WATCHFUL EYE — Former WVU quarterback and current assistant coach Pat White looks on during a recent practice. - BlueGoldNews

MORGANTOWN — Sometime Thursday morning, Nicco Marchiol or one of the other near half dozen West Virginia quarterbacks is going to take the snap from center in practice and someone will miss a block or miss an assignment.

Normally, a whistle will blow and the quarterback, wearing a bright jersey which signals that the defenders are not to tackle him, will stop dead in their tracks.

But this will not be one of those normal days. As promised, WVU will be going live and hitting the quarterback will be fair game as part of the evaluation process, for head coach Rich Rodriguez learned back in Pat White’s early days that often a player’s best comes only in live action drills and games.

And so Marchiol and Jaylen Henderson and Scottie Fox and the others will have to make a play, escape a rush, throw a hurried pass, something they never would have shown had the play been blown dead.

On that day, the evaluation process will begin and in this camp, that is quite a process as Rodriguez has a posse of coaches involved in teaching, evaluating and developing the quarterbacks.

It’s his offense, so he is the head honcho, but the quarterback coach is his son, Rhett, whose knowledge is deeply entrenched in his dad’s offense. At the same time, Rodriguez has added WVU legendary quarterback Pat White to his staff as his assistant and also as a QB coach, while the overseer of the offense, Travis Trickett, also is involved.

“I usually am the loudest guy,” Rodriguez said with a laugh. “Now Rhett, he’s the opposite personality from me. He’ll be perfect, because he’s the one talking to the quarterback on the headpiece there.

“And Pat, he’s kind of quiet, too. He’s also helping me manage the situations on the field. It’s been a pretty good mix so far, but I kind of have a tendency to jump into the middle of it a whole lot, but Rhett and Pat understand that and so do the quarterbacks,” Rich Rod continued.

“There are times I’ll be with the whole team watching film. Sometimes I’ll be the offense watching film, and then just about every day I meet with the quarterbacks. It’s been good because we all have our different personalities in the way we approach it. That makes it easier for us to manage them.”

The most intriguing of the group, even including today’s quarterbacks, is White, who took Rodriguez’s team to its greatest heights while putting together what should be a Hall of Fame career with 4,480 rushing yards that produced 47 touchdowns while completing 64.8% of his passes for 6,049 yards with 56 TDs and just 23 interceptions.

After bouncing around while seeking direction after concussions brought a brief NFL career to an end, White was convinced by his former teammate Ryan Stanchek that coaching would fit him and he began dabbling in that area.

There had been some hesitation, for many believe that superstar players do not make superstar coaches, but the timing seemed right, as Deion Sanders also was making a name for himself in the profession.

When Rodriguez got the WVU job after 17 years away, he got together with his former star quarterback to explore the coaching situation.

“Somebody said the superstars struggle a little bit being a head coach because everything has been easy for them, but that’s not the case,” Rodriguez said. “They earned that kind of status. Guys like Pat and Deion Sanders, they earned their status as players.

“There is a lot of sacrifice from a time standpoint that make a coach. A lot of great athletes don’t have to make that time commitment. They can do something that isn’t as all consuming as coaching, so they look to go down a different track.”

“I talked to Pat about it. I said, ‘If you want to be a coach, go all in,'” Rodriguez said. “Jump in with both feet. I know you can help us and this is a chance for you to jump start your career, and he’s been doing that.”

White has enthusiastically returned to Morgantown to begin making his way into the coaching profession.

“Pat’s got a little bit of experience,” Rodriguez said. “He obviously knows a lot of the system, but it’s been like 20 years since he was here. There’s a lot of stuff in the offense we weren’t doing back then and there’s a lot of stuff we were doing back then we aren’t doing now, so Pat’s still in the process of learning all that.

“He’s got a good demeanor about him. Him and Rhett both, I needed that because I needed a calmer, analytic kind of guy to be there when I screaming at them. I’m kind of loud, I see something, I say something. I don’t usually wait until the next.”

If he can inject some of whatever it was that made him a star into one or more of the Mountaineer quarterbacks, it could turn what most “experts” believe will be a tough year for the Mountaineers into the start of the return to excellence.

At the same time, Rodriguez has also brought another of his stars into the coaching ranks with the running backs in Noel Devine, the explosive little runner with the electric speed that makes a Rodriguez offense go.

Devine had been running speed camps in Florida and Rodriguez he, as well as White, is perfectly suited to his assignment here.

“It’s the same thing with Noel. He’s got a great personality. Noel is excited to be out there,” Rodriguez said. “He’s a natural football coach. I can see recruiting in his personality. He’s going to have a great career in coaching. He’s still learning but he’s got everything it takes, I think.”