QB Face-Off: West Virginia & Oklahoma
Aug 31, 2013; Morgantown, WV, USA; West Virginia Mountaineers quarterback Paul Millard (14) hands the ball off to running back Wendell Smallwood (4) against the William
West Virginia Mountaineers current QB for today’s game against the Oklahoma Sooners will be Paul Millard. So this made me wonder… how does Millard stack up against Sooners QB Trevor Knight? Let’s take a look…
Both QB’s are from Texas… and that’s it. Everything else is different. Oh, and they’re both new starters who, between them, have thrown for a combined 87 passes for their college teams this year. Paul Millard never got to play in any real game that counted because he was always the back-up for the now famed New York Jets QB Geno Smith. With that in mind, he also threw for 4,500 yards as a senior in high school. On the opposite end, Knight spent his freshman years backing up Landry Jones. As for high school, he threw for less than half of what Millard did. But alas, there is the recruit ranking system. This gave Knight 4 out of 5 stars because he’s a dual threat. If you’ve read my article about recruiting and how it works, you know I’m less than a fan of this system. But I digress…
"Not putting too much on the quarterback is important. – Dana Holgorsen"
What can be expected tonight is that Millard will throw the ball and Knight will run the ball. As each QB gets more comfortable in their role, the head coaches will slowly begin to put more pressure on them to take on more responsibility. Despite getting off to a rocky start in last week’s game, Oklahoma’s QB Knight ended up posting 28 throws, 13 runs and 103 yards during 11 completions. Oppositely, Millard was among the lowest throwing QB’s that head coach Dana Holgorsen has coached by throwing only 25 times and running the ball the rest of the time.
"We were throwing the ball all over the place last year, and this year we’re running the ball a lot. – Dana Holgorsen"
OSU head coach Bob Stoops has stated that he has great confidence in his QB once he settles down and gets into a rhythm of throwing the ball despite his difficult start in the beginning of last weeks game. This tells me that the Mountaineers will need to keep a fast pace and not stop the clock, much like they did last week, in order to throw OSU off balance and keep their QB unsettled.