Rich Rodriguez Kansas postgame

So, Rich, you've been good offensively all year until today. Can you explain what happened? Yeah, first off, I apologize to our fan base, to every West Virginia fan out there. I mean, I didn't see this coming. It was just embarrassing. I mean, just I told the team, it was poorly coached as can be. I mean, offense poorly coached, defense poorly coached. It was just, again, I thought we had a decent week. But give them credit, and we've got a lot of work to do. I think our players are resilient. I know we're not going to let this game define us or define our season, but we've got, obviously, a lot of things to fix in a hurry. You're blocking very well. No, we didn't block at all up front. I knew their front was good, but it was bad from the start in everything. Pass protection, run game was awful. I'll have a better grasp of some of the whys after I watch the film. No shortage of things that we've got to do to get better. I'm going to turn it over to the I think our players are pretty conscientious, but the staff failed our players, failed our program tonight. I was going to ask, with going into each week and changes and things like that and trying to get it fixed, how does something like this happen towards the end of the year? Thinking going into the game that you were going to play better and had a great game in practice, et cetera. What's your question on that? Just like how does something like this happen now at this point in the season? You're saying in particular our problems defensively? Well, now, I mean, now on offense as well when it had been great earlier. Yeah, today was an outlier. Right. Our offense had played pretty well all year. Defense hadn't played well all year and continued to play poorly. So I don't, you know. Answer to your question, we haven't played well defensively. We've played tighter a little bit in a couple games, you know, TCU, whatever, but we've played well. One player doesn't define it, but how much did you miss Bubba Grayson? Yeah, I think Bubba up front, he's kind of a calming presence, but, you know, it's just one guy, you know. And I had some concerns that, you know, they're pretty good up front, but, my gosh, it was, I don't want to say there was panic that set in, but it was probably some of that that happened, which is a little bit unforeseen. Because we've played how many games we've played up to this point, nine. So we've got work to do to fix it. Did Kansas do something different defensively to make it difficult to run the ball? Yeah, I mean, they did a different scheme than they had shown. But it's not something that we haven't seen as coaches. But it was a completely different deal than what they had shown before. But give them credit, it was good. But after the first couple of series, we kind of knew it. But a lot of the problems were just. You know, we, you know, would have maybe the five-man protection in, and they had a six-man blitz, and we knew one guy was coming free, but you can't let two guys come free. So it was just, there was, like I said, I got to watch the film. There was a multitude of errors that start with our coaching. I know it happened late in the game, but do you have an update on Jayden? Rich, it looked like the start of the third quarter, he kind of fixed things defensively, had back-to-back punts. How do you kind of get that to carry throughout the rest of the game? Good question. I mean, it's just deflating. I know, I mean, we've seen it all year. It's like open up a game with a score, another score. You know, you don't make them punt at all in the first quarter or first half or something. I don't, it's, you know, done this a long time. This is, I've not had this much frustration to this level season-wide, season-wide, maybe ever. So, and guys are trying, but there's, you know, obviously there's, the answers are not coming like they should. If you're saying it's coaching, does a performance like this warrant any evaluation or re-evaluation of the staff? Oh, sure, but it's not, yeah, but not just this game. You know what I mean? But the season hasn't been made in that direction yet. Yeah, yeah, there's, it's got two games left in the regular season, but it's, I mean, the staff kind of gets evaluated, myself included, on every game, you know, good or bad. I'm not one to... It's a shy to tell. The staff, good or bad, exactly where they're at. I'm not one to kind of sit back and then, okay, I'll tell you at the end of the year what's going on. It's like after the Coastal Carolina game, we had a staff meeting an hour after the game because I was upset and vented then. So it's not like our issues have not been addressed or talked about. But it is very frustrating, to your point, that we continue to have some of the same problems. And, you know, I know some of it you can point to. Trying to get some more guys on defense, whatever, but we've got to do a much better job. Today, we've got to do a better job everywhere, but defensively, it's pretty obvious we've got to do a whole lot better job. How do you get this team to refocus and ensure that this game doesn't define them? Well, there's just two weeks left, and there's a lot riding in two games. James, you know, Every game's for a bowl game. You know, we've got two really talented teams, ranked teams coming that we've got to play. This is our seniors' last home game. It's always, to me, something really special. And so, for 24 hours, we should be miserable. We're going to get some corrections, look at what the heck happened, and try to fix it. And then next Saturday, you know, I don't know if you can play much worse, but we've got to play a whole lot better and give our fans something to cheer about because we didn't do that today. We didn't give them from the jump. You know, we got about time from the jump. We got our loyal fans there and didn't give anything to cheer for. I mean, that bothers me that we have such a great fan base and we don't give them something to cheer for when they come out in the cold weather and want to see us play well. Rich, I mean, I guess with all due respect, why should fans have hope in salvaging this year or even in the future of the program with... Losses to first-year head coaches, losses to last-place teams with more money invested, etc. So are you stating facts? Like, what are you saying? What should give fans hope that next season... You don't think we're better than we were a year ago? Oh, you're 100% sure. Okay, okay. So you answered one of them for yourself. Like, I don't mind it. You can be critical. I would hope you'd be critical actors today, but, you know, we're better than we were a year ago. We're going to be better in... Three weeks than we are today. We're going to be better in three months than we are today. We're going to be better next fall than we are this fall. If we can retain the players we want to retain and recruit the way we need to recruit, and I fixed some of the issues that we've got to fix. So, and the school wants to win. You know, our administration wants to win. Everybody involved with us wants to win. I know what it takes to win. Maybe, you know, you could question that after tonight. I understand that, but this is not my first rodeo. You know, so answer to your question. I mean, I understand you would be critical. I don't mean this is whatever. I'm a big boy. You know, you can be critical, but I know what the hell I'm doing. I know what I need to fix it, but I'm frustrated that I couldn't fix it a little bit better than I've fixed it so far, especially defensively. That makes sense. And that's my job. I'll get it done. But we will be better going forward. We have to get learned from this. We will be, I think, incrementally better. Two months, three months, and certainly next year than we are this year. I think we're better than last year, but we still got work to do. Rich, how much of a problem is it that you had to play or play so many different players that week-to-week development might be tougher to do just because... Yeah, that's part of the deal. I don't, I mean... I've said before, flipping a roster of 80-some players every year is not a good recipe for success because it's hard to develop them in your system and what you're doing. We had to do it first year, and then we had to do it again this year, and we don't want to have to do it again if we can have some retention of some guys. But that being said, you've got to retain the right guys and you've got to have a plan. I think offensively, despite today, I think. Yeah, there's some pretty. Good optimism for that. Defensively, it's not been good at all, and that's pretty obvious. But I know what we need to do to fix it. Let's put it that way. Whether you want to believe it or not, that's fine. But, again, I've done this a long time. I've got great help here in the state. I've got great help in administration. I've got a plan to make sure that days like today aren't going to happen