WVU Football Coaches Encouraged, Aware of Work Ahead After Scrimmage

Saturday marked a major step in Rich Rodriguez’s plan during WVU football fall camp. The Mountaineers held a morning scrimmage at Milan Puskar Stadium.

The scrimmage was closed to the media, but Rodriguez and his defensive coordinator Zac Alley both shared their thoughts about what happened.

As planned, they got through 100 plays and did so without the coaches having to constantly interrupt the action.

“Everybody was getting reps, which was good to see. Everybody was live, including the quarterbacks and they all got hit a little bit and we needed to see that,” said Rodriguez.

Overall, Rodriguez thought it was a productive first scrimmage for his transfer-laden football squad.

“From a head coach standpoint, to see the defense win some and the offense win some, that’s probably a pretty good thing,” said an oddly satisfied Rodriguez. “Now, it’s on to the next thing,” he added.

As for how the quarterbacks performed, Rodriguez hinted that they are still a work in progress.

“There are a lot of decisions for them to make, so we’ve got to get that corrected,” he explained.

Rodriguez then offered a summary and some analysis about how the rest of the offense played as a whole.

“I didn’t see a lot of missed tackles; I thought we tackled okay. The one thing we did have was way too many penalties,” Rodriguez revealed. We had a full Big 12 crew here and we had four or five procedure penalties, which should never happen. We had three or so holding penalties and those are like turnovers.”

However, some of the penalties were mistakes that can’t happen during games.

“We had a critical offsides on fourth and four, and that should never happen. Then we had one unsportsmanlike conduct after a touchdown. I just told the guy the next time that happens just keep running into the locker room,” said Rodriguez sarcastically.

“We started fast. The first couple of series we got off the field and did a good job executing and near the end of practice I felt like we just fell off a little bit. I challenged the guys afterward just to maintain from the first play of the first quarter to the last play of the fourth quarter. Both are important and you don’t know which one is going to win the game.”

For a big bright spot, Alley thought the tackling from the defense was on point.

“It was one of the better overall first scrimmages I’ve had,” admitted Alley. “Usually, you get out there the first day and you are whiffing left and right because you haven’t actually had to go body-on-body at any point up to that time, but I felt like, overall, we tackled pretty well today compared to first scrimmages of the past. Hopefully we can build on that.”

Alley also made his expectations moving forward clear.

“The expectation is everybody knows everything that we do every time. I’d say some of the older guys who are more experienced definitely have a good grasp, and some of the younger guys it’s probably a little fast for them,” he said.

“The good news is we still have three weeks until we play.”

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

For a related story, Mike Asti gave his takeaways from Friday’s open practice.