MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Logic dictates typical Week 1 mistakes and nerves that exist in any season opener will come into play for both West Virginia and Coastal Carolina when the two teams start their respective 2026 seasons at noon Saturday at Milan Puskar Stadium.
Excitement is building on both sides in anticipation of putting the dog days of preseason camp in the past and the chance to compete against another team.
So, too, however, are concerns from both head coaches.
“Special teams more so because you don’t practice that live a lot. Usually, you’re guesstimating how your guys are going to perform. That’s probably the biggest worry,” WVU head coach Rich Rodriguez said. “But also, even though a lot of these guys may have played somewhere else, most of them are playing for the first time in our stadium with our crowd, so they’re going to be excited and a little nervous. I want them to get that out of the way in a hurry and just play ball.”
That’s perhaps easier said than done, and the environment in Morgantown figures to be advantageous for the Mountaineers, while potentially problematic for Coastal Carolina.
Rodriguez and the WVU staff emphasized experience through a surplus of offseason transfer additions, but a lack of familiarity in this system adds to the head coach’s concern level.
“A little more anxious, because we have so many new guys,” Rodriguez said. “Even though a lot of them have played some college football, they haven’t played in this system. That’s probably adding to the anxiety a little bit. I’m anxious for those guys. They’ve worked hard. We have a hard week to get ready and we’ll see what we have.”
While the Chanticleers — like WVU — have a largely new-look roster, they don’t have the luxury of staff continuity.
Coastal head coach Ryan Beard is in his first year after leaving behind Missouri State to guide the Sun Belt Conference member. Beard expects to learn plenty about his team Saturday afternoon.
“A lot of that is how we handle the moment, because you’re going to West Virginia. I don’t know if you’ve been to a game there. It’s a pretty active crowd,” Beard said. “They’re probably going to know some information about you, say some things to you that you might not like. How well do we focus and stay in the moment? How can we take a play at a time, good or bad, and be able to overcome some of those adverse situations and learn and grow from it in game? Not just after the game watching the film. How do we make adjustments as a staff? How do our offense, defense or special teams units come together after a good play or bad play to move forward and finish the game the right way?”
Neither head coach has publicly named a starting quarterback, but it would be a surprise for the Mountaineers to go in a different direction than Michael Hawkins Jr., an Oklahoma transfer with dual-threat ability that Rodriguez has preferred through the years.
With Hawkins Jr. and tailback Cam Cook, who led all of FBS in rushing last season at Jacksonville State, the Mountaineers will carry a different look offensively than a year ago. That includes a revamped offensive line expected to feature four new starters, while Nick Krahe, the lone holdover, is transitioning from tackle to guard.
“Week 1 is always a challenge, simply because you don’t have a really good sample size of them playing together,” Beard said. “You know who they are as individuals and where they were at their respective institutions before they got to West Virginia.
“But that’s really where your in-game adjustments come. Who is giving you the looks that you prepared for? Who is not? And they’re going to be uptempo as well and go as fast as humanly possible. We have to do a a good job of communicating on defense, getting aligned and making sure that you don’t have the free runners and issues in Week 1 that a lot of people have had to prevent some of that explosiveness from their offense.”
The Mountaineers are likely to have even more turnover defensively.
Linebacker Ben Cutter is the lone returning player among the team’s top 17 tacklers from a year ago.
A handful of holdovers from last year’s team will assume expanded roles and numerous transfers from FBS programs are on the two-deep depth chart. Additionally, several junior college transfers and true freshmen figure to play meaningful snaps Saturday.
“I worry more about the nerves to start,” WVU defensive coordinator Zac Alley said.” You have a lot of guys, this is probably the largest crowd they’ve ever played in front of in their life. Whether it’s a transfer, high school kid or whatever that looks like. There will be some first-game jitters as far as when you get out there, and that affects the communication, execution and all that probably more than anything else.
“We’ve been preparing for these guys for a while now. The plan is in. The guys know it. You put it on the board right now, they can tell you what we’re doing. But you get into actual performance being in an environment that they’ll be in at our stadium here, I do imagine there will be some guys like, ‘whoa’, for the first time. We’ll settle in and move from there.”