West Virginia offensive line coach Jack Bicknell Jr. left his Thursday press conference using the wall to support himself to get off the raised surface and leave the meeting room.

“I’m an old man,” Bicknell joked.

“Come on, old man,” safeties coach Gabe Franklin said.

Bicknell isn’t too old. He’s 62, the same age as Rich Rodriguez. He’s definitely been around when it comes to coaching, though. Bicknell’s coached at eight different universities and for four different NFL teams, including on the 2009 New York Giants team that won the Super Bowl. He also coached the offensive line that helped Jamaal Charles become one of the best running backs in the NFL for the Kansas City Chiefs.

Bicknell’s seen it all.

This is his first year at West Virginia, after coaching alongside Rodriguez at Ole Miss, and could bring an interesting play style for Rodriguez’s offensive line.

Usually, an offensive line rotates in players after the starters get tired, but Bicknell could run the offensive line like hockey lines. After one drive, they’ll bring off the whole line and swap it with a new, fresh one, working hand-in-hand with running a tempo offense. He made it clear that they won’t swap every play.

“That’s the way I like to do it,” Bicknell said. “It keeps everybody healthier that way. Coach Rod is 100% on board. He liked to play 10. But, obviously, you can’t play guys if you’re not going to be any good. Naturally, that’s what we’re trying to get accomplished through practice.”

Like Bicknell said, he needs to have 10 offensive linemen to run that type of strategy. Right now, Bicknell said he has seven to eight linemen who can run that style through the first couple of days of camp. The rest of the room still needs to get in shape and stop making simple mistakes.

“I want to get as many people as we can ready to go play the game,” Bicknell said. “I think they’re coming along. Always with the offensive line, you got to fix things. If we can do that and keep taking steps forward, I think we’ll be a good group.”

Bicknell’s still figuring out where each lineman could play. Like the receivers and the rest of the positional groups, he’s mixing each player at guard, center and tackle. There are positions where some players are more comfortable, like Kimo Makane’ole, who’s most comfortable at right guard. Bicknell wants the linemen to be as flexible as possible, so he can run that style of offense.

Center is one of the most important positions in the offense, and even more important in Rodriguez’s tempo offense because when the center is over the ball, they can start the play, and keep the momentum going. The position swapping helped Bicknell find multiple centers who he has confidence in to snap the ball. He listed Landen Livingston, Carson Lee and Cooper Young as some who’ve been good centers in camp.

“We have seven guys snapping,” Bicknell said. “We can’t run this offense without absolute precise snaps… We have more centers, honestly, that could go into the game than I’ve ever had. That’s for sure. That can legitimately snap the ball, and we can run our offense and be somewhat effective.”

In his over 30 years of coaching the offensive line, Bicknell’s coached a lot of different units. His newest, WVU’s 2025 group, is starting to take shape and should be ready by Week 1 against Robert Morris to run his hockey-style substitutions.

“I’m very confident,” Bicknell said. “I’m excited about this group. They have great character. The things we are doing wrong right now can be fixed. There’s no question about that. It’s a natural progression.”