Rich Rod, WVU to Hold a Draft to Squeeze in a Mock Game, Set First Depth Chart

Unlike previous years, college football rosters were far from complete at this time of the year. There would be another transfer portal window after the spring, creating even more movement, although not nearly as much as the second window. Because Rich Rodriguez and his staff got to Morgantown late in the process, many of their transfers came in that second portal window that no longer exists.

Now, if you were to go through and study the WVU football roster, that's what you'll see when they tee things up on September 5th against Coastal Carolina. There may be one or two additions at some point, but for the most part, the roster is in place.

Because there is no second window to go get more help, Rich Rod feels he has to have some answers heading into the summer months. To achieve that, he and his staff will have a draft on April 7th to split up the team and will eventually play a mock game, giving it a scrimmage-type feel and more so than any spring game ever has. We're talking a real, line-it-up, 11 vs. 11 game to figure out what they need to focus on when they return for fall camp.

“I’m trying to make it so that our first game ain’t our first game," Rodriguez said. "We don’t have any preseason scrimmage games against somebody else. We can’t really compare what we have to somebody else until we play them. I usually wasn’t worried about it, but now I’m like, we have got to find out before the summer some semblance of a depth chart. It doesn’t have to be set in stone because you can move up or down the depth chart in the summer and in August. We will have a depth chart after April 18th. Having a true game and a draft and the competitiveness of that, I think, is going to accelerate that process."

Don't get your hopes up, though. The odds of anyone outside of the building getting eyes on that tentative depth chart are equivalent to the NCAA figuring out the transfer portal issues before the summer.

In place of the real thing, I'll do my best to piece things together and publish a depth chart projection. We'll post one here in early April, and then one more after spring ball is wrapped up.