Get ready for West Virginia Will.
Florida’s former starting quarterback-turned suspended for usage of performance enhancing drugs turned transfer Will Grier is now a Mountaineer.
Dana Holgorsen has to be tickled. Grier has to be thinking he’s gotten his wish.
For Holgorsen, the timing was perfect. Eventually, the WVU natives will get loudly restless if the program doesn’t show gains in wins and losses. Skyler Howard is entrenched into the starting spot for this upcoming season, but after that, you’d be looking at breaking in a new signal caller in a pass-happy offense.
Grier, unbeaten as a starter at Florida, will come in riding a head of personal steam, being suspended in the midst of a 10 touchdown, 3 interception campaign where he was genuinely coming into his own.
In other words, Holgorsen and staff just got some major stability at the most important position moving forward into 2017. Grier wouldn’t be eligible until October unless it is appealed down. It’s not often … or eveer it seems … a legit starting quarterback from a major program with three years left of eligibility falls into your lap.
Grier is a big armed, fairly mobile sort who should fit well what WVU does.
For Grier, he gets what he wants, which is almost a shoe-in starting job. Jim McElwain reportedly refused to agree to give Grier his starting job back automatically, which is a perfectly normal thing for a coach to do. Grier wasn’t keen on McElwain’s level of normalcy, so now he gets to go to a place where one can either:
1. Assume he was given an assurance of going in as the starter;
2. Knows that even if the guarantee wasn’t there, the competition will tilt the race far in his favor given his experience.
You’ve got to wonder a bit, if the transfer reports are true, why Grier couldn’t simply have the confidence that he could win back a job he wasn’t guaranteed in the first place but earned with his play. WVU has to be hoping it’s just a quirk in his personality rather than an entitlement attitude and aversion to position-competition.
Grier will also get to showcase whatever he’s got after learning the offense for a season, en masse. WVU will most assuredly throw, and throw some more. Holgorsen and staff certainly aren’t trying to keep games under 2.5 hours with 60 runs per game.
Overall, this is an enviable situation for both, and an opportunity for both at the right place in the right time. It’s on them to make the most of it, now, which means for Holgorsen, fulfilling much of the buzz that ascended him to the head coaching spot and for Grier, successfully putting to bed a sloppy start to a career that could have immense promise.
