Quick Hits: Bounce Back Day, Perimeter Blocking, NIL Deals, Sharp O-Line + More

Friday morning, the West Virginia Mountaineers held an open practice for the media.

Shortly after, head coach Rich Rodriguez met with reporters to discuss how today went after a bad day two.

I thought our guys did a better job today of the intensity level and attention to detail, so I thought we got better today.

Pretty spirited, pretty good.

Obviously, you get so much more work done in shoulder pads than in shorts or without the pads on.

We do a lot of perimeter stuff, and we got to be good perimeter blockers our wide receivers, tight ends, running backs all of our skill guys, we demand a lot out of them from a downfield perimeter blocking standpoint.

Today we got some of that work done, but theres a lot of work to do with that.

I liked the effort.

I didnt think the technique was very good, for the most part.

Thats one of the reasons weve been able to run the football at times at different places.

Weve had really good running backs, good quarterbacks that could run, but we had really good downfield blocking and guys taking a lot of pride in that.

Its a very conscientious group.

I mean, Ive got three really good o-line coaches working with them.

Mentally, as far as assignment-wise, and again, were not that complicated at all, but what I saw at least the last three days, theyve been pretty sharp mentally.

I didnt think today we got as much push maybe up on the line of scrimmage.

And Coach (Zac) Alley, hes got 46 blitzes and 18 coverages and 45 fronts put in already, I think.

I hate to limit it because they do such a good job teaching it, but theres a whole lot more our guys have saw up front today in the third day of practice than you would normally expect, so Ill reserve judgment until we see it a few more times.

Ollie punted pretty well today.

Kickers have seemed to be pretty accurate.

We got some good competition going on there.

Im excited about our special teams.

I think because where were at with our roster and got so many new guys, everybody wants to compete to play, and they know special teams is a way for them to get on the field.

We kind of have like an NFL salary cap would have, and whats projected for QB1, left tackle two.

And the hard part about that for us, or anybody thats new as a staff is you really dont know.

I mean, what do you pay this guy and that guy because you really hadnt played a game with them? But you have to project that as best as you can, and then you have to have the ability to restructure the salary cap or their salaries as the season goes along or as the season goes.

This will be the toughest year for that because everybodys projected.

And our players know that you dont want to pay your fourth-team nose guard more than your starting quarterback.

You have to have a salary cap structure that rewards guys for earned success.

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