Austin Kendall and the Long Road both Ahead and Behind

Neal Brown held his camp-concluding press conference yesterday and, much like Labor Day looming just over the horizon, the head coach’s address to the media signified that summer is indeed coming to a close. Credit to the Kentucky native, then, for wasting not a second of anyone’s time before announcing that West Virginia’s starting quarterback is Oklahoma transfer Austin Kendall.  If we’re being honest, the presser could have ended then and there. After months of compounding stress and speculation over who would inherit the QB1 mantle vacated by Will Grier, Mountaineer nation breathed a grateful sigh of relief: answers were had.

Or were they?

Kendall is the guy under center come August 31st. That much is good to know. But this is the same Austin Kendall who transferred from Oklahoma after serving consecutive years living in the shadow of Heisman winners Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray. This is the same Austin Kendall who’s only start came in the opening series against Baylor last year toward’s the end of September before Murray came in the next series but hasn’t started an honest-to-god game of football since his senior year at Cuthbertson High way back in 2015.

With West Virginia projected by most talking heads and odds-makers to win somewhere in the range of 3-5 games in 2019, the Waxhaw, NC native doesn’t figure to move the needle much further towards projected wins. After two years waiting in the wings, a decisive move in-conference, and an extended position battle that many weren’t sure he’d win, Austin Kendall’s collegiate career is a largely blank canvas colored nothing but uncertainty.

Austin Kendall is a mystery but here’s what we know

• As a high school senior, Kendall was projected as the nation’s no. 7 pocket passer and the ranked 101st out of ESPN’s top-300 player nationally.  In his final two years of high school, the son of Brian and Kim Kendall amassed 7,008 yards passing and 47 touchdowns.
• He turned down offers from Auburn, Clemson, Miami, Tennessee and – yes- West Virginia in favor of the Sooners and their ascendant offense.
• In 2016, he posted 143 passing yards and 16 completions, which was the best clip ever from a true freshman under former coach Bob Stoops.  We know that in 2017, Baker Mayfield took the nation by storm, planted a giant panhandle-sized flag at Ohio State’s 50 and took home the Heisman.  Kendall was largely a spectator.
• After sitting a required year upon transferring from Texas A&M, Kyler Murray won the job in 2018 and arguably topped Mayfield’s performance from the previous year and himself took home the Heisman.  Again, Kendall was largely left to watch the spectacle.
• Earlier this year former Alabama starter Jalen Hurts arrived in Norman with his sights set on the QB1 job and his own shot at bringing a Heisman back to Sooner country for the third straight year.  We all know what happened next.

Neal Brown lured Austin Kendall to WVU based largely on the strength of a relationship built years prior when Kendall’s older brother played for Brown at Kentucky.  Of course, there was also the whole “vacancy under center” thing to sweeten the deal.  Kendall didn’t tempt Lincoln Riley’s ire to move to a conference foe just for an outside chance at a starting job.  He came to play and he came to win.  So what now?

The way forward seems mired with as much uncertainty and potential adversity as what came before.  For Kendall and the rest of this new-look West Virginia team, it’s combating a combination of youth, inexperience and a coaching staff this is just getting their feet wet.  There are no star receivers, the offensive line is still playing positional musical chairs and the defense lost several of its a half dozen players from a year ago.  If you’re Austin Kendall and are touring the kingdom you’ve just inherited, you might be asking why the coffers look so empty.

With the full Big 12 schedule looming alongside two P5 teams in Missouri and NC State in non-conference play, 2019 will be baptism by fire for West Virginia. Not even season-opener JMU, perennially elite at the FCS level, provides an easy bar to clear.  It would be fair to wonder if Austin Kendall is just a glutton for punishment, knowing full-well he could have stayed at Oklahoma and reaped the rewards of coasting along with a program that looks to be in the express lane toward another Big 12 title and another playoff bid.

Whatever you might think, he made the better choice.

Kendall still earned his job outright, but the monolith that is a blue-blood recruiting machine, exactly what exists at Oklahoma, is no longer standing in the way and there’s no Spencer Rattler running drills beside you. Kendall is a great football player who has been working diligently, quietly behind the scenes for this very opportunity. You can see the talent here and even here. You hear Brown speak of his composure and how he never drifts too far up or down the emotional spectrum. Leadership demeanor, if I’ve ever heard it.

Sometimes calamity and turmoil happen upon you in sudden fashion and you need to recalibrate and plant roots elsewhere (see: Will Grier). Sometimes, it’s about biding your time, soaking up knowledge and blazing your own trail. The latter of the two scenarios is Austin Kendall, yet with room to write several more chapters.

Despite the uphill struggle that awaits West Virginia in 2019, the season is high. Austin Kendall has two years of eligibility and a slew of young offensive talent to work with, not to mention a deeper-than-deep stable of running backs headlined by Kenndy McKoy and Martell Pettaway. For added juice, Neal Brown has had his hand in producing some prolific offenses in the past, which is perhaps an even less important statistic than what he was able to engineer at Troy between 2016-2019 when, despite missing key offensive pieces each season, produced 429.6, 418.5 and 389.2 ypg, respectively. So, here you have a coach who’s proven to be able to do a lot with a little and a veteran signal-caller with a fire in his belly burning mountain high. I’ve heard of worse pairings.

Perhaps the last thing that I know concerning Austin Kendall is that he’s the type of story WVU fandom should embrace. Will Grier was castigated by the national media before landing in Morgantown and shredding defenses for two short years. West Virginia embraced him and he, it. Kendall doesn’t have the tape that Grier does but he knows what struggle entails. He knows what it’s like to get that call and know when your career has hit a critical juncture. West Virginia’s team catchphrase in the media circuit is #trustheclimb and it’s brand ambassador should be Austin Kendall- he’s been climbing for years.

Despite all the work he’s put in, be it dressed in crimson and cream or old gold and blue, Austin Kendall’s most grueling tasks still await. Opportunity is a grand luminous thing until it’s waiting just outside the tunnel on a Saturday. The work is now in living color. All the scrutiny, the limelight and the weight of being the face of a program is now, finally, Kendall’s to own. Perhaps the camp battles, the resolute focus, the faith in one’s self to head 1,135 miles down a different path were all part of a grander scheme.  Call it Mountain Mama’s machinations. Call it the awesome chaos of modern college football. Call it the #theclimb extending ever-upward.  Austin Kendall would probably just call it what it is: his time.