“Disappointed, Not Discouraged” — Rodriguez’s Message After WVU’s Ugly Loss

It's been a brutal few days for the West Virginia football team. First, they lost to Ohio, marking their first regular-season loss to a Group of Six team since 2008. And then on Monday, they received news that starting running back Jahiem White and wide receiver Jaden Bray have been ruled out for the season.

What makes matters worse is that WVU's offense looked anemic before the injuries to White and Bray. Now, they have to not only find answers to all of their issues offensively, but also replace two really talented, productive players.

In the loss, the Mountaineers didn't win on first down nearly as much as they would have liked, forcing them to play behind the sticks and creating a bunch of 3rd and longs. The offensive line had a game they'd like to forget about, Nicco Marchiol missed some things in the pass game, and the backs and tight ends played poorly as well.

Despite how bad it looked, head coach Rich Rodriguez is not hitting the panic button just yet.

“Disappointed, not discouraged, because the guys played hard. I know they’ll get better," he told Tony Caridi during his coach's show Monday night. "But just really disappointed because I thought we had a good week of practice. The guys were focused. There wasn’t clowning around or anything like that. We knew it was going to be a pretty good football team, and that it was going to be a tough environment, and it was. I thought our guys handled the environment; it was just offensively, we played so poorly, coached poorly, and couldn’t get in any rhythm whatsoever.

"Defensively, we played pretty well for the most part. We knew the quarterback was a problem. He proved to be every bit of what we thought he would be. We just didn’t play well enough to beat a pretty solid team. We’ll learn from it. As disappointed as we were, I think our guys understand if we’re going to come back, why not come back this week, right? To get our guys’ total attention on obviously the biggest game on our schedule.”

Can the Mountaineers flip the switch and find enough answers over the next few days to have a chance to beat their bitter rival? It won't be easy, but it's not impossible. Crazier things in this rivalry have happened before.