Howard-Main-61515.jpg
Howard's Long Journey to WVU
August 31, 2015 07:37 AM | Football
The path Skyler Howard took from Fort Worth, Texas, to Morgantown, West Virginia, was about as straight as that 65-mile stretch of two-lane highway between Morgantown and New Martinsville – a road full of twists, turns, delays and, yes, sometimes detours.
In 2012, Howard, generously listed at six feet tall in the West Virginia media guide, had zero interest from any of the Power 5 schools in his native Texas after his senior season at Brewer High. It was the same fall West Virginia quarterback Geno Smith was carving up Big 12 defenses.
Howard, believing he was good enough to play at a high major program, began his college career as a walk-on at Stephen F. Austin. But he ran out of money while he was there, and decided to hit the reset button and go to Riverside City College in Riverside, California.
At Riverside, he led the Tigers to a 10-2 record by passing for more than 3,000 yards with 33 touchdowns, drawing interest from some of those bigger schools he wanted offers from when his high school career ended.
Among the big schools on the telephone was West Virginia, which at the time was in semi-scramble mode seeking a proven quarterback following the departure of Ford Childress. Childress was the guy everyone hoped could maintain WVU’s recent tradition of exceptional quarterback play that began in 2004 with Big East player of the year Rasheed Marshall and continued with Pat White, Jarrett Brown, and most recently, Geno Smith.
Childress couldn’t, so West Virginia has been out shopping for the next one ever since.
Howard was immediately drawn to the Mountaineers because of their new association with the Big 12 Conference – a league he grew up watching and wanting to play in.
“My high school back home, I was probably the only one to go Division I in a while,” Howard recalled last week. “That’s one thing I told the guys when they said juco after my senior year and I said, ‘Nah, I’m going to go Division I.’ I told them ‘I’m not going to do it, no matter how I get (to a Division I school).’ I didn’t even know what juco was.”
Hit the fast forward button to December 2013, after Skyler tore up JC defenses at Riverside. He began learning more about Dana Holgorsen’s plug-and-play offense at WVU and thinking about the allure of facing Texas, Baylor, TCU and Texas Tech on a yearly basis.
Why not go to a school with an innovative offensive coach that plays against these guys every year and show them what they were missing out on, he figured?
“The offense fit when I opened my eyes up to it, but playing in the Big 12 was the biggest thing for me, just being able to go back home and play in Texas and play those teams that said I was too small all of my life,” he said.
Ah, some good, old-fashioned motivation to spread on your bagel each morning before you start the day – the morning pick-me-up that has been fueling ambitious football players ever since Rutgers and Princeton first got down in the mud almost 150 years ago.
There is nothing quite like having a determined player with a giant chip on his shoulder running around out on the football field, especially when it happens to be your quarterback. In Howard’s case, though, what he’s got sitting on his right shoulder is much bigger than just a chip. He said what’s there starts with a P and ends with an O (but not an E).
“It’s a potato,” he pointed out, admitting what drives him is determination and not anger because he wants to show those other schools that he IS big enough and IS good enough to play quarterback in an elite conference, adding, “and to everybody else that said I couldn’t do it.”
“He’s tired of hearing how he is not big enough, fast enough or good enough,” said Holgorsen. “He wakes up every day competing with himself and doing what he has to do to make all of that go away. He’s going to be focused on what he’s responsible for, and I’ve been happy with what he has done.”
If you talk to his teammates or the rest of the coaches, they will say Howard’s best attribute is his competitiveness. We saw a little bit of that during the games he played last year in place of an injured Clint Trickett, beginning with Kansas State and continuing with Iowa State and Texas A&M in the Liberty Bowl.
Howard passed for 198 yards and two touchdowns in a relief role against Kansas State, started the Iowa State game and threw for 285 yards and three scores in Ames, and then passed for 346 yards and three TDs in the Liberty Bowl loss to the Aggies.
Those were performances Howard believes have set him up for the rest of his collegiate career.
“It’s going from game experience to practice now, and I can study it and be a student of the game,” he explained.
Holgorsen has a great reputation for developing productive college quarterbacks through the years and he’s also got a couple of old QB hands on his offensive staff that Howard can bounce ideas off of if he needs to.
Running backs coach Ja’Juan Seider was Marc Bulger’s backup at WVU before transferring to Florida A&M for his senior year in 1999. And Lonnie Galloway could really spin it at Western Carolina, where his name is still prominently listed in the record books.
Both have been impressed with Skyler’s competitiveness and willingness to work on his craft this fall.
“It’s hard to be the guy when (the other players) are hoping someone else is the guy,” admitted Galloway. “But Skyler did what he needed to do to gain our trust, coach Holgorsen’s trust and the players’ trust. He really works hard at it.”
Added Seider, “His whole life he’s felt like he’s had to prove someone wrong and there is nothing wrong with that. Major (Harris) had that and Pat (White) had that. Having played the position, I always tell him, ‘You don’t have anything to prove. Your job is to go lead this team. You’ve got playmakers all around you so let those guys go out and make plays. You don’t need to be a superhero. Just put the ball in play.’”
Seider continued.
“Just look at how he played against Kansas State and Iowa State – calm, no pressure, and then you look at A&M, playing a school from Texas on the big stage, the kid growing up probably wanting to play there and then he tries to do too much. It was probably the game we had the most open wide receivers since I’ve been here. As a quarterback, you’ve got to set that temperature gauge at about 70 – you can’t get too hot or too cold.”
It’s doubtful Howard will ever play at 70 degrees, the fire just burns too brightly within him, but 98.6 degrees should be fine with some of the weapons Holgorsen has assembled around him.
There are two proven runners in the backfield, a talented group of incoming wide receivers to go with a solid cast of returners and a blossoming offensive line up front to protect him.
Howard was around last year to see how Trickett and Kevin White developed their on-field rapport that resulted in White becoming a top NFL draft pick and the Mountaineers having one of the most productive passing attacks in the country. You can’t discount the time those two spent last summer getting on the same page, and Howard said that is something he is beginning to do with the new receivers he’s working with this fall.
“I’m starting to meet with the receivers on Mondays just to go over film and make sure they see what I see and I see what they see,” he said. “We’ve just got to find the grass and get on the same page.”
For Howard to achieve the things he wants to achieve as West Virginia University’s starting quarterback, he’s going to have to produce. It’s as simple as that, no matter how hard he prepares or how much he wants it – or how much those around him want it for him.
“No matter how much I like you, or coach Holgorsen likes you, if the guy isn’t producing you’ve got to play the next guy,” said Seider. “But I feel good about where we’re at (with Howard) and where we’re going.”
Indeed, Skyler Howard’s journey to become a Power 5 Conference starting quarterback has been long and arduous with plenty of delays and detours - from the time he first put on the pads with no one in the stands, to playing in front of a small gathering of friends and family in junior college, to now having an entire state of 1.8 million residents analyzing his every throw playing for one of college football’s most rabid fan bases.
Naturally, the stakes are much higher now for Howard these days, but he says he is unfazed by it. He maintains he’s still the same kid he was when he first started playing pee-wee football back in the day, though perhaps a lot wiser for the wear.
“You remember why you started, all the way down to five years old putting on the pads for the first time. It’s all a journey,” he concluded.
The next leg of Skyler Howard’s football journey begins this Saturday.
Gold-Blue Spring Festival Fan Recap
Sunday, April 19
John Neider | April 18
Saturday, April 18
Coach Zac Alley | April 18
Saturday, April 18
Coach Rich Rodriguez | April 18
Saturday, April 18
