Photo by: All Pro Photography/Dale Sparks
Mountaineer Football Notebook
November 26, 2018 01:12 PM | Football, Blog
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – We've now had the weekend to fully digest West Virginia's 59-56 loss to sixth-ranked Oklahoma Friday night at Milan Puskar Stadium.
The two teams combined for 115 points and 1,372 total yards in a back-and-forth game reminiscent of the one West Virginia and Oklahoma played here in 2012 when the Sooners won another shootout 50-49.
In that game, Landry Jones marched the Sooners 54 yards in six plays to defeat West Virginia when he completed a six-yard touchdown pass to Kenny Stills with just 24 seconds remaining.
You wonder if Will Grier could have done something similar if the Mountaineers could have gotten the football back with 2:36 remaining when the Sooners converted a fourth and 5 at the WVU 40.
Grier's final game at Milan Puskar Stadium was probably the best Senior Day performance since Geno Smith's 23-of-24, 407-yard, three-touchdown passing effort in West Virginia's 59-10 win over Kansas in 2012.
Grier completed 32-of-49 passes for a career-high 539 yards and four touchdowns, the 19thtime he's passed for more than 300 yards and the 16thtime he's thrown three or more touchdown passes in a game.
Grier's 22-game passing totals at West Virginia consist of 516 completions in 785 attempts for 7,354 yards and 71 touchdowns with 20 interceptions.
He's second to Smith in career touchdown passes, third to Smith and Marc Bulger in career passing yards and fourth to Smith, Bulger and Skyler Howard in career completions.
Grier also has top 10-marks in total offense (sixth), pass attempts (seventh) and total plays (10th).
If you were to project Grier's average passing numbers over the same number of games Smith played at WVU, Grier would have completed 1,030-of-1,571 passes for 14,709 yards and 141 touchdowns.
That would have placed him among the NCAA's all-time top 10 in passing yardage and among the top three behind just Houston's Case Keenum (155) and Boise State's Kellen Moore (142) in touchdown passes.
Including his six-game passing totals at Florida, Grier's career college stats include 621 completions in 945 attempts for 8,556 yards and 81 touchdowns.
Not too shabby.
More Mountaineer Football Notes …
* David Sills V added two more touchdown catches on Friday night against Oklahoma to give him 35 for his Mountaineer career – six behind school record holder Stedman Bailey.
Sills V is now eighth in school history in total touchdowns scored, ninth in career receiving yards (2,007), 12thin receptions (128) and 14thin scoring (214).
Gary Jennings Jr.'s impressive seven-catch, 225-yard showing against OU boosted his career standing in three different WVU pass-catching categories. He's now sixth in receiving yardage (2,294), seventh in receptions (168) and 10thin receiving touchdowns (17).
Other Mountaineer players moving up the career charts include
- Senior punter Billy Kinney, now sixth in punting yardage with 6,804 and seventh in total punts with 165.
- Junior Kennedy McKoy, who is now 21stin rushing with 1,802 yards and tied for 13thwith four others with 18 rushing touchdowns. McKoy needs 135 yards to pass A.B. Brown's 1,937 yards to move into the top 20.
- Junior place kicker Evan Staley, who is 12thin PATs with 75 and 14thwith 18 field goals.
- Junior outside linebacker David Long Jr., now fourth in tackles for losses with 39 ½ and tied for 12thwith five others for 12thin sacks with 14. According to director of football communications Mike Montoro, Long is the only FBS player to rank in the top 10 in solo tackles (68) and tackles for losses (18 ½), and he's 26ththis week with eight sacks.
- And, junior Marcus Simms is now 13thin career kickoff return yards with 992.
* Here is where Jake Spavital's 2018 offense sits among the best in school history with the bowl game remaining, but one game fewer than the 2011 and 2012 offenses sitting at the top:
- Second in touchdown passes with 38, six short of the 44 thrown in 2012
- Fifth in passing yards with 3,939
- Sixth in pass completions with 272
- Sixth in total yards with 5,724
- Ninth in pass attempts with 407
* West Virginia fell three spots to No. 15 in this week's AP poll and four spots to No. 16 in this week's coaches' poll. The Mountaineers are looking to spend the entire season in the rankings for the first time since 2007 when WVU started that year No. 3 and finished sixth.
West Virginia came close in 2016, going the final 12 weeks in the polls after spending the first four outside the rankings.
* The West Virginia-Oklahoma game pulled a 3.4 rating – ESPN's highest-rated Friday game in eight years and the highest-rated Black Friday game among all networks since 2015.
That 3.4 rating was a 162 percent increase from last year's Virginia-Virginia Tech matchup played in the same game window. It was also the second-highest rated game on ESPN this year, trailing just the Labor Day night Virginia Tech-Florida State telecast.
* The Big 12 will announce its players of the year and all-conference teams later this week (voting has already been completed), and the suspicion here is that WVU's two late losses to Oklahoma State and Oklahoma could cost it dearly when the postseason hardware is passed out.
Kyler Murray likely sewed up offensive player of the year and also the first team quarterback spot with the Sooners' 59-56 win over WVU, and it's hard to imagine a way David Long Jr. can be named defensive player of the year the way the Mountaineer defense performed the last two weeks of the season.
I do envision Long Jr. making the all-conference first team, along with possibly left tackle Yodny Cajuste.
It's also difficult for me to see David Sills V and Gary Jennings Jr. jumping past Oklahoma State's Tylan Wallace, Oklahoma's Marquise Brown and either Texas Tech's Antonie Wesley, TCU's Jalen Reagor or Texas' Lil'Jordan Humphrey for first team honors at wide receiver.
Sills V and Jennings Jr. just happened to play in the deepest conference in the country for top-shelf wide outs.
And one guy I didn't even mention was Iowa State's Hakeem Butler – one of six Big 12 players with more than 1,000 yards receiving this year.
Jennings Jr., Sills V, Baylor's Jalen Hurd and Oklahoma's CeeDee Lamb could make it 10 with games remaining.
*And finally, here are some for-fun bowl projections with championship weekend remaining before official bowl invites are officially extended next Sunday:
ESPN.com has the Mountaineers either facing Syracuse in the Camping World Bowl in Orlando or the Valero Alamo Bowl in San Antonio against Washington State.
Stewart Mandel of The Athletic has a WVU-Washington meeting in the Alamo while Sports Illustrated.com's latest projection has West Virginia playing NC State in the Camping World Bowl, which would be the makeup date the two schools couldn't work out when Hurricane Florence canceled WVU's meeting at NC State back on Sept. 15.
CBSsports.com is also projecting a Camping World Bowl meeting against Syracuse, while The Sporting News has the Mountaineers falling to the Liberty Bowl where they would face Mississippi State.
Of those, a Dana Holgorsen-Mike Leach matchup in the Alamo Bowl would certainly be the most appealing to the casual college football observer.
Who wouldn't tune in ESPN to watch that one?
The two teams combined for 115 points and 1,372 total yards in a back-and-forth game reminiscent of the one West Virginia and Oklahoma played here in 2012 when the Sooners won another shootout 50-49.
In that game, Landry Jones marched the Sooners 54 yards in six plays to defeat West Virginia when he completed a six-yard touchdown pass to Kenny Stills with just 24 seconds remaining.
You wonder if Will Grier could have done something similar if the Mountaineers could have gotten the football back with 2:36 remaining when the Sooners converted a fourth and 5 at the WVU 40.
Grier's final game at Milan Puskar Stadium was probably the best Senior Day performance since Geno Smith's 23-of-24, 407-yard, three-touchdown passing effort in West Virginia's 59-10 win over Kansas in 2012.
Grier completed 32-of-49 passes for a career-high 539 yards and four touchdowns, the 19thtime he's passed for more than 300 yards and the 16thtime he's thrown three or more touchdown passes in a game.
Grier's 22-game passing totals at West Virginia consist of 516 completions in 785 attempts for 7,354 yards and 71 touchdowns with 20 interceptions.
He's second to Smith in career touchdown passes, third to Smith and Marc Bulger in career passing yards and fourth to Smith, Bulger and Skyler Howard in career completions.
Grier also has top 10-marks in total offense (sixth), pass attempts (seventh) and total plays (10th).
If you were to project Grier's average passing numbers over the same number of games Smith played at WVU, Grier would have completed 1,030-of-1,571 passes for 14,709 yards and 141 touchdowns.
That would have placed him among the NCAA's all-time top 10 in passing yardage and among the top three behind just Houston's Case Keenum (155) and Boise State's Kellen Moore (142) in touchdown passes.
Including his six-game passing totals at Florida, Grier's career college stats include 621 completions in 945 attempts for 8,556 yards and 81 touchdowns.
Not too shabby.
More Mountaineer Football Notes …
* David Sills V added two more touchdown catches on Friday night against Oklahoma to give him 35 for his Mountaineer career – six behind school record holder Stedman Bailey.
Sills V is now eighth in school history in total touchdowns scored, ninth in career receiving yards (2,007), 12thin receptions (128) and 14thin scoring (214).
Gary Jennings Jr.'s impressive seven-catch, 225-yard showing against OU boosted his career standing in three different WVU pass-catching categories. He's now sixth in receiving yardage (2,294), seventh in receptions (168) and 10thin receiving touchdowns (17).Other Mountaineer players moving up the career charts include
- Senior punter Billy Kinney, now sixth in punting yardage with 6,804 and seventh in total punts with 165.
- Junior Kennedy McKoy, who is now 21stin rushing with 1,802 yards and tied for 13thwith four others with 18 rushing touchdowns. McKoy needs 135 yards to pass A.B. Brown's 1,937 yards to move into the top 20.
- Junior place kicker Evan Staley, who is 12thin PATs with 75 and 14thwith 18 field goals.
- Junior outside linebacker David Long Jr., now fourth in tackles for losses with 39 ½ and tied for 12thwith five others for 12thin sacks with 14. According to director of football communications Mike Montoro, Long is the only FBS player to rank in the top 10 in solo tackles (68) and tackles for losses (18 ½), and he's 26ththis week with eight sacks.
- And, junior Marcus Simms is now 13thin career kickoff return yards with 992.
* Here is where Jake Spavital's 2018 offense sits among the best in school history with the bowl game remaining, but one game fewer than the 2011 and 2012 offenses sitting at the top:
- Second in touchdown passes with 38, six short of the 44 thrown in 2012
- Fifth in passing yards with 3,939
- Sixth in pass completions with 272
- Sixth in total yards with 5,724
- Ninth in pass attempts with 407
* West Virginia fell three spots to No. 15 in this week's AP poll and four spots to No. 16 in this week's coaches' poll. The Mountaineers are looking to spend the entire season in the rankings for the first time since 2007 when WVU started that year No. 3 and finished sixth.
West Virginia came close in 2016, going the final 12 weeks in the polls after spending the first four outside the rankings.
* The West Virginia-Oklahoma game pulled a 3.4 rating – ESPN's highest-rated Friday game in eight years and the highest-rated Black Friday game among all networks since 2015.
That 3.4 rating was a 162 percent increase from last year's Virginia-Virginia Tech matchup played in the same game window. It was also the second-highest rated game on ESPN this year, trailing just the Labor Day night Virginia Tech-Florida State telecast.
* The Big 12 will announce its players of the year and all-conference teams later this week (voting has already been completed), and the suspicion here is that WVU's two late losses to Oklahoma State and Oklahoma could cost it dearly when the postseason hardware is passed out.
Kyler Murray likely sewed up offensive player of the year and also the first team quarterback spot with the Sooners' 59-56 win over WVU, and it's hard to imagine a way David Long Jr. can be named defensive player of the year the way the Mountaineer defense performed the last two weeks of the season.
I do envision Long Jr. making the all-conference first team, along with possibly left tackle Yodny Cajuste.
It's also difficult for me to see David Sills V and Gary Jennings Jr. jumping past Oklahoma State's Tylan Wallace, Oklahoma's Marquise Brown and either Texas Tech's Antonie Wesley, TCU's Jalen Reagor or Texas' Lil'Jordan Humphrey for first team honors at wide receiver.
Sills V and Jennings Jr. just happened to play in the deepest conference in the country for top-shelf wide outs.
And one guy I didn't even mention was Iowa State's Hakeem Butler – one of six Big 12 players with more than 1,000 yards receiving this year.
Jennings Jr., Sills V, Baylor's Jalen Hurd and Oklahoma's CeeDee Lamb could make it 10 with games remaining.
*And finally, here are some for-fun bowl projections with championship weekend remaining before official bowl invites are officially extended next Sunday:
ESPN.com has the Mountaineers either facing Syracuse in the Camping World Bowl in Orlando or the Valero Alamo Bowl in San Antonio against Washington State.
Stewart Mandel of The Athletic has a WVU-Washington meeting in the Alamo while Sports Illustrated.com's latest projection has West Virginia playing NC State in the Camping World Bowl, which would be the makeup date the two schools couldn't work out when Hurricane Florence canceled WVU's meeting at NC State back on Sept. 15.
CBSsports.com is also projecting a Camping World Bowl meeting against Syracuse, while The Sporting News has the Mountaineers falling to the Liberty Bowl where they would face Mississippi State.
Of those, a Dana Holgorsen-Mike Leach matchup in the Alamo Bowl would certainly be the most appealing to the casual college football observer.
Who wouldn't tune in ESPN to watch that one?
Players Mentioned
OL
/ Football
QB
/ Football
WR
/ Football
P
/ Football
LB
/ Football
RB
/ Football
WR
/ Football
WR
/ Football
K
/ FootballHouston Game Uniform Reveal
Thursday, October 30
2025 Coal Rush Atmosphere
Wednesday, October 29
United Bank Playbook: Houston Preview
Wednesday, October 29
Edward Vesterinen | Oct. 28
Tuesday, October 28
