Greene vs Marchiol Battle is Far From Over

Who will win the QB1 job? We won't know anytime soon.

As Neal Brown promised, the decision of a starting quarterback was not made at the conclusion of Saturday's spring game. 

This is going to be a process that plays not only into the summer but beyond the first couple of weeks of fall camp. And to be honest, we may not know who the starter will be until they take the field. That's the advantage of having a quarterback battle is they don't have to announce anything publicly and keep Penn State guessing.

Garrett Greene and Nicco Marchiol split the reps with the ones during the spring game. Greene finished 8-of-11 for 156 yards and a touchdown to go along with 18 yards on five carries and oh yeah, a 40-yard touchdown reception on a trick play. Marchiol completed 6-of-12 passes for 58 yards and was sacked three times on the afternoon.

"If you look statistically, Garrett's stats were better," said head coach Neal Brown. "One of those that he hit was probably going to be a sack. Both of them are runners and in this format, it's hard for them for their full tool set to be shown. I thought Nicco threw two really nice deep balls and our receivers didn't play the ball very well. Without having a chance to watch it, it's hard to tell but I thought they protected for Garrett a little better which is unfortunate for Nicco. Like I said, this is going to be the long game. Regardless of what happened today or what happened through the first fifteen. This was going to be winter, spring, it's going to through summer and into fall camp before we figure it out."

The hype surrounding Marchiol is warranted but we have to remember how young he is and that Greene is entering his fourth year in the program. I wouldn't be surprised if Greene begins the season as the starter and then Marchiol takes over if things don't go as planned. But then again, we are a long, long way from any decision being made, so there's no way of predicting who will take the first snap in Happy Valley.

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