Rich Rod Talks QB Competition, Player Contracts, Injuries, Roster Spots + More

And just like that, we're back into football mode in Morgantown. Well, sort of. The men's and women's basketball teams are in the final stretch of their seasons, and baseball is just beginning, but over the next month or so, we'll get to learn more about this almost entirely brand new squad Rich Rodriguez put together over the winter.

Tuesday afternoon, Rich Rod met with the media for the first time in months, answering questions ahead of the team's first practice, which is set for this Saturday.

Initial injury report

“There’s 101 players that will be participating in spring practice. Four guys are out with some injuries or surgeries — (LB) Ashton Woods had a shoulder that we had to fix from the season, (N/S) Emory Snyder had a hip surgery and got that fixed, (K) Peter Notaro has got a foot, not on his kicking foot, but he had a foot thing he had to get fixed, so he’ll be out for a few weeks, and then (LB) Antoine Sharp got a knee that we had to get fixed, so he’ll be out this spring.”

First thoughts on the roster

“I’ll have a better idea when we have true practices and see where there at. But just from a physical standpoint, where they are at in the weight room and the things there doing there…we need to be bigger, we need to be stronger, we need to be more athletic. There’s just so much more true competition at every position. I feel like we truly have that and brought that in with some of the transfers, really good high school freshman class we brought in, and a couple of junior college guys that we signed back in December, I think are really going to be able to help us as well.”

Scouting and landing Oklahoma QB transfer Michael Hawkins Jr.

“I knew about him from watching him a little bit, and obviously, we had some guys that were at Oklahoma that saw him in person and who he was as an athlete, who he was as a person. We wanted somebody to come in and compete with Scotty (Fox) and Max (Brown) for the job, and somebody that had the skillset to be special, and Mike has that. He’s shown that so far. He’s a smart guy. It’s really important to him. He works hard. He and Scotty, and Max too, have done a really good job of taking another step. This spring is going to be really important to him, but he has all the skills that you want in a quarterback — he can run, he can throw, he’s smart, he’s competitive.”

If he feels better about the state of the o-line

“I do. We lost the top nine or ten guys last year, so we had to start all over. We feel better now because Landen (Livingston) has played, Nick Krahe has played, Malik Agbo has played a little bit. And then some of the young guys behind them, I think, have gotten better. We signed a really good freshman class, and then we got a few transfers in there on the o-line. We’re so much deeper now with guys that have experience playing. Last year, we got some transfers in, but they didn’t have a whole lot of experience as a starting offensive lineman. We brought some guys in that have some experience as starters in college, and we have a couple of freshmen that are going to have great careers. I do think we are going to be in a much better spot, and we need to be.”

Importance of hiring Chance Trickett

“I hired Chance because I wanted some NFL scouting experience. He’s done it for twelve years. How they go about scouting and evaluating prospects and all that, because we’re not just evaluating high school guys, we’re evaluating guys that got in the portal and all that. Chance’s experience has already helped. We revamped how we evaluate and how we grade guys.”

Adding a pair of Jax State OL transfers

“Bubba Grayson and Cam Griffin, one, both know the system, the offense. They also know the techniques and a lot of the things that Coach (Rick) Trickett has installed. That helps. They’re helping teach those (other) guys, hey, this is what he wants here, and this is what he wants there. They’re great program guys. I’ve known them since high school. We wanted to get them before. I would have liked to have them last year. But they’re enjoying it, they’re working really hard, and they’re great guys. They’ve helped kind of be the glue with some of the new guys we brought in.”

If there are any roster spots left

“We have two to three spots that may be open. We waited intentionally to see. It might be a junior college guy that’s graduating in May. It might be a guy in the portal that hadn’t got what he wanted yet. Last year, we had the spring portal as well, so you may be losing guys and picking up guys. Now, everybody should be what you have is what you have. There’s always the danger of a guy unenrolling and re-enrolling somewhere else, and I know the NCAA is trying to put some teeth into that, which they need to do.”

If the spring game will be a traditional Gold vs. Blue matchup

“No. I think we’re calling it like a Spring Festival. We’re trying to make it an event for fans to come out and to be fan-friendly. I think they want to see some football too, so we’ll have some competitive stuff. We may do things a little bit different — do some one-on-ones and some different things that fans may want to watch. The scrimmage part, I’ve never been that that’s the end-all be-all, and if you had a great spring scrimmage, that means you’re destined for greatness or the opposite. We’ll come up with a format.”

Length of player contracts

“We’re trying to get more guys up to multi-year deals because the retention part is the first thing you do after every season. You’re always going to lose a couple, and we lost a couple we didn’t want to lose, but we were able to retain a lot of guys, too. Again, a lot of times that takes money, but it also takes guys that want to be here and be in the culture, be in that locker room, and be the ones that take this program where we think it should be. We got a lot of them on one-year (contracts). We’re trying to get more on two-year. I wouldn’t mind getting some guys on three-year contracts. All of that is an ongoing process.”