Speed the name of the game for West Virginia and Rodriguez

West Virginia head coach Rich Rodriguez recognizes that his team has to get faster.

And that’s at every single position on the field.

“Up front on defense, at linebacker, in the secondary, at wide receiver, at running back, offensive line,” he said. “You think o-line, you don’t need fast but you have to have twitchy, athletic guys to do some of the stuff we do on the offensive line.”

That’s not to say that there isn’t some of that there already and Rodriguez doesn’t plan to specifically target a bunch of track guys, but instead football speed. That means guys that are playing fast at all times in order to effectively accomplish what he wants to be done on both sides of the ball.

“It’s a miserable feeling if you’re just sitting there, especially if you’re on defense and you can’t tackle them because you can’t catch them. Then you have no chance,” he said.

That speed is the most important element for Rodriguez outside of toughness because while you can make up for size by trying to get more to the ball, being slower can really expose things.

Now, Rodriguez admits that the Mountaineers do have some guys that can run but he tries to reserve too much judgement in that category early on in his tenure because with all the changes it leads to players often thinking too much. That means they aren’t playing as fast as they should at all times.

“That’s not their fault. We as coaches got to get them to play faster, you know what I mean, by teaching them,” he said.

That’s what spring football and the summer are for in order to get them to play without hesitation in order to see how they really stack up once the bullets start flying. And the end result is hopefully much faster all around although the Mountaineers won’t be hesitant to use the transfer portal to accomplish that as well with the second window opening after spring drills.

“Once we get all that done, then we can at least play faster, I think,” he said.

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