WVU's Scrimmage on Saturday Will Answer Questions the Depth Chart Can’t Yet

The second week of fall camp is about to come to a close for West Virginia, and Saturday's scrimmage will reveal a lot. It's not going to determine the starting quarterback or any other position battles, but it will certainly be a key piece of data moving forward as the coaching staff evaluates who can help them now versus who needs more time to develop.

The plan for head coach Rich Rodriguez is to go roughly 100 plays and have everyone live, including the quarterbacks. He's well aware of the risk involved, but he has to know what he's got in the quarterback room and who gives him the best chance to win right out of the gates. The only way to truly know that is to go live.

While it will be set up to have a game-like feel, there will be some wrenches thrown in by Rodriguez, as he explained on Thursday.

“I’ll create scenarios from field position standpoint — backed up, midfield, gold zone, red zone. The down and distance stuff usually takes care of itself. And I’ll intermix the groups. I might have one group of offense and a different group of defense, and then switch it up. We do that during practice from a substitution standpoint, and like not as fast as a hockey shift because you can’t do it mid-play, but pretty close to it. For no reason whatsoever, it could just be 2nd and 7, and I’ll be yelling, ‘Give me the second offense, third defense, whatever.’ Just keeping guys aware of it, and if it’s a fourth down situation and we can be punting or punt blocking it, everybody’s got to be ready. I told the guys I don’t want any spectators in the program on the field.”

The real question is how WVU will get through approximately 100 plays with such a limited running back room. Only Jahiem White and Diore Hubbard practiced on Thursday. Jaylan Knighton and Tye Edwards are currently ineligible, Kannon Katzer and Clay Ash are banged up, and we haven't heard a single mention of Cyncir Bowers, who has yet to practice. He may have to go Air Raid with it, which may not be a bad idea anyway, that way he can let all five quarterbacks spin it.

The other key piece of this is the level of physicality that guys play with. Rodriguez has been very critical of the toughness and physicality all throughout camp and needs to see it measure up to what he believes is playing hard.

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