Energy, Enthusiasm and Excitement Fuel WVU's Greene
September 14, 2023 11:41 AM | Football, Blog
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By: John Antonik
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Mark it down, junior quarterback Garrett Greene is going to be amped up to play Pitt this Saturday night in the 106th Backyard Brawl at Milan Puskar Stadium.
That's no different than Duquesne last Saturday or Penn State two weeks ago, or Texas Tech next week, for that matter. Energy, enthusiasm and excitement are what fuel the Tallahassee, Florida, resident.
However, there are times when coach Neal Brown would like for his quarterback to be able to turn the wattage down a little bit at the start of games, or at least channel it a little bit better.
When you look at Greene's situational passing statistics on SportSource Analytics, his numbers across the board are pretty similar with one exception – first quarter completion percentage.
Through two games so far this season, Greene is completing only 42.9% of his first-quarter pass attempts. The number jumps to 64.3% in the second quarter and remains in that general area throughout the game.
Brown is aware of this, and he's talked to Greene about it.
"He's a ball of energy, and that's his greatest strength," Brown said earlier this week. "He does a really good job of being that energy guy all the time, and that probably works against him a little bit at the start of games because he is so amped up.
"We've got to figure out a way, as a staff - and I'm talking about everything from our sports psych people to our strength, sports science and coaches - to get him to calm down a little bit where he can execute a little higher," Brown said. Quarterback Garrett Greene's completion percentage has improved throughout games so far this season (All Pro Photography/Dale Sparks photo).
Many years ago, quarterback John Talley used to be like that and every throw he made was like a Nolan Ryan fastball, no matter how close he was to his intended target.
Brown said Greene has similar velocity on many of his early passes.
"When you are amped up like that and full of energy … his ball, and I'm not trying to get too scientific here, but he throws a really tight ball," Brown explained. "If you are ever down at field level and y'all watch him throw, he's got RPMs on his ball. It's a tight spin, and when he gets really excited, that ball comes out hot and those balls are hard to catch sometimes.
"And he knows this and he's conscious of it, but it hurts him a little bit early in the game," Brown added. "He'll get better at it, but it's just handling those emotions."
Offensive coordinator Chad Scott believes the solution might be to get Greene hit early in the game to get him calmed down a bit.
Keep in mind, despite playing 24 career games, Saturday will only be his fifth career start behind center. His role up until the final two games of last year was to come in as a changeup and give defenses a different look, so in that respect, the coaching staff is still learning things about Greene.
"I think the best way to do it is to get him involved early, whether that be a quarterback called run play or him having an opportunity to scramble and get himself hit," Scott explained. "We need to find a way to get him an easy completion or a called run, just to knock the jitters out of him."
On the flip side, Greene's first-quarter completion percentage is somewhat skewed because of drops. If you include the half-dozen dropped passes he's had so far, he would be completing 71.1% of his passes instead of the 57.8 completion rate he has through two games.
For that, Brown has been really pleased with the way Greene has dealt with things so far.
"He's probably handled that as good or better than any quarterback I've ever had," Brown said. "If you go back and look, he threw two really dime throws that should have been touchdowns, and he threw another one on an out cut that should have been a first down.
"We had four legitimate drops in the (Duquesne) game, but it didn't faze him one bit," Brown said. "I kind of peeked back and he was back there talking to the guys who didn't make the catches. I think we had two drops at Penn State, and he did the same thing. He didn't let it affect him."
You know Pitt is going to bring pressure and try and affect Greene on Saturday. The Panthers saw what pressure did to their quarterback during last Saturday's 27-21 loss to Cincinnati when the Bearcats sacked Phil Jurkovec five times and hit him a total of 21 times during his 32 pass attempts.
Pressure is in coach Pat Narduzzi's DNA, and he's always had the players up front who can get to the quarterback.
On the other hand, perhaps the Panthers hitting Greene a time or two might not be such a bad thing after all.
