Garrett Greene’s NFL Preseason Has Some WVU Fans Questioning the Past

Garrett Greene is doing his thing in the NFL, but it's a new thing.

He's making the transition to wide receiver with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and so far, it's going better than anyone could have imagined. Through the team's first two preseason games, he's caught five passes for 47 yards and returned two punts for a total of 38 yards.

Entering training camp, I thought there was no chance for Greene to make the 53-man roster, given the talent the Bucs have in that room. But right now, he's at the very least going to make it a challenging call for the Bucs' front office to make.

After seeing clips of his performances in practices and games, some West Virginia fans are quick to jump to calling out former WVU head coach Neal Brown, believing he should have switched to wide receiver in 2024 to open the door for Nicco Marchiol.

In some ways, it's a hindsight is 20/20 sort of thing, but it's also not. Sure, everyone is going to assume Greene would have been a star receiver in college AFTER seeing him make some plays in the NFL preseason. But making the move during or before the 2024 season would have made zero sense.

The Mountaineers were coming off a nine-win season in 2023, a year in which Greene was one of the best downfield throwers in all of college football. There is data to support that. If you put yourself in Brown's shoes, you're not about to make that bold of a decision mid-season, as some are suggesting once Marchiol started against Cincinnati and Arizona. Learning that position takes time. It didn't just happen overnight for Greene.

Also, when you're a coach that's very clearly on the hot seat, you're going to ride or die with the quarterback that helped land you an extension the prior offseason. Although the turnovers were an issue in 2024, you're going to put your confidence in the guy who won nine as opposed to the unknowns of Marchiol.

Nicco Marchiol may end up being a really good quarterback at West Virginia, and if that's the case, that still doesn't change my stance on this. At that point in time, and even now, no one knows what he's truly capable of.

Greene didn't have the greatest supporting cast of receivers throughout his time as WVU's QB1, and not to mention, he had several QB coaches throughout his development. Considering the circumstances, he still churned out a rock-solid career at QB. It wasn't the decision to keep him at QB that "held the offense back," it was a myriad of factors that weren't directly tied to Greene.

Neal Brown made plenty of mistakes while at WVU, but keeping Greene at QB wasn't one of them.

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