What will win the West Virginia football QB competition?

West Virginia is in the midst of its first true quarterback competition since 2013.

The coaches have made it clear from the start that when they know they’ll know who is going to take the first snap against James Madison Aug. 31 but early in fall camp that hasn’t made itself apparent yet.

Redshirt juniors Austin Kendall and Jack Allison are considered the front runners after going through the spring especially with the lingering situation of whether Bowling Green transfer Jarret Doege will have his waiver approved to play immediately this fall. That remains a complete unknown for now.

So if the race does eventually come down to Kendall or Allison how will position coach Sean Reagan make a choice between the two?

Well, it won’t come down to completion percentage or any other advanced metric when trying to name a starter. Instead, something much simpler.

“Making confident, decisive decisions. Whoever does that the best and doesn’t have plays that will get you beat will end up being the guy,” Reagan said.

There is an emphasis on making sure that the quarterback isn’t going to beat the rest of the team as mistakes at that spot are magnified on a per-play basis.

The quarterbacks coach has seen growth from the room when it comes to an understanding of the offense but now the focus shifts to concentrating on the fundamentals of the play to make it work. Understanding the play itself is just the first step, now the quarterbacks have to take things from the classroom to drill work and finally apply it in 11-on-11 situations.

That’s not to say they haven’t made mistakes or missed signals but there is a confidence level with where they are in knowing what to do. Now it becomes about executing it when it counts.

For example, Reagan was displeased with such effort from an RPO drill that the quarterbacks performed well in but it didn’t translate when it was put in a live situation.

“Their read was fine but the fundamental and how they do it was not,” he said.

Reagan believes that physically whoever emerges from the race will have plenty of enough arm strength to run the gamut of the offense and he’s seen improvement in that department as well. That has come with more timing working with the wide receivers and understanding where to go with the ball.

The plan is to continue to rep each of the quarterbacks, usually stacked with Kendall working with Trey Lowe and Jack Allison working with both Jarret Doege and Trent Jackson during the two-spotting. Still the group has to improve in the nuances of playing the position such as execution and eye-discipline.

“We can’t guess, you’ve got to read,” Reagan said.

As for the individuals, Reagan likes the comfort level that Kendall has developed and how that has rubbed off on how he has interacted with his teammates in a leadership role. For Allison, he has major arm talent he just has to fine-tune aspects such as his eye-discipline.

The wildcard in Doege present some exciting possibilities as he’s started 17 games at this level and thrown for over 4,000 yards and 39 touchdowns during his time with the Falcons. The uncertainty over his status makes things difficult to sort out but he does bring a wave of confidence.

The plan there is to give Doege reps and once his situation is determined he could move to the scout team in the coming weeks if it isn’t approved.

Taking care of the ball and executing will win one of these quarterbacks the post, but which one will it be?

“You have to make every play count,” Reagan said. “You can’t take a play off at this position.”

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