MORGANTOWN — After around 90 minutes, West Virginia’s Gold-Blue Spring Festival was over, or at least the football portion. It marked an end to a couple of things. It was the end of practice 15, which meant it was the end of spring practices for Rich Rodriguez in 2026. Spring football was over.

Now, Rodriguez and the Mountaineers go into a second offseason, and can’t practice again until August, the month before the first game of the season against Coastal Carolina on Sept. 5.

After the spring game, Rodriguez took the podium for the last time until August, unless you travel down to Big 12 Media Day in Frisco, Texas. As much as Rodriguez talked about the atmosphere of the spring game and the festival as a whole, he recapped the team’s progression from practice No. 1 to practice No. 15.

“All in all, I thought it was a pretty good spring,” Rodriguez said. “I think we found out some things that we wanted to find out, and there’s still some questions and stuff that we got to get finalized before the first game.”

There were a couple of areas he touched on, but the biggest was how the quarterbacks have progressed, especially the newer ones. Michael Hawkins, the Oklahoma transfer, has completed 15 practices in Rodriguez’s system as he looks to challenge returner Scotty Fox Jr. for the starting role in 2026.

Rodriguez thought Hawkins took a “leap” every day throughout the spring.

“He’s a smart guy,” Rodriguez said. “It’s really important to him. He’s taking a lot of extra time to learn, and so in 14 practices, I really think he’s taking a big step. Throughout the summer workouts, I know he’ll be over here a bunch of times watching film and probably meeting with coaches. What we thought we were getting with Mike, he’s shown every bit of that. I’m really, really pleased with the progress.”

Fox, Max Brown and the freshmen have also progressed through the spring, too. Fox, Brown and Hawkins are the more experienced of the bunch, so they’ve picked up the offense and digested all the information this spring a lot better.

“Our quarterbacks, there’s a little bit of experience there, with Scotty, with Mike, and even with Max. You can see some of that,” Rodriguez said. “But they don’t have a ton of experience. You can see how every practice, I think they advanced a little bit.”

Outside of the quarterbacks, Rodriguez was asked about true freshman offensive lineman Kevin Brown. Brown was a 4-star recruit and decommitted from Penn State to join his father’s former team, the Mountaineers.

Brown took reps at left tackle during the spring game, and Rodriguez reiterated that he’s still supposed to be in high school because he enrolled early to get the extra 15 practices in.

“He’s obviously a big, physical athlete,” Rodriguez said. “He’s been coached well, been trained well. His dad has done a great job training him. He loves football. He doesn’t like it. He loves it, and he’s passionate about it. His kind of mentality is infectious, and he’s what we thought he was when we recruited him, and he’s gonna have a great career.”

For the rest of the team, there’s still a lot of work to do, especially before fall camp rolls around. From now until then, WVU can work out in the weight room, do drills on their own and watch film, preparing for a full plate in August.

“We’re not in shape, but no team is in shape in spring ball, and to play at our pace, you got to be in great shape,” Rodriguez said. “That’s what summer workouts are for.”

After 15 practices, Rodriguez is happy with the progress the team has made since the start of March. Schematically and execution wise, there’s room to grow, but at least, the team has a handle on playing with a hard edge.

“Everybody uses the word culture, but I like where the culture is at,” Rodriguez said. “I think it will continue to get increased and be exactly where I want it to be.”