Rich Rodriguez Reveals WVU Football Player Retention News

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – With WVU fans constantly speculating about which players will be back as Mountaineers in 2027, Rich Rodriguez dropped some news during his weekly press conference on Tuesday.

While he’s not ready to release any names or go into detail, he said the program has already agreed to terms with “a few” of the current players to return next season. He did also mention that they are still in the process of evaluating the roster and their view of a player could change depending how the rest of the season unfolds.

However, and contrary to any other reports, West Virginia has not officially signed quarterback Mike Hawkins. Rodriguez has been open about wanting the Mountaineers’ dual-threat signal caller to stay in his system, but retaining him remains an ongoing process.

Though it’s unclear if he’s among those Rodriguez was referring to, cornerback Andrew Powdrell publicly admitted he’s planning to utilize his fifth-year option and play one more season of college football at WVU next year.

But for Rodriguez, he’s made a point to be proactive about talking with players, like Hawkins, who are high priorities to re-sign. He doest believe in waiting until the end of the season to open that dialogue, since doing so could be risky.

Rodriguez also spoke candidly about Hawkins last week. He even went into more detail about his mindset in player retention at that time as well.

“Obviously, when you get a guy like Mike [Hawkins] and his skills…and he’s still learning — that’s the fun part about it. It’s his first year in the system, so you know that every year he’s going to be better and better,” said Rodriguez, again bringing up, as he often has throughout the season, how Hawkins will only continue to improve and grow as a player the more years he spends in his system.

“He’ll be an anchor of the offensive group, but if you got a guy in your program that is an underclassman and he’s having success and he enjoys it here and he’s a building block on either side of the ball, you want to get those guys locked down as soon as possible because they’ll help other guys, whether it’s recruits or other guys coming back.”

Rich Rodriguez Offers Insight Into Discussions About Retaining Mike Hawkins

Rodriguez then revealed more of what’s going on behind the scenes when it comes to Hawkins and the other players West Virginia already knows they want back.

“GM Chuck Lillie, he had been started already with some of the retention talks,” Rodriguez said.

“But we talked as a staff; we talked about every guy and kind of helped give Chuck and our personnel staff some direction on where we wanted to go, what we wanted to do with it. Those talks are ongoing. We have the high school signing date coming up in December, and then the portal obviously in January, so to me, you got to have an idea before the year’s over so you know what you got to go get in the portal. We won’t get everybody re-signed by December, but I’m hoping to get most of them done by then, so we’ll have an idea of how many we’ll want to sign with the high school class as well.”

Recently, Hawkins opened up about why he picked West Virginia and why he loves being a Mountaineer under Rodriguez.

“I just loved his mindset,” said Hawkins. “Developing the offense as a whole and not just the quarterback. Getting guys involved and getting a lot of guys on the field, rotating guys. So that was probably the biggest thing, and just building relationships. Even the defensive side of the ball and having relationships with those guys.”

Through eight games, Hawkins, who started his college career at Oklahoma before transferring to WVU, has thrown for 1,598 yards, run for 836 more, thrown 11 touchdown passes, scored 16 on the ground, which leads the nation and has only turned the ball over twice via two interceptions.

Find more coverage of the WVU football program at WV Sports Now.