Rich Rodriguez and the rest of the West Virginia quarterbacks head into the meeting room, or as Rodriguez calls them, the “truth rooms,” where anything goes. The coaching staff is straight up with the players while watching film. If they do something bad, they’ll tell them. If it’s something good, they’ll recognize it.
The players’ age or background doesn’t matter in the truth room. Everyone is treated the same, even true freshman quarterback Scotty Fox Jr., who has started the past two games and is in line to start a third on the road against Houston.
“We don’t worry about anybody’s feelings or anything like that,” Rodriguez said. “We tell them straight up, like that was not very smart, or that was really good. It’s not all negative, it’s not all positive, it just is what it is. The quarterbacks, we tell them, we are going to be brutally honest with you and this is how it’s going to be. We don’t kind of worry about, even if he’s a freshman, let’s treat him with knit gloves, not destroy his confidence. You destroy your confidence by playing poorly. You play well, you get more confidence.”
Rodriguez is in a unique situation. There aren’t a lot of FBS teams in college football that are starting true freshman quarterbacks. You could probably count them with your fingers. In this era of college football, a freshman quarterback sits for a year or two, and then if that’s all a team has, they’ll bring in a veteran through the transfer portal to make up those two years.
Rodriguez has started freshman quarterbacks before. It’s still a unique situation for him, because when he’s had a freshman, there have been veterans around him. There are older players around Fox, but they are all first-year players in Rodriguez’s system.
“It’s a different dynamic,” Rodriguez said. “Everybody doesn’t have experience. That’s not an excuse, that’s just the reality.”
Rodriguez has treated Fox a little differently than the veteran quarterbacks when it comes to playcalling. The play sheet was limited to keep it simpler. As the weeks go on, the play sheet will open up.
“There are things we’ve got to be able to expand a little bit and try to be a little creative offensively,” Rodriguez said. Simply, some of the stuff that we had there we have to execute a little bit better, too.”
Even with the limited playbook, Fox set the WVU true freshman single-game passing yards record with 301 yards. He threw the ball 41 times and had two passing touchdowns. It was the first passing touchdown for WVU since Fox’s garbage time bomb to Cam Vaughn against BYU. Fox was pretty efficient at throwing the ball.
He still made some mistakes, and TCU’s pass defense is one of the worst in the Big 12. Houston doesn’t have the best pass defense, but it’s definitely better than the Horned Frogs.
“I think his decision-making was really good for the most part,” Rodriguez said. “I think he was seeing the field. He was getting rid of the ball quickly when he had to. There was a lot to grow off of, but he’s going to see something new every week. Different defenses, different ways people play against it, and we got to help prepare for that. But for a true freshman in that environment, he was composed. There were a couple times he dropped some snaps or something. But even then, he didn’t panic. I’m proud of the way he played.”
