West Virginia football head coach Neal Brown had just wrapped up his first season with the Mountaineers and met with the media to reflect on what unfolded over the 12-games.
Still, attention couldn’t help but turn to the future.
Brown will return a bulk of the players that saw significant snaps in 2019 next season and received an added boost when first-team all-Big 12 starting nose guard Darius Stills elected to come back for his senior season just a few hours after things had wrapped up.
He also intends to have back his entire coaching staff. But there are some interesting questions remaining with this team away from what could unfold down the stretch with recruiting or any possible roster additions in the coming months.
The biggest of those is at quarterback, where junior Jarret Doege finished the season as the starter after supplanting senior-to-be Austin Kendall after starting the first nine games of the year. Doege was able to take advantage of the NCAA redshirt rule and will have two years remaining over Kendall’s one but there is a plan to decide on how the situation will be handled heading into 2020.
Brown plans to sit down and evaluate the pluses and minuses from both of the quarterback’s performances in 2019 and remove emotion from each individual game in doing so.
“Just kind of look and see how they managed the offense, how productive they were, decision making, those type of things,” he said.
The plan is to them come into January with a clear plan on the direction that the Mountaineers will be going from a competition standpoint at the quarterback spot.
While Stills cleared up one overhanging mystery on the roster, another is the status of senior wide receiver George Campbell and if he will be given a sixth year of eligibility next fall. Campbell dealt with injuries in two of his seasons at Florida State prior to arriving in Morgantown.
Brown said that while Campbell has applied and there is confidence that he’ll be approved, he still has a decision to make whether he would indeed return.
“It’s really now a decision for him almost like a normal junior. Will he come out, will he not come out,” Brown said while also making it clear he supports whatever decision Campbell makes.
One player that won’t have any eligibility remaining is at punter with the graduation of LSU transfer Josh Growden a standout in his only season with the Mountaineers. The plan for now is that West Virginia won’t be adding any players to the roster at the position until some point after the spring, if at all.
The focus will be on allowing redshirt freshman Kolton McGhee and redshirt sophomore Evan Matthes set to battle it out and showcase what they can do during spring ball.
“Both of those guys have shown some signs that maybe they can be the guys,” Brown said.
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