Rodriguez wants to continue with a similar play style at West Virginia

As Rich Rodriguez transitions into becoming the head coach of West Virginia, his tendencies and how he attacks each game schematically won’t change just because he has a new job.

Rodriguez is known for his hurry-up style offense. His strong run game includes the quarterback as a big part, which Rodriguez does not envision changing.

“Certain things have changed a little bit. I always thought the tempo and playing fast, who wants to watch a lot of fat guys hold hands in a huddle, so when we huddle up, it’s like a trick play for us,” Rodriguez said.

At Jax State this past season, the Gamecocks’ offense ranked 58th in the country in plays per game and third nationally in rushing attempts per game, showing Rodriguez’s desire to run the ball and go fast at the same time.

Jax State quarterback Tyler Huff was 12th in the nation this season in rushing yards and was second among all quarterbacks in rushing 1,343 yards on the ground. Jax State also ran the ball on 67 percent of their possessions, which was fourth in the country, only behind the three service academies.

Defensively, there is a style Rodriguez wants to play with, but he’s unsure of the specifics of the specific schematics of it all.

“It depends on the coordinator I hire. I have a couple that I’ve talked to, I have a couple in mind, and they’re both different, they’re not the same. Everybody runs a little bit of everything now defensively, whether it’s an odd-stack or an even front, and everybody kind of has certain personnel packages they use on defense. I’m going to pick the d-coordinator, I’ll have a really good one because I have enough resources to hire a really, really, good one, and then from there, I’ll build out the defensive staff,” Rodriguez said of who will be leading his defense.

Rodriguez added he wants to pressure opposing teams and be the aggressor on defense rather than let the offense dictate the style of play.

“There’s not one particular scheme that I want other than I want us to be really, really, aggressive, and I want to force the issue so to speak on the other team,” Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez and the Gamecocks had a 76.4 overall grade on defense per Pro Football Focus this season but graded out to 61.2 in the pass rush grade category.