On National Signing Day most of the attention is on high school players rather than on the current situation of a football program. West Virginia head coach Neal Brown though talked about the current state of his program, saying the Mountaineers are not going to look outside of their current roster at the quarterback position.
West Virginia had two starters at quarterback this season, while also seeing a true freshman play in two games under center this season.
The starters were JT Daniels, who transferred out of the program to Rice, and Garrett Greene. The true freshman is Nicco Marhciol and according to Brown, Greene and Marchiol will battle it out for the starting quarterback position next season.
“We’re going with these two guys we got,” Brown said.
The Mountaineers added a quarterback in their 2023 class on Wednesday with the addition of Sean Boyle, but the competition will be between Greene and Marchiol.
“We’ve done the portal thing, we’ve done the transfer thing, we’re in the mode that we’re going to develop the guys that we have here,” Brown said. “At this point in time don’t anticipate taking a transfer quarterback.”
Last season, West Virginia had the highly-touted transfer Daniels start the first 10 games of the season before he was benched for Greene. Greene would end 2022 43 for 78 passing, with 493 yards and five touchdowns through the air. Greene also added 276 yards and five touchdowns on the ground.
Marchiol saw less live action than Greene, completing four of his 13 pass attempts for 61 yards and a touchdown. Marchiol saw most of his snaps in West Virginia’s final game of the year in which it was raining heavily against Oklahoma State. In that game, Marchiol would use his legs, rushing six times for 32 yards.
“Garrett I think he’s shown a lot of growth. he played well. He wins the Oklahoma game, starts the Oklahoma State game. Nicco comes in at the end of the Oklahoma State game. Really pleased with his development over the past 12 months,” Brown said of the two quarterbacks. “It will be those two guys competing for the starting job in the spring.”
Brown said his plan is to go with Greene and Marchiol and continue to develop them and see how they play heading into 2023.
“We will not add one (a quarterback), we don’t have that intention,” Brown said.
