Garrett Greene Showing 'Significant Improvement' in Key Area

West Virginia QB Garrett Greene is ironing out one of his "weaknesses"

Schuyler Callihan | Aug 17, 2024

Christopher Hall - West Virginia on SI

In this story:

West Virginia Mountaineers

The number one thing that everyone is going to be paying attention to this upcoming season in regards to West Virginia quarterback Garrett Greene is his completion percentage. While he made several big plays in the passing game, he had more misses in the dink and dunk game than he or Neal Brown would have liked.

Some of those missed layups can be attributed to Greene not taking some heat off the throw, always delivering a fastball of sorts. Head coach Neal Brown preached this all of last offseason and then throughout the season, but the adjustment was never fully made.

The other factors behind the low 53.1 completion percentage? Well, for one, WVU took a ton of shots down the field in 2023 and when you throw it deep with that much regularity, you're going to naturally have a lower completion rate. He also did a good job of throwing the ball away when necessary versus trying to force something that wasn't there. As you know, those count as incompletions.

Obviously, there were some mechanical things that needed fixed as well and soon after the Duke's Mayo Bowl he, Neal Brown, and quarterbacks coach Tyler Allen cut up film of every single throw he made throughout the year to do a deep dive on what exactly needed tweaked.

“With Garrett, one thing we really focused on this summer was touch and it’s really shown up in the span of the last 13, 14 practices we’ve had," Allen said. "Really good touch when he’s on the move outside the pocket, he’s really improved on that."

Has this improvement translated to more completions?

“I went back two days ago and looked at his numbers from fall camp last year and fall camp this year and it’s a significant improvement in completion percentage. Now, hopefully that transitions in two weeks from now. A lot of that was his footwork and touch and some mechanical issues where he was falling off. We got him grounded now.”

The goal that they would like for him to hit is 64-66%, but even a modest improvement to 58 or 59% would be a noticeable difference.

MORE STORIES FROM WEST VIRGINIA ON SI