Neal Brown had a vision for what his offense would look like.
With three games remaining in the 2022 campaign, the head coach decided to shift his offensive attack by giving quarterback Garrett Greene the controls.
That meant taking advantage of more read-option in the run game, run-pass-options and a variety of other schemes that the fleet-footed Greene would allow the Mountaineers to utilize.
It took some time, but Brown believes that his offense demonstrated in 2023 that it had become what he thought it would be when that decision was initially made.
The highlight was when West Virginia rolled up 634 yards against Cincinnati, an average of 9.8 per play, and rushed for a total of 424 yards the most in Brown’s tenure atop the program. The Mountaineers followed that up hitting 8.4 yards per play against Baylor and 7.4 against North Carolina.
Overall, the offense hit the 500-yard mark four times over the final eight games of the season and rushed for over 200 yards the same number of times.
Over the first five games of the season, the Mountaineers averaged just 26.4 points and 347.4 yards per game but over the last eight games following the bye, those totals were 34.6 points and 489.1 yards per game.
And that even includes the Oklahoma matchup where the offense struggled to find their footing and was significantly lower than the rest of the production.
“We’re making it difficult to defend the entire field from a run game perspective sideline to sideline. We’re splitting the defense and doing a bunch of different things off some base run plays. And we’re quickly getting the ball downfield,” Brown said.
But the biggest reason for the jump was the overall play of Greene, who put together his best stretch of football over his career under center. Outside the Oklahoma contest, Greene displayed significant improvement and took care of the football with just 4 interceptions on 254 attempts.
The improvement didn’t take the coaching staff by surprise as Brown felt that early in the year Greene was primed for a breakout in the Pittsburgh game prior to injuring his ankle five plays into the game. That would cost him the rest of that contest and the next game against Texas Tech and meant that the Mountaineers would have to rely on backup Nicco Marchiol with no experienced options behind him.
That led to more conservative play-calling in both the run and pass game as the coaches couldn’t afford for an injury to sideline Marchiol as well and couldn’t put him at risk. But once Greene was back in the TCU game, the coaches pressed that button and were able to get a better understanding of what he can and can’t do on the field, which helped to shape the offensive game plans moving forward.
There was some trial and error with Greene as the coaches looked to tailor things to his strength and make sure he understood what they wanted to do but they believe they found the right mix.
Combine that with the running backs showing improvement in their path to the line of scrimmage, setting up their blocks and breaking tackles and it led to the offense being more explosive.
“Once I felt he’s healthy and he can run that’s when we were like ‘hey we’re going to win games because of him’,” Brown added.
West Virginia had success with longer drives earlier in the 2023 schedule, which was good when it came to time of possession and giving the defense rest. But those are hard to maintain against quality defenses and the coaching staff always felt that they had players that could create explosives.
Greene’s ability to run also allows the offense to not be forced to be perfect and can make up for some of their deficiencies in other areas. That’s a reason that Brown plans on making that dual-threat ability a necessity moving forward when it comes to his quarterback. On the season, Greene rushed for 772 yards and 13 touchdowns.
In the history of the program, only Pat White (2) and Rasheed Marshall have hit that total showing the impact that Greene has had in that department. And with the bulk of the offense returning in 2024 around Greene, there is the possibility for the redshirt senior to be even better for the Mountaineers as long as he takes steps.
The biggest of those is his accuracy as Greene only connected on 53-percent of his passes last season. It's been the biggest focus for the senior this off-season as he has worked with both people in the building and his own quarterback coach.
It's a process that takes time and can't be corrected overnight and the coaches are looking at it as a nine-month process to get there.
"He's got his feet in a better position. Some things we knew what the issue really was last fall but you can't fix those in a week," Brown said.
As part of that he has been working on changing his feet and arm angles in order to make a jump in that department. It's something Brown has compared to a quarterback he recruited when he was at Troy in Oregon signal caller Bo Nix.
"I think Garrett is completely capable of making a big jump. That's the number one thing for him to continue to not only grasp what we're doing offensively but he has to get his completion percentage better and then get some of those touch throws down," he said.
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