West Virginia Football: Do Mountaineers have nation’s best WR corps?
By Phil Poling
The West Virginia football passing game started slow Sunday night, but once quarterback Will Grier got settled the receivers were virtually unstoppable.
Both Gary Jennings and David Sills tallied four catches in the opening quarter for the ‘Eers, but the offense as a unit struggled. The running game wasn’t very effective, bringing pressure the offensive line struggled to slow down. Things changed when Grier found Sills on a back-shoulder throw in the redzone that resulted in WVU’s first touchdown of the season.
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Sills, of course, is a former quarterback who understands how to read a defense and find the holes in zone coverage. Add that he’s a matchup nightmare in the redzone and the Mountaineers become a difficult team to defend. Sills scored for the second time late in the 3rd quarter from 10 yards out, after his first was from one yard further in the 1st half.
At 6-foot-4, you simply can’t stop Sills in the redzone 1-on-1. Grier knows this and is more than capable of taking advantage. On the final drive of the game while needing a touchdown, it was Sills again who received the endzone target from Grier. Sills was unable to corral the pass, but it’s something both will be able to learn from moving forward.
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It’s funny how Gary Jennings, the team’s leader in catches and yards Sunday, isn’t the first wide receiver mentioned, but the other guy did score the first two touchdowns. After overthrowing Jennings on two plays that could’ve swayed the first half, Grier and Jennings finally got on the same page in the second.
In the fourth quarter while trailing 24-17, Grier found Jennings on the second play of the drive for a 60-yard touchdown. He’d finish the game with 13 catches for 189 yards, and seemed to have an enviable rapport with Grier racking up 18 targets. Already with a redzone target in Sills, adding a burner like Jennings to the mix spells trouble for pass defenses.
After Virginia Tech missed a field goal to give WVU one final chance late, Grier looked Ka’Raun White’s way three times on the final drive. Unsuccessful, but who a quarterback seeks out on the final drive could be a telling sign of who he trusts. White only hauled in four catches for 74 yards in the game, but that included a beautiful streak down the middle and a nice toe-tapping catch on the sideline.
White is the most experienced of the trio, but he’s dealt with injuries and the shadow of his brothers — Kevin and Kyzir. Don’t expect White to fade with the emergence of Sills and Jennings, though. It’s likely to blossom with defenses forced to occupy defenders elsewhere, opening things up for the legacy wide receiver.
Enough beating around the bush, though. Do the Mountaineers have the best wide receivers in the country? Even in defeat, it’s only right we pose the question. Oklahoma State’s wide receivers played an incredible game Thursday — against an AAC West team. The Mountaineers did their work against an ACC team, and one that’s historically great defensively.
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You’ll be hard-pressed to find a trio like Jennings, Sills and White somewhere else in college football, but players like Tevin Bush, Reggie Roberson jr. and Marcus Simms will flourish given the same opportunity for WVU. The Mountaineers flirted with the “Wide Receiver U” nickname, but this group of players could really set it in stone.