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WVU Football
West Virginia head coach Rich Rodriguez believes that one of the worst four-letter words is soft.
The head man demands toughness out of his players and it’s something that is instructed from the top down so that means developing and cultivating it over time, and keeping that dirty word out of the program.
The gap between what Rodriguez and his coaches expect out of players' effort and the players themselves is often wide at first, but over time those concepts become one.
So it’s no surprise that the gap is wide early into spring football.
“I told them afterwards I think it’s there. I’ve seen moments. I think it’s there but if you’re soft mentally or physically, you’re not going to make it. You’ll stand out amongst your teammates, stand out in the program and it’s not going to be the place for you. It’s pretty simple,” he said.
But how does Rodriguez describe being soft? Well, in football terms he lays it out rather simply as leaning into somebody instead of knocking them off balance, bear hugging instead of driving a player down the field and instead of sprinting in front to block you simply run with them.
And there are plenty more examples as well.
But that definition of soft isn’t innate for all and takes some time for the coaches to tell their players and for it to eventually click. That makes the role the coaching staff plays critical.
“That’s on us as coaches. We have to explain what that is. They may now know what our version of being soft is. I wasn’t happy with all the things I had to yell at today but I didn’t see anything that can’t be corrected,” he said.
Rodriguez highlighted one of his unnamed wide receivers during his first tenure in Morgantown as a prime example of that maturation occurring in his career. That player entered the program not in the hard edge category but flipped the switch entering his second season.
That means the old saying that if a puppy doesn’t bite, he won’t bite as a dog isn’t necessarily true.
“We were challenging him and all that and he went from being the softest wide receiver to being the best stock blocking wide receiver I’ve ever had to this day. And a three-year starter,” Rodriguez said. “...So he changed. He grew up and matured. Guys can change and we can bring it out of them.”
Rodriguez believes that there is a method to his approach and the key is consistency. Everybody has to play hard and bring that toughness every single day.
“If there is a moment of softness or weakness, mentally or physically, you have to address it every time. Not 99-percent of the time, every time and that falls on us as coaches,” he said.
That toughness is key because football is a game where, especially in the trenches, big people are trying to move other big people against their will. And Rodriguez is a firm believer that everybody has that willingness and competitiveness to meet that level of toughness.
“As a coach, as a player, whatever. If they’re keeping score we always have something to prove. When you get to the point where you don’t feel you have nothing left to prove then you’re probably not getting better,” Rodriguez said.
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