- Sep 8, 2014
- 25,433
- 59,371
It's kinda quiet on the board today....this should brighten things up!! :D
Quarterback Will Grier has the arm, experience to move WVU
http://www.wvgazettemail.com/sports...will-grier-has-the-arm-experience-to-move-wvu
MORGANTOWN — A season ago, Will Grier was the quarterback on West Virginia’s scout team, a job he had to hold while he sat out the entire season after deciding to transfer from Florida. Every week, he’d lead the group charged with mimicking the opponent’s offense in practice, and all at once, he’d give defensive coordinator Tony Gibson cause to be concerned and then incentive to be confident.
“I knew we had scout-team guys out there, so I thought, ‘Well, we can defend some stuff pretty well,’ but then we’d go against him, and he was making me scratch my head on Tuesday and Wednesday and say, ‘Wow, are we doing what we should be doing? What’s going on?’ ” Gibson remembered last week. “ ‘But that quarterback’s pretty good. I don’t know if the guy we’re going to face this week is better than that guy. I don’t think he is.’ ”
Shift from the fall to this spring. Gibson is beginning his fourth season as the defensive coordinator, and Grier, now practicing with the regulars, is still giving Gibson fits.
“He’s good,” Gibson said with an assuredness reserved for calling a blitz on third-and-12.
The situation with Grier is simple: After being handed a one-year suspension in October 2015 for testing positive for a performance-enhancing drug, the Mountaineers are supremely confident the fourth-year junior from Davidson, North Carolina, will be eligible for the opening game of the 2017 season provided he maintains the standards of eligibility.
WVU is just as sure he’s capable of lifting the offense to a different level because of his passer’s pedigree, because of his experience gleamed from six games and five starts for a Southeastern Conference program and, most of all, because of his arm.
“He can get it out there,” offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Jake Spavital said.
▪ ▪ ▪
Spavital likes to challenge his passers. He’ll use quick screens to the outside to gauge how fast someone gets the ball out of his hands and to a receiver. He comes to every practice with a new play designed to throw a deep ball. And sometimes, there’s a backyard competition to see who can throw it the farthest.
“We were out there the other day, and I told them I can throw it over 50 yards, so I want to see how far they throw it,” said Spavital, a quarterback when he played at Missouri State. “It’s funny, because sometimes they rear back and wing it as far as they can, but they’re also trying to get the timing of it all down and they’re chopping up their footwork. He’s testing it all out, and he’ll send some out there.”
Spavital trails off, and then he continues.
“He’s got a strong arm,” Spavital said. “I think he can make all the throws.”
Team rules prohibit Grier from talking to the media this spring.
The Mountaineers weren’t altogether limited in that regard last season, and Skyler Howard’s deep throws were a feature and a strength of the offense. But shorter throws to the outside or over the middle didn’t have consistent velocity or accuracy, and Howard completed 54.8 and 61.1 percent of his attempts in his two full seasons as the starting quarterback.
And in the red zone, where the offense oftentimes faltered, he completed 44.9 and 55.3 percent of his passes. With Grier on campus and with a focus placed on recruiting and developing bigger receivers who make easier targets, WVU expects to do better than the 33 touchdowns in 57 red-zone possessions in 2016 and the 33 touchdowns in 58 visits the year before.
“He can make tight throws,” head coach Dana Holgorsen said. “In red-zone offense, you have to make tight throws. That field gets shrunk, so you have to make tight throws. Will has the ability to make those throws. Whether it’s him or whether it’s the receivers making those tight catches, I like what I’ve seen out of our red-zone offense so far.”
▪ ▪ ▪
Already this spring, as Spavital learns what throws Grier likes and what he’s good at, Spavital has decided to continue the deep throws outside and in the middle, because he believes he has the receivers who can get open and the quarterback who can deliver, but he’s seemingly ready to mix in more features. WVU’s perimeter passing game is expanding with the quick screens outside but also with the more demanding throws to the outside and deeper down the field.
The Mountaineers, who conclude the spring with the Gold-Blue Game at 1 p.m. Saturday at Mountaineer Field, opened 30 minutes of a practice last week to reporters. The offense snapped against the defense, and Grier made a handful of throws from the hash marks on the left side of the field to receivers on the right, including one throw to a target open past the first-down marker.
“When I was with Davis Webb last year, he had a tremendous arm, and he’d throw that comeback route to the [far] side all the time because it was open,” said Spavital, the offensive coordinator at Cal and with Webb last season. “Defenses don’t believe you’re going to throw that.”
That’s the bonus involved with the 6-foot-2, 205-pound Grier.
“The problem defensively is there are going to be holes. Now, can the quarterback find those holes? We’ll take our chances,” Gibson said. “With a kid like Will, our game plan would be totally different with him.”
More zone coverage to patrol the openings? Less blitzing to devote more players to defending the pass?
“I don’t want to say,” Gibson said. “I don’t want to give anybody any answer. But he’s a different kind of kid. He’s very, very intelligent. You can’t get him on a lot of stuff.”
Understand Gibson’s 3-3-5 defense presents “a lot of stuff.” He blitzes. He bluffs. He disguises one coverage within another. He’s constantly changing, and he does it all to lure a quarterback into a mistake, be it a hurried throw or a regrettable one.
“He’ll see something, and it triggers him and he knows exactly where he’s going and he knows exactly where to put the ball,” Gibson said. “He’s done it numerous times.”
▪ ▪ ▪
Grier is a coach’s son. His father, Chad, was a quarterback at Richmond and behind Jeff Blake at East Carolina and then a head coach at Davidson Day School, where he won four state championships. Will played for him and was the Parade and the Maxwell national player of the year in 2013. He finished his high school career second in state history with 14,565 passing yards and a state-record 195 touchdown passes.
Grier redshirted in 2014 at Florida and then came off the sideline in the 2015 opener before winning the next five starts to lead the 6-0 Gators into the top 10. He had 10 touchdowns and 1,204 yards passing, completed 65.8 percent of his 161 passes and threw just three interceptions before he was suspended.
“He’s doing good now,” Spavital said. “He’s awesome in terms of being a coach’s kid and having been around it and having seen so much and so many different types of offenses. What he did in high school is different from what he did at Florida, and that’s different than what we’ve done. He’s got a great approach to it. He studies it. He tries to figure it all out. Now we’re starting to see it sink in for him.”
One of the distinguishing elements in WVU’s offense is the run-pass option the quarterback has, when he must read the defense and decide whether it’s better to hand the ball off or keep it and pass to an anticipated opening. Howard was regularly praised for his decision-making, as well as for his running after choosing to keep the ball, and Spavital understood Grier didn’t have much experience with that.
The throws aren’t a challenge, and Grier did run for 2,955 yards and 31 scores in high school and 116 yards and two touchdowns at Florida.
“I give him a ton of freedom,” Spavital said. “I’m big on rep it, rep it, rep it to where he gets comfortable with what we’re trying to do. I’ll be like, ‘Hey, I’m going to give you five things you can do on the perimeter, and these are the [defensive] looks these plays are good against.’ We rep it enough to where I feel comfortable enough to let him go out there and get in the right play.”
Quarterback Will Grier has the arm, experience to move WVU
http://www.wvgazettemail.com/sports...will-grier-has-the-arm-experience-to-move-wvu
MORGANTOWN — A season ago, Will Grier was the quarterback on West Virginia’s scout team, a job he had to hold while he sat out the entire season after deciding to transfer from Florida. Every week, he’d lead the group charged with mimicking the opponent’s offense in practice, and all at once, he’d give defensive coordinator Tony Gibson cause to be concerned and then incentive to be confident.
“I knew we had scout-team guys out there, so I thought, ‘Well, we can defend some stuff pretty well,’ but then we’d go against him, and he was making me scratch my head on Tuesday and Wednesday and say, ‘Wow, are we doing what we should be doing? What’s going on?’ ” Gibson remembered last week. “ ‘But that quarterback’s pretty good. I don’t know if the guy we’re going to face this week is better than that guy. I don’t think he is.’ ”
Shift from the fall to this spring. Gibson is beginning his fourth season as the defensive coordinator, and Grier, now practicing with the regulars, is still giving Gibson fits.
“He’s good,” Gibson said with an assuredness reserved for calling a blitz on third-and-12.
The situation with Grier is simple: After being handed a one-year suspension in October 2015 for testing positive for a performance-enhancing drug, the Mountaineers are supremely confident the fourth-year junior from Davidson, North Carolina, will be eligible for the opening game of the 2017 season provided he maintains the standards of eligibility.
WVU is just as sure he’s capable of lifting the offense to a different level because of his passer’s pedigree, because of his experience gleamed from six games and five starts for a Southeastern Conference program and, most of all, because of his arm.
“He can get it out there,” offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Jake Spavital said.
▪ ▪ ▪
Spavital likes to challenge his passers. He’ll use quick screens to the outside to gauge how fast someone gets the ball out of his hands and to a receiver. He comes to every practice with a new play designed to throw a deep ball. And sometimes, there’s a backyard competition to see who can throw it the farthest.
“We were out there the other day, and I told them I can throw it over 50 yards, so I want to see how far they throw it,” said Spavital, a quarterback when he played at Missouri State. “It’s funny, because sometimes they rear back and wing it as far as they can, but they’re also trying to get the timing of it all down and they’re chopping up their footwork. He’s testing it all out, and he’ll send some out there.”
Spavital trails off, and then he continues.
“He’s got a strong arm,” Spavital said. “I think he can make all the throws.”
Team rules prohibit Grier from talking to the media this spring.
The Mountaineers weren’t altogether limited in that regard last season, and Skyler Howard’s deep throws were a feature and a strength of the offense. But shorter throws to the outside or over the middle didn’t have consistent velocity or accuracy, and Howard completed 54.8 and 61.1 percent of his attempts in his two full seasons as the starting quarterback.
And in the red zone, where the offense oftentimes faltered, he completed 44.9 and 55.3 percent of his passes. With Grier on campus and with a focus placed on recruiting and developing bigger receivers who make easier targets, WVU expects to do better than the 33 touchdowns in 57 red-zone possessions in 2016 and the 33 touchdowns in 58 visits the year before.
“He can make tight throws,” head coach Dana Holgorsen said. “In red-zone offense, you have to make tight throws. That field gets shrunk, so you have to make tight throws. Will has the ability to make those throws. Whether it’s him or whether it’s the receivers making those tight catches, I like what I’ve seen out of our red-zone offense so far.”
▪ ▪ ▪
Already this spring, as Spavital learns what throws Grier likes and what he’s good at, Spavital has decided to continue the deep throws outside and in the middle, because he believes he has the receivers who can get open and the quarterback who can deliver, but he’s seemingly ready to mix in more features. WVU’s perimeter passing game is expanding with the quick screens outside but also with the more demanding throws to the outside and deeper down the field.
The Mountaineers, who conclude the spring with the Gold-Blue Game at 1 p.m. Saturday at Mountaineer Field, opened 30 minutes of a practice last week to reporters. The offense snapped against the defense, and Grier made a handful of throws from the hash marks on the left side of the field to receivers on the right, including one throw to a target open past the first-down marker.
“When I was with Davis Webb last year, he had a tremendous arm, and he’d throw that comeback route to the [far] side all the time because it was open,” said Spavital, the offensive coordinator at Cal and with Webb last season. “Defenses don’t believe you’re going to throw that.”
That’s the bonus involved with the 6-foot-2, 205-pound Grier.
“The problem defensively is there are going to be holes. Now, can the quarterback find those holes? We’ll take our chances,” Gibson said. “With a kid like Will, our game plan would be totally different with him.”
More zone coverage to patrol the openings? Less blitzing to devote more players to defending the pass?
“I don’t want to say,” Gibson said. “I don’t want to give anybody any answer. But he’s a different kind of kid. He’s very, very intelligent. You can’t get him on a lot of stuff.”
Understand Gibson’s 3-3-5 defense presents “a lot of stuff.” He blitzes. He bluffs. He disguises one coverage within another. He’s constantly changing, and he does it all to lure a quarterback into a mistake, be it a hurried throw or a regrettable one.
“He’ll see something, and it triggers him and he knows exactly where he’s going and he knows exactly where to put the ball,” Gibson said. “He’s done it numerous times.”
▪ ▪ ▪
Grier is a coach’s son. His father, Chad, was a quarterback at Richmond and behind Jeff Blake at East Carolina and then a head coach at Davidson Day School, where he won four state championships. Will played for him and was the Parade and the Maxwell national player of the year in 2013. He finished his high school career second in state history with 14,565 passing yards and a state-record 195 touchdown passes.
Grier redshirted in 2014 at Florida and then came off the sideline in the 2015 opener before winning the next five starts to lead the 6-0 Gators into the top 10. He had 10 touchdowns and 1,204 yards passing, completed 65.8 percent of his 161 passes and threw just three interceptions before he was suspended.
“He’s doing good now,” Spavital said. “He’s awesome in terms of being a coach’s kid and having been around it and having seen so much and so many different types of offenses. What he did in high school is different from what he did at Florida, and that’s different than what we’ve done. He’s got a great approach to it. He studies it. He tries to figure it all out. Now we’re starting to see it sink in for him.”
One of the distinguishing elements in WVU’s offense is the run-pass option the quarterback has, when he must read the defense and decide whether it’s better to hand the ball off or keep it and pass to an anticipated opening. Howard was regularly praised for his decision-making, as well as for his running after choosing to keep the ball, and Spavital understood Grier didn’t have much experience with that.
The throws aren’t a challenge, and Grier did run for 2,955 yards and 31 scores in high school and 116 yards and two touchdowns at Florida.
“I give him a ton of freedom,” Spavital said. “I’m big on rep it, rep it, rep it to where he gets comfortable with what we’re trying to do. I’ll be like, ‘Hey, I’m going to give you five things you can do on the perimeter, and these are the [defensive] looks these plays are good against.’ We rep it enough to where I feel comfortable enough to let him go out there and get in the right play.”
