West Virginia’s push to keep Mike Hawkins Jr. in Morgantown is still alive, but the deal isn’t done yet.
The bye week came and went without a new contract in place for the quarterback beyond the 2026 season, though there’s still a path to getting something finalized before the regular season ends. That would be the preferred outcome for WVU, even if the process is taking longer than anyone would like.
What’s not in question is the interest on both sides. Hawkins and his family are said to love Rich Rod, the coaching staff, the program, and everything about WVU, while his representation has remained in steady contact with the Mountaineers’ “front office” personnel about a new deal.
There’s also another piece to this puzzle: Hawkins’ younger brother, Maliek. He returned for his first defensive snaps since Week 2 in the win over TCU and is expected to have a larger role over the final month of the season. His future is part of the conversation too.
The financial terms haven’t been made public, but WVU believes it can get a deal done and still have enough flexibility to keep other key players and add more talent through the transfer portal.
Rich Rodriguez made it clear this week why Hawkins matters so much to the program.
“Obviously, when you get a guy like Mike 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. 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.”
Rodriguez also pointed to the bigger roster picture, with retention talks already underway across the program.
“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.”
Hawkins, for his part, is staying locked in on the games ahead and leaving the contract side to his agent. There’s no distraction there.
And this isn’t being framed as a pure bidding war. The Hawkins camp is focused on winning and on his development as an NFL quarterback, and believes Morgantown is the place where that can happen.
He’s one of several players WVU wants to secure for the long haul. If the Mountaineers can get Hawkins signed, keep the core together, and add more defensive help, they’ll give themselves a real chance to build something special in the near future.
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