New season, same old story in Morgantown. When the football season begin's every year WVU"s football fan's inevitably have expectation's of a national championship. I try, usually without success, to remind people that WV is not Ohio st, or Notre dame, or USC. Let's face it, if your a top young highschool recruit and you have the chance to go to either Los Angeles or Morgantown, where would be more appealing to you? The recruiting picture on a national scale is dominated by big universitie's in big cities. WVU has made a good living by taking chances on what other school's would deem, "hard-luck," cases. Athlete's that either have academic or behavioral issues. What is un-exceptable at Notre Dame is a star recruit in WV. Since the Rodriguez era however, WVU's profile had been liftted into the perinial top 25 profile and the quality of the player's has risen accordingly. One has to look no further than start quarterback Geno Smith.
Geno Smith's accolade's on the field have been nothing short of spectacular. Smith finished his junior season with 4379 passing yards, 31 TD"s, 7 interception's, and a 65.7% pass completion record. Smith is getting ready to re-write the record books this supassing Mountanier great's Pat White, Marc bulger, and Major Harris, in nearly every signifigant catagory there is. The Mountaineer's finished last season with a record breaking 70-33 prefomance over Clemson in the Orange bowl. Last weekend after 8 month's of waiting to see if they could duplicate that kind of offesnsive fire work's they did not dissapoint. A 69-34 drubbing of Marshall, the little brother who couldn't muster a single victory in 12 tries.(I loved to mess with Marshall fan's telling them I couldn't wait for the sequal to, "We Are Marshall," a second plane crash-get it?) Though Marshall hasn't been a very good team in the last 10 years, I'll save my diatribe on how they only had a team with Pennington and Moss for later, They certainley are not a cup-cake pushover of the typical D-II variety, ala Appalachin st. ect.. For the Mountaineer's to be able to come back out after the off-season and seemingly pick right up where they left off is even making me a believer. Note I did not say I am a believer, just that thier making me one. In my previous blog entry I saddled them with 5 losses in my pre-seaso picks, more because I'm chosing to error on the side of caution than I believe thier that mediocre. After Geno Smith's preformance Saturday I'm simply floored. I understand that Smith has the great fortune of playing with several gifted athlete's in Tavon Austin and Stedman Bailey, both of whom could be the stand out star hiesman hopefull's alone on another team, but right now Smith is playing at 2 level's above the competition. There was hardly a single play that Smith did not audible out of, and correctly I might add, to the benefit of the team. His matuarity in the pocket coupled with his arm strenght and accuracy where simply amazing for the 1st game of the season. One of the more impressive thing's I saw was his abiltiy to complete out passes throwing to the right side line. These are not easy pass's to complete. He's rolling to his right and must he deliver a strike to the reciever's outside shoulder and in bound's. He did it effortlessly an over and over again.
I am in many way's the eternal critic. It's not that I think the game is easy, I've just been spoiled by the virtue of being a Steeler fanatic. I got to say it though, Smith appears to be every bit as developed this year as RG3 was last year. Whether or not the his season will be as friutfull is yet to be seen.
