Garrett Greene was publicly named the starting quarterback moments prior to kickoff of the season opener but it didn’t take him long to embrace his role as a leader.
After West Virginia fell 38-15 on the road at Penn State where Greene completed 16-27 passes for 162 yards while rushing for 71 more yards and a touchdown.
It was an up and down performance as a whole for the offense, but Greene didn’t point the finger anywhere but back at him.
Over and over, Greene simply said that he needed to make more plays. There wasn’t anything else but praise for his teammates as he accepted blame for the failures of the offense. Now anybody watching the game knows that’s not necessarily the case but accepting that responsibility is a good sign.
It means that Greene is more than ready to take the next step as the conductor of the offense.
Head coach Neal Brown compared Greene to an artist given his dual-threat ability and given that he can’t force him to paint by numbers and instead allow him to create. That means giving him the tools necessary to feel confident running or throwing the football in order to generate offense.
“I don’t want to take his playmaking skills away. He’s an athletic quarterback and I thought he took care of the football, that’s your one concern. Was he perfect with every pass decision or every run? I thought he did run around and made some plays, thought he extended some plays,” Brown said.
That running ability is something that sets Greene apart and makes him difficult to defend with all he can bring to the table.
“Coach Brown has given me a lot of freedom. He wants me to go through progressions but if I see a running lane, he’s allowed me to take them as long as I don’t abuse that privilege,” he said.
But the next step is doing a better job of making plays happen down the field when Greene does indeed extend things with his ability to move in the pocket. That was the one major disappointment for Brown when it came to the first performance of Greene in the starting role this year, but it can be corrected.
It starts with trust.
"He has the best offensive line in the country and those RBs do a good job of seeing the blitz. He has to do a great jo of trusting those guys up front and trusting those backs to keep him clean and keep his eyes downfield," coordinator Chad Scott said.
Greene also will need to execute in those third and fourth down passing situations which proved problematic at times against the Nittany Lions. Some of that was on the wide receivers, but other times the group was able to get open and the ball wasn’t delivered.
Again, you didn’t need to tell Greene that.
“I know when I miss a guy. The second play of the game, the one screen to Cortez (Braham), I have to give him a better throw and there’s some other throws I’d like to have back today,” he said.
That desire for improvement despite a game where Greene ranked as the top offensive player on the roster according to Pro Football Focus is something to certainly build on moving forward.
And West Virginia is going to need to figure out quite a bit on the offensive side over the next week and change with Duquesne up next and then the Backyard Brawl with Pittsburgh on deck.
But that’s something you don’t need to remind Greene about.
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