Neal Brown Gives Insight on Garrett Greene's Development

Greene has dazzled fans with his legs but there's still more to learn for the redshirt freshman

There is a large contingent of the Mountaineer fanbase that is clamoring for the Garrett Greene era to begin. It came during and following West Virginia’s loss to Maryland in the season opener. The offense looked stagnant, and critics pointed to starting quarterback Jarret Doege as the culprit.

On Saturday, fans got to see Greene in action and maybe earlier than expected. He took the field on the third offensive series of the game, and it wasn’t due to a lack of production from the offense. In fact, West Virginia already led 21-0 at this point, with Doege leading two touchdown drives, but head coach Neal Brown had a strategy heading into the game.

“Anytime you’re going to play young players, it’s important for them to know when they’re going into the game,” said Brown. “And so, starting on Monday, we told him, ‘Hey, third series, you’re going to go into the game, and then, this is what you’re going to run, and the second time you go into the game, this is the plays you're going to run.”

“We practiced only his set of plays all week, the third down plays, all those types of things,” continued Brown. “The intention was to get him into the game early, depending on how it went. We knew he would get several snaps - I just didn’t know when it was going to come, end of the first half or middle of the third quarter. But I felt really good about him getting a bunch of snaps. The only time I got after him is when he forgot to go out there one time.”

“I don’t know if he ran any of the plays the way they were exactly supposed to be ran, but he made some plays,” said Brown while giving out a chuckle. “So, credit to him, and that’s kind of where it’s at right now. He’s fun to watch. He’s got some juice about him. I thought he did a good job of creating some plays. Some of those didn’t need to be created - he could have thrown into rhythm, but he showed some growth.”

“There’s some things he probably didn’t do a good job of, but everything he did was full throttle, and that’s one of the reasons we’re excited about him, and he made a couple of nice throws. And he ran the ball – he has the ability to do that. You saw that, continued Brown.

Brown was hesitant to fully evaluate Greene’s performance before watching the film but gave a little more insight.

“I thought he did some good things. Was he perfect? Absolutely not. But I thought he did a good job managing the environment,” said Brown. “You got to remember; this is the first time he’s really played with people in the stands. Played a lot against Eastern Kentucky last year, but there wasn’t anybody here, but I thought he handled the elements well.”

There is a long-term plan for Greene, and he is only at the beginning stages of his development.

“We went into fall camp with a plan," said Brown. “He’s going through this maturation and growth process. He’s a guy that didn’t have what I would say ‘normal quarterback upbringing.’ So, the way the quarterbacks are kind of brought up now is that they play seven on seven starting in middle school, and you do a bunch of seven on seven tournaments, and you have seven on seven teams, and you have spring football, and you basically getting a bunch of live reps. And for him, that just wasn’t his experience. He was a baseball player. He comes from a baseball family. He played summer baseball. He didn’t go through spring practice. He didn’t go to many (spring) practices at all. He played in an offense that was really run base. It wasn’t a spread type of offense. So, they weren’t asking him to make progressions or look at coverages a whole lot. So, he just didn’t have that same type of quarterback upbringing as some of the others.

“Whether it was Jarrett whose dad was a high school football coach, and that’s what he did growing up, or Will Crowder is in a system there in Gardendale, and that’s what they did. That wasn’t Garrett’s upbringing, and I don’t think that’s bad because I think you get into bad habits. But really, over the last 20 months or so, this is the first time he’s really been locked in on football only and worked fundamentals and had to go through progressions and his athletic ability just wasn’t enough because he’s relied on that. So, it’s a growth process with him. His spring was up and down. We felt like he had a better summer, but in fall camp, it was still up and down. It wasn’t consistent as we’d like to see - didn’t think he was ready to play in the opener. We knew he was going to get some playing time here. We’ll go back and evaluate the film, and if his play here and his play as we go through the week warrants that he gets an opportunity in situations, then yes, we will use him. I think he can help us.”

Neal Brown and his staff is developing their young, dynamic quarterback and not throwing him to the wolves, so to speak. Instead, he is allowing him to learn and grasp playing quarterback at a high level. However, it appears he is building towards something. Whether Greene slowly takes over the job or uses him in special packages throughout the year, it sounds like Greene will play more as the season rolls along.

West Virginia has its hands full next week as they welcome the Virginia Tech Hokies next week at Noon on FS1. 

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