The West Virginia Mountaineers will be back in Morgantown this Saturday for a home game against Utah. Both WVU and the Utes are coming off disappointing performances in their first week of conference play. West Virginia got completely outplayed in a 41-10 loss at Kansas. Utah, which was ranked 16th in the AP Poll last week, fell to the 17th-ranked Texas Tech at home by a final score of 34-10. As West Virginia looks to get back on track, it will have to do so against a talented, angry football team led by a rather impressive quarterback.
Devon Dampier
Yet again, West Virginia will be facing a dual-threat quarterback this weekend after struggling with such players multiple times this season. Devon Dampier of Utah led the Utes to a solid 3-0 start prior to their home loss to Texas Tech last weekend. Dampier is a transfer from New Mexico with a tremendous amount of upside. If you’re looking for a comparison, look no further than Ohio’s Parker Navarro, who led the Bobcats to a victory over WVU back in Week 2. As a Lobo, Dampier posted strikingly similar numbers to Parker Navarro in 2024.
Devon Dampier in 2024 (New Mexico):
2,768 passing yards, 12 touchdowns, 12 interceptions
1,166 rush yards, 19 touchdowns, 7.5 yards per carry
Parker Navarro in 2024:
2,423 passing yards, 13 touchdowns, 11 interceptions
1,054 rushing yards, 18 touchdowns, 6.6 yards per carry
You can also see similarities between the two signal callers when looking at their size, as Dampier is listed at 5’11 and 210 pounds and Navarro is listed at 6’0 and 211 pounds.
Through four games with Utah, Dampier is averaging just shy of 200 yards passing and 60 yards rushing per contest. While the WVU defense has performed significantly better than its offense this season, dual-threat quarterbacks have presented a challenge. The aforementioned Navarro threw for 247 yards and led his team in rushing with 87 yards on 18 carries back on September 6th. Last week, Kansas QB Jalon Daniels had 69 yards rushing and threw for three touchdowns in the blowout.
Dampier has completed a career-high 70.9% of his passes this season. Dampier has plenty of offensive talent around him at the skill positions, including wideout Ryan Davis, who was his second favorite target at New Mexico in 2024. Both he and Davis have made the jump to the Big 12 Conference. At Utah, Davis leads the team in receptions (29) and receiving yards (241) to go along with one touchdown grab.
Aside from the Texas Tech loss, Utah’s offense has been efficient with Dampier leading the way. In Week 1 against UCLA, Dampier connected on 21 of his 25 pass attempts while rushing for 87 yards on 16 carries. Through the first three games of the season, Utah proved to be extremely potent in the running game. Utah racked up 145 carries for 870 yards and 12 touchdowns en route to a 3-0 start.
Utah is a talented football team, led by a solid quarterback, that earned every bit of their #16 spot in the AP Poll prior to the loss to Texas Tech. If anything was an outlier through the first four games, it was the performance that they put forth last week to open up conference play that knocked them from the Top 25. Dampier threw two interceptions, and the Utes ran for just 101 yards on 31 carries. Dampier’s longest run was just seven yards.
If West Virginia wants to get to 1-1 in conference play, they will have to do some similar things to what Texas Tech’s defense managed to do. They will need to limit Dampier’s ability to pick up first downs on the ground and force a couple of interceptions (something that he has been prone to throughout his career). Unfortunately, Dampier is also the prototype of the quarterback WVU has struggled with this year. We'll see who is able to win that battle, and it'll probably play a role who wins the game.