Morgantown, West Virginia – Never underestimate the element of surprise. Virginia Tech has likely spent this entire week preparing for an immobile quarterback who can’t pass down field and who lacks any pocket presence, and they’re licking their chops!
Jarret Doege against a tough, physical, aggressive is a recipe for disaster. Virginia Tech’s defensive line will get pressure on Doege and he simply doesn’t handle pressure well. History tells us that he’ll either take the sack or throw an interception or out of bounds. He does not have the ability to extend plays or create when the pocket collapses.
The upcoming game against bitter rival Virginia Tech is huge. Although Neal Brown has embraced safe choices in the past, now is the time to take a risk and throw redshirt freshman Garrett Greene into the game and completely shock the Hokies’ defense.
Today, Brown seemed more open to the idea of Greene playing after watching the game film from the Long Island University game.
“I think it was a mixed bag,” Brown said of Greene at his weekly press conference. “First of all, what I was really proud of was that he tends to get really excited out there. I thought he handled himself really well in that regard. I thought he was under control and showed some maturity.”
Brown continued: “I thought his run decisions were really good. Withing the run game where we were asking to do things with the read game, he made some good decisions. He did miss a few pre-snap reads and he probably should have thrown four or five passes in the run pass option game that we were asking him to do, but I thought his vision when he scrambled was pretty good.”
Greene, who finished last week’s game 4-7 for 57 yards passing while rushing 14 times for 98 yards, showed that he’s capable of doing things that Jarret Doege just can’t do, but he must find a way to run the team’s offense the correct way, according to Brown.
“You don’t want to contain the best thing about him, which is his ability to freelance and to make plays on the run, but you also don’t want him breaking out and running the ball every single time. We’re working on kind of finding a happy medium. There’s more good than bad and the encouraging thing is that things that weren’t exactly what we want or what we’re teaching are things that we can get corrected.”
Although Greene isn’t exactly where Brown would like him to be in terms of leading his team, Greene’s elusiveness, speed and creativity give the Mountaineers something that Doege never could, and it’s Greene’s natural abilities that could be the one deciding factor that could help West Virginia beat Virginia Tech on Saturday.
