Brown mum on starting QB for WVU opener
MORGANTOWN — Remember when you were a kid in grade school, playing with your buddies out in the schoolyard? Remember how there was this one kid who would drive you crazy, come up to you and say something like “Do you know who asked Maryanne to the Saturday night dance?”
And you’d bite, because Maryanne was the prettiest girl in school.
“No, who?” you’d say eagerly, wondering who the lucky guy was.
“I know,” he’d answer, “But I’m not gonna tell you.”
And he’d skip away laughing.
That’s kind of the game West Virginia football coach Neal Brown is playing with the media as we close within two weeks of the opening game of the 2023 football season with West Virginia playing at Penn State.
See, he let on early in what now will be a weekly Monday press conference through the rest of the season that he knows who will be his quarterback.
But he isn’t telling.
And, no, the secret is being kept in a far more secure area than Mar-a-Lago.
After going through the camp battles that are still going on, Brown admitted that he “has a pretty good idea of who will play,” who will start the game at every position. He went through them, then at everywhere but quarterback when he added, “I know y’all are interested in who will play quarterback.
“I know who is going to play. I know who is going to start, but … “
But what?
“I don’t know if we’ll share that or not,” he said, then added, “but that’s been decided.”
The two candidates have gone at it for about nine months now, Brown mulling over what could be a season-defining decision of whether to go with the experienced Garrett Greene or the inexperienced Nicco Marchiol.
It seems that is the least secret secret ever. Now Brown hasn’t told the two players which one he has decided upon.
He didn’t have to.
“They know … they know, we haven’t done anything formal with it, but I think they have a good understanding,” Brown answered. “Here’s the thing. We have two good quarterbacks. I feel good about both of them.
“One of them is a little bit further ahead. That’s kind of where it is.”
And where it is going to stay because, believe it or not, Penn State is keeping track of what’s going on.
“I don’t know if it will help us to share a whole lot or not,” Brown said.
Believe it or not, if Brown rented a skywriting plane and flew it over Happy Valley in the morning, you can bet Penn State would still practice against both quarterbacks, so it probably wouldn’t hurt, either.
Now if one were to take a wild guess, he would pick Greene, and Brown pretty much hinted that was his choice.
Hints?
“Going back to January, there’s a progression leadership-wise, there’s been a progression of feeling good in their own skin and that happens with maturity. There’s a progression fundamentally being able to take the drills that we run year-round and be able to apply those to pressure situations.”
The most mature, most experienced, is Greene. There’s no one disputing that at this stage of their careers.
And hint No. 2?
In the end it sounds like there was one piece of data that was the deciding factor to Brown.
“Decision making,” he said. “Decision making over a long term. That, and overall accuracy.”
And through most of the summer camp Brown’s repeat criticism of Marchiol was that he was having problems with his decision making, which kind of makes that last statement a giveaway.
The Mountaineers had a full scrimmage on Saturday under the lights with Big 12 officials, but Brown said that wasn’t in any way the deciding factor.
“Going into the scrimmage, I knew. The scrimmage kind of verified what went on through camp,” Brown said. “Both guys have gotten better but one of them has performed at a higher level. We’re going to continue to push them, we can play both of them in the game … but it’s been clear who’s ahead at this point.”
Too much had gone on for too long before they got down to Saturday’s scrimmage.
“You go into this for nine months open-minded,” Brown said. “You’ve got the parameters that you are going to stick to on how you are going to do the reps. We stuck close to that. There’s a big data base. This is about 15 practices, summer workouts, spring work … there’s a lot of data points.
“Who goes out there first in the game comes from a lot of data points.”
And, as the year goes on, it could change.
“They have both worked hard on knowledge of what we’re doing offensively. I’m comfortable but we have to continue to get better,” Brown said. “This isn’t like two weeks before your first game that you say, ‘Alright, this is what we have for the rest of the year.’ But I’m pleased with where they’re at.”