Photo courtesy of BlueGoldNews.com WVU offensive line coach Jack Bicknell Jr., left, tries to make points to the offensive line.

MORGANTOWN — Sometimes the best of plans never sees the light of day.

Proof, you want.

You got it.

This was West Virginia’s offensive line coach Jack Bicknell back before the season started, his answer to what he was hoping to do with his offensive line:

“We want to play a lot of people. It’s hard to get 10 (who can play), but when I was at Ole Miss we played with seven. A couple of things it does is it keeps everybody into it. It’s not just the five guys who start, where the other guys look at me like ‘Well, it’s over for me.’

“If you are giving the other guys time you are thinking ‘If I can get to the top seven or eight, I can play.’

“With the tempo we play, the D-line is substituting back and forth, why can’t we? You get to the fourth quarter and if you play just five guys, they are pretty beat up by the fourth quarter. The thing is that you don’t cost yourself anything when you put those other guys in.

“That’s what we’re trying to build. I have to be able to trust you when you go in there you are not going to mess up a protection or a run scheme.

“That way, when you get an injury, we’re not panicking because the guy has played. I think Coach Rod is 100 percent on board with it and would like to play 10, you can’t do it if the guys you put in there aren’t going to be as good as the ones who come out.”

Now for the reality of what developed through camp and into the season. Here is a look at the number of snaps played by the offensive linemen through the first three (not counting the Robert Morris opener) games against Division 1 company:

Total snaps: 206

Snaps by offensive lineman:

Nick Krahe, 206

Walter Young Bear, 206

Kimo Makane’ole, 206

Ty’Kieast Crawford, 206

Landen Livingston, 174

Carson Lee, 41

Ryan Caretta 1

The truth is, had center Landen Livingston not suffered an injured ankle midway through the Kansas loss last week, the starting five offensive linemen would have played every snap, but one of the three games against D-1 opponents.

So much for playing 10, or 9, or 8, or 7, or even 6.

Why has this happened?

Head coach Rich Rodriguez has answered it often, noting that he wants to play a lot of players every game, that it is a necessity with the fast tempo his team uses.

But…

“I truly want to play a lot of guys, but they’ve got to earn that,” he has said, noting the final judgment comes on whether or not the team can win with that player in the game.

Obviously, he hasn’t found many in the offensive line.

“Usually, the O-line is the first people to blame when you are having a problem running the football,” Rodriguez said on his Monday night radio show. “There’s a whole lot of people to blame, though, starting with the coaches. Trust me, if someone can play better, we’re going to put them in there. We’re not winning too much not to play the best guys.”

After a disastrous performance against Ohio University in an unforeseen 17-10 loss in which WVU had just 76 rushing yards in 28 carries, an average of 2.6 yards per try, the running game has shown signs of life.

Against Pitt, the Mountaineers rushed for 174 yards and controlled the ball, running 58 times, but they averaged only 3.0 yards per attempt with Tye Edwards filling in for the injured Jahiem White, who is out for the season after knee surgery.

Then, Edwards was out against Kansas and questionable this week with the talk sounding like it’s probably more like doubtful, WVU put together a game plan that produced 182 yards on 41 tries, a respectable 4.4 per attempt.

But that stat should carry an * for the leading rusher was then back-up quarterback Jaylen Henderson and came after the game was out of reach.

While Henderson’s speed in relief of the starting QB Nicco Marchiol, who it turns out this week is also on the injury list with a foot problem that has plagued him for a while, it remains questionable if his running skills can really cover up the loss of White, Edwards and, perhaps, Cyncir Bowers, who suffered a concussion.

What’s more, there are doubts that Henderson can throw well enough to balance the WVU offense, which has Rodriguez also looking past him at Khalil Wilkins, who also came in and averaged 7.2 yards per rush but did not throw the ball.

Rushing the football has not been the only area in which the Mountaineers’ offensive line have been unable to deliver consistent yardage, but there have been 13 sacks in the first four games, which points fingers at leaking protection and Marchiol’s inability to get free when under pressure.

Now, they figure to be playing with a backup center for at least this week, which makes Jack Bicknell Jr. the man on the spot as the offensive line coach.

Bicknell, the son of former Boston College head coach, has a relationship with Rodriguez that goes all the way back to 1982 when Bicknell was BC’s center, snapping the ball to legendary quarterback Doug Flutie, and Rodriguez a WVU safety.

Flutie played four times against WVU and while he won a Heisman Trophy and invented the collegiate version of the “Hail Mary” pass to beat Miami, he never beat WVU and Bicknell in his playing and coaching career five times and never beat the Mountaineers.

“Coach Rod never misses a moment to remind me that we lost all five against West Virginia,” he said.

As the son of a football coach, Bicknell was destined to follow in his father’s footsteps.

He was ‘Like please do this.’ Well, he sort of said that. He knew it was a great life.

“I was going to be a coach. All my mentors, everybody I looked up to my whole life, including my dad, were coaches,” he admitted. “I had one little flirting thing (when he was coming out of college). My dad told me there was a new company out in San Francisco that I could go work at. I asked him what its name was and he said ‘Apple.'”

His reply to that?

“That’s stupid, I’m not doing that,” Bicknell said.

So, he took a graduate assistant’s job making $300 a month and never looked back.

When Rodriguez’s journeys took him to Ole Miss as offensive coordinator five years back, Bicknell became his line coach.

“I love tempo,” he said. “That tires out D-lines and a lot of times it makes them simpler because they can’t get everything in. If you are disguising one side and bringing a blitz from the other side, they can’t get that in fast enough,” Bicknell said.

But to take a group of offensive linemen who grew up in another system and try to mold them into a smooth operating group is not something that comes easily, especially with the tempo Rodriguez runs his offense at.

It isn’t made for a 300-pound lineman.

“They mind it, but that’s their tough luck,” Bicknell said.