Neal Brown Gives Early Thoughts on QB Battle

The Mountaineers are working toward figuring out who their starting quarterback is going to be when they line up to play Pitt to kick off the 2022 season. Right now, it's a three-headed race between Garrett Greene (R-So.), Will Crowder (R-Fr.), and Nicco Marchiol (Fr.).

Prior to the start of spring practice, head coach Neal Brown made it clear that he did not want to add another body to the quarterback room until they get through the 15 spring practices. This allows the three currently in the battle to split the reps and gives them an opportunity to go and take the job rather than adding a veteran and eliminating reps.

“If we went and got a transfer quarterback, I don’t know how we get a really good evaluation on the young guys. And it’s not about this fall, but it’s about the future. And, we got three guys here in Garrett Greene and Nicco Marchiol and Will Crowder that deserve the opportunity to show what they have,” said Brown. “So, we’re going to go through the spring, and the belief is that one of them will take reigns of the job, or we’ll get it narrowed down to two, and if that’s not the case, then we’ll go find a guy. There will be guys available, but I thought it was important for them, and important for the trajectory of our football team, to let those guys have the ability to go out and compete in the spring, and so, we’ll do that.”

The one quarterback that is on the market that WVU has expressed interest in is former Georgia and USC starter, JT Daniels. Daniels is scheduled to visit Morgantown soon and will wait to make his decision until after the spring. To me, this signifies the Mountaineers are his preferred choice over Missouri and Oregon State.

I'm sure Brown and the coaching staff would love to have a quarterback like Daniels around because of the experience he has. It buys more time for the younger quarterbacks to develop and it would likely give WVU a better chance to win this season. However, Brown would probably rather see one of his current three quarterbacks take control of the job and give them someone to build around for the next three to four years.

Four practices in and it's been about what everyone expected - inconsistency.

"Up and down," Brown said. "Garrett [Greene] is the oldest and he's probably been the most consistent. He probably hasn't had as many highs or as many lows as the other two. Nicco had a great day on Thursday, kind of had his welcome to college football moments on Saturday where it got loud in there and the defense started making some plays and you've got to remember, he's a high school senior too. I thought he bounced back and did a better job today. Then Goose [Crowder] has been a little bit up and down as well. I think overall, you really want to get into the double-digit practices before you really have a feel of kind of what they're doing."

Fans will get a good look at the quarterback battle at the annual Gold-Blue spring game which is set for April 23rd at 1 p.m. at Mountaineer Field.

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