Final Grades: WVU QB Play Showed Progress With Room for Improvement

This will be an ongoing series with WVSN’s Cody Nespor and Tom Bragg grading the performance of each position group during the 2020 West Virginia University football season. A new position will be graded each day, beginning today with quarterbacks:

CODY NESPOR:

Jarret Doege capped off an otherwise, efficient and effective season with a poor bowl game performance that included a second-half benching. Doege’s worst two games of the season unfortunately game at the very end, in the blowout loss to Iowa State and the benching against Army. Throughout the rest of the season, however, Doege was an efficient Big 12 quarterback.

Despite WVU’s having another poor season in terms of drops, Doege completed 63.9 percent of his Big 12-leading 374 pass attempts and finished third in the conference with 2,587 passing yards. Despite leading the league in pass attempts, Doege also had a league-low four interceptions. The former Bowling Green transfer also had a string of fours games throwing for over 300 yards in the middle of the season.

The negatives with Doege this season are that he only threw for 14 touchdowns and he completed very few deep balls to receivers. Both of these issues could be explained by WVU’s receivers having a very disappointing season, which we will discuss at length in a couple of days, but they also point to Doege’s good-not-great overall play. 

Despite this being his first full season play at WVU, Doege did start 17 games at Bowling Green. With 30 college starts now under his belt, it is not unreasonable to expect more from the redshirt-junior. I think the benching in the Liberty Bowl could be seen as a pretty clear message from Brown; it’s time for Doege to show he can take that next step or it’s time for someone else to get a chance to play.

GRADE: B

TOM BRAGG:

Good but not great is an apt description for WVU’s quarterback play this season. Jarret Doege was a fine game manager and fit well with what Neal Brown was trying to do on offense, but throwing the ball down the field caused problems. Doege’s deep ball left a lot to be desired — yes, the receivers did not do him many favors with drops but almost nothing down the field from Doege looked very good this season. 

Still, WVU was a much better team in 2020 than it was in 2019 thanks in no small part to the improved play at the quarterback position. Prior to the bowl game, Doege was not making the mistakes that will lose you a football game (read: turnovers). In the bowl game, Doege was bad — no denying that — which led to Austin Kendall’s swan song with the Mountaineers in the second half of that Liberty Bowl win against Army. 

The starting job will be Doege’s to lose this offseason — I think he earned that with his play in 2020 — but as we have seen several times already during Neal Brown’s short tenure in Morgantown if the quarterback play is not going to give WVU its best chance to win then someone else will get a shot. 

GRADE: C+