WVU’s defense has taken plenty of heat after surrendering 1,668 yards and 131 points across three conference games, and Rich Rodriguez isn’t pretending otherwise. He’s frustrated, the fan base is frustrated, and the numbers have made the problem impossible to ignore. But the head coach still sounds convinced this isn’t a lost cause.
Rodriguez was asked whether the issues can be cleaned up during the season, and he didn’t dodge it.
"Most of them, yeah," Rodriguez responded when he was asked if the problems can be fixed during the season. "There's no question.
When you give up two halfback passes in the Iowa State game and a flea-flicker pass in this game, those are just embarrassing. That should never happen.
We just got to get coached better and obviously perform a lot better to give us a chance to win games. I'm encouraged because I know we can play a whole lot better."
That’s the heart of his message: the defense has been bad, but not beyond repair in his eyes. Rodriguez believes the talent is there and expects his staff to do a better job putting players in spots where they can actually succeed.
A lot of the breakdowns have come from misfits in the run game, poor eye discipline, and players simply not lining up correctly. Rodriguez said the staff has gone back over everything in detail to try to pin down why the issues keep changing from week to week.
"We've looked at everything," Rodriguez said. "The whole staff watched the film for four and a half hours Sunday morning, watched it with the whole defense Sunday afternoon, and trying to get to the bottom of exactly why, because it's been a different issue or issues every week.
I know what the answers are, and the coaches know what the answers are, and we have good enough players to play better. We just, as a staff, got to find ways to get our guys to play better, and that includes everything: How we're practicing, who's playing where, fundamentally, schematically, everything.
I think there is the ability for us to be pretty good on defense with the guys that we have and the coaches that we have, but it's not shown up."
Personnel changes are coming, too. Some players who have already been shifted around could be moved again, including on the back end, and more guys who haven’t gotten much action so far are expected to see the field more moving forward.
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