MORGANTOWN — During West Virginia football’s practice, offensive assistant Travis Trickett is everywhere. He’s on his radio talking to someone, walking around with his clipboard, talking to other assistant coaches. Trickett doesn’t stand still.
“I’m wherever coach [Rodriguez] needs me,” Trickett said.
Trickett is listed as Rich Rodriguez’s offensive assistant. He’s not the offensive coordinator, but he manages the offense and a lot of the team. When Rodriguez had his early National Signing Day period press conference, Trickett was sitting in the audience working the phones, letting Rodriguez know if the Mountaineers scored another recruit.
While WVU is in individual and group periods, he’s bouncing around observing. This spring, Trickett is mostly doing evaluation, figuring out what the Mountaineers have in each player.
“Last year was making sure the standard of practice needed to be what coach wanted it to be,” Trickett said. “Now that our staff has been together, they understand that… Now, it’s really like I’m with the offensive line a lot, watching them. Watching how we are doing the drills there and evaluating.”
This year, Rodriguez and the team used a new evaluation technique because, as Trickett said, most of the coaching staff know the standard of the hard edge. So, now it’s figuring out the talent levels of the players on the roster and what they do well, so Rodriguez and Trickett can fix the scheme to play to the players’ strengths.
Rodriguez and Trickett decided to “dumb down” everything this spring for the players because when a player struggles, especially in the spring, it’s usually a mental mistake. The mental issues can be fixed in the summer and fall.
“A lot of the time it’s other things, but one thing coach wanted to eliminate this spring, to evaluate what we have, he wanted to eliminate the thinking piece,” Trickett said. “I don’t want them to say that he doesn’t understand. He doesn’t have this… This spring has really been about, he wants to see our guys play fast to see who we have. When they know what to do and how to do it and how it’s coached, what player do we have in that player? When you have that you can evaluate.”
That does have its downsides, though. Defensive coordinator Zac Alley loves blitzing a lot and using motion to disrupt the offense. Since everything is simpler, Alley had to restrain himself and his defense.
“Zac is kind of biting his fists, wishing he could do more,” Trickett said. “But it allows you to see, we got these new D-linemen, new corners, new linebackers, new safeties, when they know what to do and how to do it, and they get put in that scenario, can they make that play, or do we need to call something else to help that player out.”
Some of the install is also slowed down because it’s less focused on schematics and more on finding out the level of talent. But in these first 15 practices is when you can experiment because there’s a whole summer and fall to work on installation. Some of the players on the roster aren’t even on campus yet, too.
“Maybe that slowed down the offensive installation piece, which we have all summer to do that,” Trickett said. “All fall camp to do that. We really wanted to know, going into summer, who can we win with when they know what to do and how to do it? That’s really what we’ve been evaluating.”
Now that the spring is over, the following weeks are spent on watching practice film and gauging the ability of the team. WVU can learn what players it can win with come fall.
So, after a couple of weeks, what does Trickett, one of the top assessors on the staff, think of the team?
“I really like the team,” Trickett said. “I really like the group. I think we got a bunch of really good guys that have the right mentality. We are not having to coach how to do things, how to practice. They are coming to work. It’s more about coaching ball, coaching technique. Year 1, you are always dealing with the other aspect, no matter how many guys are returning or whatnot. I think that’s been really good and really encouraging to see.”
