MORGANTOWN — In this era of college football, it’s hard to gather information from spring games. The games are watered down from the traditional shortened scrimmage, and some teams don’t even have them.

West Virginia football had its spring game Saturday afternoon, or the Gold-Blue Spring Festival to be correct, and for roughly 90 minutes, Rich Rodriguez showed off a little bit of his 2026 squad.

The team had been working all spring, and the only glimpse the public or media received was a week before the spring game for a short 30-minute segment. A bit more was showcased from the spring game, but it was hard to keep track, with a fast-paced format and no stats.

The team was split down the middle, like Rodriguez said, into a gold/white team and a blue team. The two teams played half-field because of the stadium, and took turns taking drives. The blue team did beat the gold/white team for those keeping score.

“I think our players really enjoyed it,” Rodriguez said. “Pretty competitive. Not sure we executed really well at times, but I thought they played pretty hard.”

Here are some of the notes from the spring game.

Quarterbacks

WVU has another quarterback battle on its hands for the 2026 season, but it feels like the field is significantly smaller than in 2025, when Rodriguez talked all offseason about how five to six guys were fighting for the starting spot.

Based on some inference, it seems like a two-horse race between Scotty Fox Jr., who is returning from last year, and Oklahoma transfer Michael Hawkins Jr. Those two were both in the black touch jerseys, but were on opposite sides, with Fox on blue and Hawkins on white.

Rodriguez didn’t know if Fox would be full-go, dealing with a hamstring injury, but it didn’t seem to bother him, taking the first snap for a first down on a rush. Fox marched his squad down the field with a couple of passes, not missing on a single one.

Hawkins led his team down the field, but he missed big on a few passes, usually missing high. He showed off his speed and athleticism, though, to make defenders miss. On Hawkins’ first drive, the offense settled for a short field goal.

But, out of the quarterbacks, Max Brown really played well, even if he’s the third name out of Rodriguez’s mouth when the quarterbacks are brought up. On his first drive, Brown took off on a quarterback run and leveled a defender. This is a scrimmage, but it looked like an in-season hit.

Brown also made a couple of nice throws and threw a dot on the run to John Neider for a touchdown, but he dropped it. Then Brown connected with Keon Hutchins on a deep pass in stride for a big gain. It was a bit easier for Brown to show his full arsenal of tricks because he was in full contact, keeping that in mind.

The rest of the quarterback room worked in after Fox, Hawkins and Brown. Two of the freshmen quarterbacks, Jyron Hughley and John Johnson, both led their respective teams to touchdowns. Hughley took his first play for a 60-yard touchdown, showing off his speed and athleticism. Johnson led his team on a touchdown drive, which was capped off with a throw to tight end Sam Hamilton.

“They all can run, can’t they?” Rodriguez said about the freshmen. “They’re competitive guys. You can also see a little nervousness in the throwing. I think sometimes you aim it, instead of just throwing it.”

Notable players

Running back Amari Latimer was on the white team with Hawkins at quarterback. The two took the field second, and Latimer made an immediate impact, helping the run game. At 6-foot, 230 pounds, Latimer definitely showed he was hard to bring down and ran hard in between the tackles.

There were a couple of receivers who made some nice plays, too. LSU transfer TaRon Francis made some catches out by the numbers and made some defenders miss for some extra yardage. JUCO transfer Keon Hutchins created separation from a defensive back and caught a deep pass from Brown. Fox connected with Troy transfer D.J. Epps for the first touchdown of the game.

There was one injury with USC transfer Prince Strachan having a shoulder injury, but Rodriguez didn’t seem to think it was anything major.

The defense was a bit harder to judge because some of the quarterbacks were in touch jerseys, and the whistle was blown when there was a free rusher. On a few plays, the officials blew the whistle for a sack. The defense forced Max Brown to cough the football up, and defensive back Maliek Hawkins, the brother of quarterback Michael, scooped it up and ran it to the stage. The secondary also broke up some passes, keeping tight coverage.

“We really limited, it really hurt Zach (Alley) because we made him reduce his plays way down so he couldn’t make all his fancy calls and stuff,” Rodriguez said. “We were really generic, definitely from a call standpoint, but I thought we tackled pretty good. I think we still have to work on getting off blocks and recognizing things a little bit.”

Other observations

It was hard to take away a lot from the spring game, since it was so short, but the number of penalties definitely stood out. WVU had offside penalties and a lot of holding penalties when the quarterback took off on the outside. But, the spring is when it’s good to get all the penalties out because there is time to correct before an actual game.

“Had a couple of silly penalties,” Rodriguez said. “We’ll have to get that corrected.”

WVU also used a combination of different formations, which included the debut of fullback Kayden Luke. Luke was in the backfield on the third drive and first with Brown as quarterback. He was used in the slot and as a lead blocker. Luke was blocking for running back Darius Morant, who is 6-foot tall, making for a lot of size in the backfield.