Greene, Marchiol Showing Signs of Growth and Maturity

Let the QB battle begin in Morgantown.

We're officially one day into fall camp and I hate to be the bearer of bad news but no, Neal Brown is not ready to name a starting quarterback. He is, however, excited about the competition and feels like they are in good shape at the position despite how much youth makes up that room.

Garrett Greene has a couple of starts under his belt and led West Virginia to their first win over Oklahoma since joining the Big 12 Conference. And that experience coupled with the few snaps he would get here and there throughout the season has gone a long way in really slowing the game down for him. 

A year ago, Greene would get caught trying to do too much when nothing was there instead of just throwing the ball away or taking a sack. Oftentimes it felt as if he would allow his energy and passion to leak into the following play, be it good or bad. That's the biggest difference Brown has spotted in his junior quarterback over the last few weeks - he doesn't let the emotion take over nearly as much as it once did.

"The thing I like about both those guys is very even-keeled. Garrett as a younger player and maybe even in the spring to a lesser extent, he's got great energy and his juice level is extremely high and what happened previously when he was a younger player is he had really highs and really lows. If you're a guy that has a bounce to you and you're up every day, your lows are really magnified. Today, his energy level was really good. He made a couple bad decisions but it didn't affect him and he was able to bounce back."

I sensed this back in the spring. You could see an increased maturity from Greene, but still saw the raw emotion and edge that he likes to play with. But he's not the only quarterback in the race that has made strides in this department. Nicco Marchiol has as well.

"I think he's more comfortable. He's at ease," Brown said. "Both of them are competing for the job and sometimes what happens when you get in these competitions is guys get really tense and they feel like the decision is based on every single play. Nicco was a little bit like that in the spring and Garrett, a little bit. But I thought both of them were much more at ease today and didn't try to force things and handled negative things better."

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