the first two quarters.

Everything changed when the teams returned to the field of play in the third quarter, and it felt like Rich Rodriguez pulled back offensively, deciding to continue to run into a heavy box over and over again. QB Mike Hawkins Jr. completed all three of his passes in the quarter and went 4/5 in the second half. The offense didn't stall out because of Hawkins; it did so because they continued to bang their head against a brick wall.

Coastal climbed back into the game, and it gave everyone an unexpected sour taste in their mouth when they left Milan Puskar Stadium. All weekend long, fans were questioning whether Rodriguez purposely hid things from Virginia, whom they'll meet in Charlotte in two weeks. He didn't admit to that, but he did acknowledge that he called the game much differently in the second half.

"We got a little conservative there. There was some times where they were bringing everybody at the end of the game, and I could have just thrown a pass and probably would have scored a touchdown, but at that time, I was made that they were just scrambling around on us, so I'm like, let's get this game over. Some of it is, sometimes you got to run against numbers and see if you can still get some positive yards. Did a little bit of that. And some of it is, okay, let's kill the clock and try to get a first down. If you run the ball every time, you're going to take two and a half minutes off the clock. We let them get back in the game too much, and something that should have been very comfortable, we could have put it away at the end of the first half or early in the third quarter, and we didn't do that."

Repping the hell out of the new look o-line

West Virginia University offensive lineman Kevin Brown | Christopher Hall - West Virginia on SI

I mentioned this in our postgame show on Saturday, and Rich Rod's comments basically supported my theory of repping the daylights out of that offensive line. The same five guys played all 76 offensive snaps, although Malik Agbo and Josh Aisosa were in there for three each in the heavy package.

For this offense to be at its best, they have to be able to run the ball, even when everyone in the stadium knows it's coming. This starting unit entered the season with over 5,000 combined career snaps, but 0 snaps played together. The only way to develop that chemistry is by playing them.

The decision to hammer it into a heavy box wasn't because he had no faith in the passing game. It was simply to see if his o-line could get movement when the defense was expecting a run, log snaps together, and to try to get to the finish line.

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