The very first thing West Virginia head coach Rich Rodriguez has to do is put a staff together, ideally starting with finding a defensive coordinator. There is no set scheme Rodriguez is searching for, but he does have a few guys in mind.
“It depends on the coordinator I hire. I’ve got a couple that I’ve talked to, and they’re different,” Rodriguez said Thursday. “And everybody runs the same of everything now defensively whether it’s an odd-stack or an even front. Everybody has certain personnel packages they use for their own defense, but I’m going to pick the d coordinator first. I’ll have a really good one because I have enough resources to hire a really, really good one, and then from there, I’ll build out the defensive staff. There’s not one particular scheme that I want other than that I want to be really aggressive and force the issue, so to speak, on the other team.”
While Rodriguez doesn’t seem to mind what the defensive scheme is, his teams had great success with the 3-3-5 in his first stint in Morgantown. That doesn’t mean he’ll lean in that direction, but he has ties with a lot of guys who have experience running it. One of which is Zac Alley, who is currently the co-defensive coordinator and linebackers coach at Oklahoma…