Last Thursday Devin Carter had his best performance as a Mountaineer, hauling in five catches for a team leading 116 yards.
“I felt like I just got comfortable and got a few more opportunities this game,” said Carter. “I was glad to capitalize on them, there were still some plays left out there. Some of the targets that I had, just not making those plays, just timing purposes with the quarterback that we need to touch up on in practice, that’s really it.”
Carter’s emergence comes at a good time for the Mountaineers. It coincides with WVU’s best game throwing the ball since 2018, with quarterback Garrett Greene racking up 391 total yards through the air.
Head coach Neal Brown and touched on this when he spoke, saying Carter “probably left 60 yards out on the field.”
“There’s two big balls that he had a chance at, but yeah we played him more inside this game and I think that’s a better fit for him,” Brown said.
Carter, an NC State transfer, was the number one guy all of fall camp and West Virginia’s passing offense has lacked true explosiveness until this week.
“He had some big plays man, had a couple really strong runs after the catch, blocked on the perimeter, and we put him at the point of contact a lot,” Brown said.
“I think he can build off that, I really do, and we need him to have those types of games. Our pass game, that was by far the best it has looked, we kind of opened it up too, but he made a lot of that stuff happen.”
One thing that changed was moving Carter inside and into the slot instead of playing him on the outside. A move which obviously had its benefits.
“That was something that we felt was the best move for him,” offensive coordinator Chad Scott said. “Big body guy that can get free runs and you saw early in the game, I think his first catch, he did a great job at the top of his route using his physicality to create separation, I think he knocked a [defensive back] down.”
He had a tremendous run after the catch later in the game, did a phenomenal job making defenders miss, breaking a couple tackles, so just allowing him to get free runs and get himself going has allowed him to use his speed and physicality which he can use to create separation at the top of his route,” Scott added.
Scott said Carter’s abilities after the catch allow the Mountaineers to be more creative on offense and the pre-snap motion allows them to be better in the run game as well.
“That was huge for us, that was a game changer for us. That alone put us in position to be able to do some other things in the offense as far as opening up a lot more even on the outside and the run game,” Scott said of Carter’s movement.
One thing that Carter mentioned was how well Greene is able to throw the deep ball.
“He does very well and it just brings complimentary [football] to the offense because the defense has to respect both the pass and the run,” Carter said.
Against Houston, Hudson Clement scored with 12 seconds left to give the Mountaineers a 39-35 lead before the Cougars converted a Hail Mary Pass on the last second of the game to send the Mountaineers back to Morgantown with a 41-39 loss.
Carter said his role as a leader was, “to pick the team up.”
“I wouldn’t say pick him [Clement] up, I would say I had to pick the team up after that because you know, losing in a way like that is just, you don’t see it very often and nobody really expected it,” Carter said. “Kind of a just ‘this doesn’t define us’ type of deal. It can either make you or break you so we just know we have to come back stronger this week and that’s really that.”
Photo by Aaron Parker, Blue Gold Sports
