Rich Rod Reveals WVU's Defense Ran Some Things It Hadn't Practiced Much + Explains Why

The West Virginia defense hasn't been great through the first two weeks of the season, nor has it been completely awful. Sure, it's easy to look at the final numbers and remember the explosive plays given up to Coastal Carolina and UT Martin, but it really boils down to playing one good half and one bad half of defense in both games.

Defensive coordinator Zac Alley admitted that in the second half against Coastal Carolina, he felt there was some "complacency" with the 24-0 lead and some things got sloppy, especially when it came to keeping contain.

Last week, it looked like there were guys who didn't know exactly where to be pre-snap, where to drop to in coverage, and just a lot of confusion. Now we know why.

"There were some things that we did that we didn't want to show, or things we didn't want to do in this game defensively," head coach Rich Rodriguez said during his radio show on Monday night. "Some of the things that we put in our guys are probably still learning, as far as how we want to run it on defense. We ran some stuff in that game for the first time that we knew we were going to need for the future, and we hadn't had a lot of practice time with it, but we've had some. You could tell it was the first time we were doing some of that. This week and going forward, it won't be the first time we're doing it, so our guys will get better at it."

To further discuss the defensive problems, a fan texted in a question asking Rodriguez if the struggles can be attributed to moving guys around trying to get reps or drinking from a firehose, as far as the scheme goes.

"First off, there's some new stuff that we're doing, and also probably it's a combination of all of the above with a lot of new players. There's not a lot of guys on either side of the ball, but I think defensively there's even more, where they are playing their first games in this system. I wish I had a couple of preseason scrimmages against somebody else to kind of figure out exactly what our guys do well and how we want to go about doing it, so I don't want to say these were like scrimmage games, but in a sense we weren't as game-ready as maybe we'd like to have been on any phase in the first game. But I don't know that I've ever been as ready as I'd like to have been in the first game or two. I think our defensive guys do a good job. They do a good job of adjusting; our coaches have a good plan for them, and every game they'll get better. This will be the biggest challenge by far that we've had. Three-and-outs are such a big deal for me and for us defensively because it makes them come right back on the field and play against a tempo offense for three more plays in a hurry."

Was running "new stuff" the right call?

West Virginia University Defensive Coordinator Zac Alley | Christopher Hall – West Virginia on SI

I fully understand that if there is something that you want to rep a bunch in a game to get prepared for the rest of the season, this past week was the week to do it.

That said, I'd like to know a little more about what exactly they were doing "new" that caused so much confusion and poor play in the first half, and just how much of the "new stuff" was run.

With so many new faces populating the defense, I would think you would want to spoon-feed them and continue to work on what you are going to run the most so that they have more reps with it and are more comfortable going into this week's game against Virginia.

Maybe we will get some more details from Zac Alley when he meets with the media later today, but at least we now know the reasoning for some of the defensive breakdowns in the first half vs. UT Martin.

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