Neal Brown Praises Nicco Marchiol's Patience and Loyalty to WVU

Loyalty is a rare trait in college football nowadays, but the Mountaineer backup QB has it.

Ben Queen-USA TODAY Sports

Neal Brown has to be one of the happiest coaches in all of college football, thanks to his quarterback situation.

Garrett Greene returns with a full year of starting under his belt and showcased last fall that he's one of the nation's most dynamic dual threat quarterbacks. Behind him is Nicco Marchiol, who came in and helped the Mountaineers defeat Pitt and Texas Tech when Greene was hindered by an ankle injury. Most in Marchiol's shoes would look to hit the transfer portal and go somewhere that could give him an opportunity to start now as opposed to waiting another year.

Neal Brown recently spoke on Marchiol's loyalty and patience during an interview with Pete Mundo of Heartland College Sports.

“I think it starts with trust. It’s been a process and he understands that we’ve invested in him. He understands that he’s shown a great amount of improvement over the last two years. And I think you also have to credit his family. He has an upbringing that where he’s gracious and they’ve allowed him the patience necessary to improve. Nicco was undoubtedly one of our most improved players in the spring if not our most improved player on our entire roster. At some point he’s going to be called upon this fall. I don’t know when but he’s played three complete games here and we’re 3-0 in those games. He’s a winner. At some point he’s going to be in position to win games for us this fall and then long-term wise he’s definitely our starter of the future.”

Do read too deep into that.

What Brown really means is Marchiol is a guy they can count on this fall, if needed. When he was thrown into fire last year they had to be cautious and reel back their gameplan because they had no idea what he could handle at that stage in his career and partially due to the fact that they had one other scholarship quarterback on the roster and couldn't afford him going down to injury as well.

"Garrett’s had some time missed due to injury and if that’s the case this fall which we don’t want it to be, but if that’s the case this fall Nicco is more than ready to come in and really step in where we can win games because of him. We may have some packages where we play him but we really haven’t got that far into it or how we’re going to play out the season. But there could be some instances where we have some packages where he plays."

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