West Virginia Has a Rocky Start to Spring Practice

If you live within walking distance of the Caperton Indoor Practice facility in Morgantown, you may have heard a loud ringing noise that shook the foundation of the land it sits on. If so, don't be alarmed. That's just West Virginia head football coach Rich Rodriguez getting back into the swing of things as spring practice is officially underway.

Day one is always full of errors, miscommunication, and a bunch of rustiness, regardless of how many returning players you have. But with a new coaching staff in place, combined with a boatload of new players, it's expected that day one of spring practice is going to be somewhat of an adventure.

“My voice is kind of half there. Our team chaplain was there he’s probably praying for me right now," Rodriguez joked as he took a big sip of water. "But nah, I mean, the intent was good. They worked pretty hard. We had some pre-snap penalties - four or five of those on offense, and I’m used to going four or five practices without having one, so we’ve got to fix that up front with the big guys. We’re still feeling our way in the first practice of getting our timing down. But I liked the effort from back where I was seeing it."

Rich Rodriguez — WVU Athletics Communication

It's not time to hit the panic button just yet. It's one practice, and there's a lot of runway between now and the season opener against Robert Morris on August 30th. There's also another transfer portal window in April where Rodriguez and his staff can address some needs and perhaps improve the overall depth of certain positions.

You don't really know what you have until you reach the latter half of spring practices. And in some aspects, you won't know what you have until the pads are on regularly in fall camp. Rodriguez was asked if this group has the toughness that he's looking for and admitted that he wouldn't know the answer to that question anytime soon.

“I don’t know if I could see it today. I’ll watch the film, but you’re in shorts and it’s all tag and you got to be smart with it. I don’t even know if we can answer that throughout the whole spring. We’ll go live but it’s not live, live like it’s against an opponent. I think we can tell something in some of the padded days. I don’t know if we can tell much of anything on the shorts days. You can see some mental toughness if they get a little tired and we do some drills that are uptempo drills, but they’re not in shape either. I tell our guys, our strength staff I think has done a good job, but they’re not in the shape they’re going to be in in August.”

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