West Virginia head coach Rich Rodriguez has a pet peeve when it comes to football.
“I think our team needs to be more situationally aware as a team,” he said.
Rodriguez is a firm believer that a lack of situational awareness is a dilemma in football at all levels and is something that has been an issue in the game for quite some time. And that isn’t just with players - it trickles down to coaches, analysts, graduate assistants and everybody else.
“The lack of situational awareness that I see everywhere is just kind of a pet peeve of mine. It bothers me so we try to overemphasize everything,” he said.
That everything ranges from down and distance, the play clock and everything else. And Rodriguez has made it a point to make sure everybody in his program is well aware of each.
That always takes some time and through spring practice to this point, it is still developing.
“We’ll get it eventually,” he said.
Rodriguez runs his offense at a fast pace so delay of game penalties aren’t really a common thing, but even at the NFL level teams attempt to run the play clock down in order to get into the perfect play and situational awareness of down and distance is an issue at times.
“You know, it's not that hard to be situationally aware if you're a football player or a coach. But for some reason, it's still a problem until – I'll yell until it's no longer a problem,” he said.
Rodriguez pointed out one specific example where it’s getting ready to be fourth down and you don’t have the right personnel ready to go on the field for the punt team.
“You know potentially you're going to have to punt it or punt return it. So those guys should be already up, helmet on, strapped and ready to go. And then all they're doing is waiting for the call and they run on the field,” Rodriguez said.
But still, that happens and has even happened to Rodriguez and it’s something that drives him nuts.
“I see it in games and it drives me crazy. It shouldn’t happen, but it does,” Rodriguez said.
----------
• Talk about it with West Virginia fans on The Blue Lot.
• SUBSCRIBE todayto stay up on the latest on Mountaineer sports and recruiting.
• Get all of our WVU videos on YouTube by subscribing to the WVSports.com Channel
• Follow us on Twitter: @WVSportsDotCom, @rivalskeenan, @wesleyshoe
