Position Battles to Watch Heading Into Spring Football

A lot of competition at some key positions this spring for WVU.

Spring football begins on Tuesday for the West Virginia Mountaineers and it is the most important spring of the Neal Brown era. He and his staff have a lot of things to figure out, including what to do at quarterback. 

What positions have the most intense competition heading into spring ball? Here are four, two on each side of the ball.

QB - Garrett Greene vs Nicco Marchiol

Unless one of these two clearly separates themselves over the course of the next month, this will likely spill over into fall camp. Marchiol is the more advanced passer, who was groomed to be a quarterback, while Greene came to WVU as an athlete still learning how to play the position. Greene started the final two games of the season last year in place of JT Daniels and also played the majority of the game against Oklahoma. He made a ton of progress in those three weeks, bringing a much-needed spark to the offense. It'll be interesting to see how much he's developed as a passer and if it will be enough to keep the starting job in 2023. 

RT - Ja'Quay Hubbard vs Brandon Yates

These two split time fairly evenly last season although Hubbard started eleven of the twelve contests. Will either of them emerge as the clear favorite? Or will the coaching staff continue to use a by-committee approach? It's an early guess, but I would say Hubbard has a slight edge. He's played more consistently and doesn't have the major blips that Yates has. But it hasn't been all bad for Yates. He's played at a very high level at times as well. It's just the severe swings that trouble him.

DT - Davoan Hawkins vs Edward Vesterinen

Replacing Dante Stills won't be easy, but these two will be tasked with the responsibility of making up for that loss of production. It's hard to truly know what to expect from FCS transfers because oftentimes you're hoping that what you saw on tape can translate to this level of college football. Hawkins seems to be a quality find, but is he going to be the clear guy here? Vesterinen enters his third year in the program and has continued to get better as he adds more tools to his arsenal and becomes more technically sound.

CB - Andrew Wilson-Lamp vs Jacolby Spells

Wilson-Lamp is West Virginia's fastest defensive back not named Davis Mallinger. He's come a long way in coverage from when he first arrived but he's got some tough competition here with Spells, who was a coveted recruit coming out of high school in 2022. In limited time across eight games as a true freshman, Spells flashed recording 13 tackles and one interception, which he took to the house at Virginia Tech.

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