West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez watches the score board during the first half of an NCAA college football game against Texas Tech Saturday, Nov. 29, 2025, in Morgantown, W.Va. (AP Photo/Kathleen Batten)

It’s been three months since the media has talked to West Virginia football coach Rich Rodriguez. And, it wasn’t a formal press conference. Most of it was talking about his new recruiting class. There were some questions about the transfer portal, but not a lot.

Since then, a lot has happened with the program. The signing class has wrapped up, there’s been a whole transfer portal, and Rodriguez has made multiple coaching changes. It’s been an eventful three months.

On Tuesday, March 3, at 11 a.m. Rodriguez will talk to the media for the first time in three months, preparing for spring football, which is already here, just a month after the conclusion of the 2025-26 college football season.

There’s a lot to talk about, and over that time, I’ve had a lot of questions that I’ve wanted to ask, and now, I finally can. There are a lot of questions I have, but here are some of the bigger ones I want answered before spring ball starts.

The quarterback situation

The quarterback situation was the talk of last season. WVU cycled through five quarterbacks last season, without Rodriguez naming a starter. After losing Nicco Marchiol, Jaylen Henderson, Max Brown and Khalil Wilkins to injury, he was forced to start true freshman Scotty Fox.

Fox provided a spark. After losing multiple Big 12 games in a row, Fox led the Mountaineers to upset a top-25-ranked Houston on the road. He won one more game and was competitive in a couple of others. But Fox wasn’t perfect. It’s hard to be perfect as a true freshman, but he made mistakes, and the offense couldn’t get anything going against Texas Tech. The Red Raiders were the best team in the conference last season and had a top defense in the country, to be fair.

However, it rehashed the question if Fox was going to be the starter going forward. Rodriguez briefly talked about adding a quarterback in the portal during his signing day conference.

“We will probably still look at one for the portal,” Rodriguez said on Dec. 3. “Get an experienced guy because of what we went through this year.”

A little over a month later, Rodriguez added a transfer quarterback, Michael Hawkins Jr. Hawkins played in nine games over two seasons with Oklahoma. He started two games in 2025, coming in for the injured John Mateer. Hawkins has experience at the Power Four level and fits the build of a rushing quarterback.

The question now is how does bringing in Hawkins affect Fox? Was he brought in to just be a safety net, or an option as a starter for 2026?

That question probably won’t be answered before the spring, and after last year’s starting quarterback situation, Rodriguez won’t be too happy if it’s asked. But it’s a question that’s been sitting with me since he brought in Hawkins.

I think Rodriguez will be more likely to answer about how Hawkins fits into the situation.

Retaining coaches

Once Rodriguez was hired in December of 2024, he quickly worked on bringing in a new staff. Even after he hired his original staff, Rodriguez had to make additional hires because running backs coach Chad Scott left two months in for Texas.

After Year 1, Rodriguez had a lot of movement with his coaching staff. Running backs coach, who was a strong hire last spring, Larry Porter, left for Auburn to join new head coach Alex Golesh’s staff. Rodriguez filled the vacancy with former Kentucky running backs coach Jay Boulware.

Then, Rodriguez didn’t extend offensive line coach Jack Bicknell Jr. after a bad year. He brought in former WVU offensive line coach Rick Trickett to be the new line coach.

Bandits coach Jeff Casteel retired at the start of the new year. Rodriguez had an inkling, and before the news was announced, he hired pass rusher specialist Larry Knight. After a little over 30 days, Knight was hired by Georgia to be its new linebackers coach. WVU reportedly hired former Arkansas defensive end coach Deke Adams as the replacement.

That’s a lot of movement after Year 1. The 2025-26 season had probably the craziest coaching carousel in the history of the sport. There were multiple Power Four job openings, including Penn State, Michigan, LSU and Florida, to name a few. Which meant a lot of new coaches were filling up staffs, meaning no assistant coach on any team was safe.

We’ll see if this was just a one-off or if this will be more frequent with athletic departments and fans’ patience thinning. So, how much of Rodriguez’s offseason is spent trying to retain coaches? Because there might have been coaches on his staff that Rodriguez convinced to stay, who might’ve gotten job opportunities somewhere else that we don’t know about.

Freshmen class

Rodriguez said he was going to rebuild the program this offseason with a big freshman class. He delivered, scoring the best freshman class in recent history. Rodriguez added multiple 4-stars, including running back Amari Latimer, offensive lineman Kevin Brown and athlete Matt Sieg. There are also some other talented 3-star and JUCO players as well. There was a recent video of Brown squatting 655 pounds, so there’s a lot of hype around this class, and particular players in it.

The question is how early could we see some of the freshman? There aren’t a lot of running backs behind Cam Cook, so could Latimer get some action? Could Brown start at one of the tackle spots?

It’ll be too hard to tell before spring ball has even happened, but there’s no question that Rodriguez could have something in mind for them. Maybe later in the spring, it’ll be more appropriate to ask a question about the freshmen because then Rodriguez can see them in action on the field. But it’s not too early to ask, especially since the last time we talked to Rodriguez, the class wasn’t even complete.