Rich Rodriguez Explains Exactly Why WVU Fumbled So Much in the Opener

One thing stood in the way of West Virginia gaining separation early from Robert Morris last Saturday in the season opener — fumbles. Four of them, to be exact.

Turning the ball over that many times in a game will get you beat by any legitimate opponent. Doing it four times in a half...you probably get crushed.

Head coach Rich Rodriguez was beside himself in the postgame press conference and immediately mentioned the fumbles and how three of them happened so close to each other, stating he had never seen anything like that. Ever.

On Monday night during his coach's show, Rodriguez revealed what he saw on film that caused the ball to hit the carpet as much as it did.

“There’s different kinds of turnovers. There’s ones that you give them by either making a bad decision, throwing the ball, dropping a pass, or you're carrying the ball loosely. Or there’s some that they cause because they had a great tackle and got a hat on it or whatever. One of them, I thought, they caused, but we still should be able to get away with it if we lower our shoulder. The other ones, we simply didn’t carry the ball high and tight with the right type of security. It’s going to happen inevitably; luckily for us, it happened against a team we were going to beat. Those are lessons that we’ve got to learn, and trust me, it’ll be a point of emphasis all week.”

Rich Rod also mentioned that one of the fumbles could have been easily recovered if they had guys running full speed right behind the ball carrier and noted that it will be a point of emphasis this week.

Starting this week with the Ohio Bobcats, there won't be any gimmes left on the schedule. Every win West Virginia collects from here on out will be earned, and the ball has to be protected at all costs. Fortunately, it's not something that's difficult thing to fix. Just because they fumbled it four times in the opener doesn't mean they'll cough it up two or three times a week throughout the season.