Neal Brown Dismisses Thought He Should’ve Benched Garrett Greene During ISU Loss

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia was hanging with Iowa State until Garrett Greene threw two costly interceptions in the fourth quarter. From that point on, Iowa State took control of the game and ended up winning comfortably by the score of 28-16. Greene’s struggles throughout the night led to WVU head coach Neal Brown being asked if he considered making a change at quarterback in an effort to spark the offense.

While some fans wanted to see backup Nicco Marchiol get a shot to lead the Mountaineer offense, the thought never crossed Brown’s mind. In fact, Brown dismissed the idea and emphasized that Greene is his starting quarterback.

“Why would we do that? What? Do you think we needed one? Nicco is going to be a really good player here, but Garrett Greene’s our starter and I believe that you play through some issues, and we’ll do the same with Nicco when he’s the starter,” explained Brown during his postgame press conference on Saturday night.

Brown then offered a brief evaluation of Greene’s performance, defending him for one of the two picks.

“He’s a great player and he played well last week. The turnovers were an issue. Like I said, one of them was a bad decision, one of them was a terrible non-call. I don’t have a quick hook with quarterbacks. I don’t believe in that. I don’t think that’s ever the right thing to do and we won’t do it when Nicco’s the starter and weren’t going to do it tonight.”

After leading the Mountaineers on a game opening scoring drive, Greene and the offense failed to get back into the end zone until it was far too late in the final minutes of the fourth quarter trailing by multiple scores.

Overall in the game, Greene completed 18-of-32 passes for just 206 yards. He threw one touchdown pass and then the two picks that led to 14 Iowa State points. Greene did run for 87 yards on 10 carries, but shied away from running with open lanes on several occasions.

Following an offseason that included a focus on improving Greene’s accuracy, the Tallahassee, Fla. native has only completed 57% of his passes despite throwing for 1,267 yards through six games.

As much as Greene’s regression makes asking about a quarterback change a legitimate question, Brown’s respond, especially immediately after the game, is not surprising either. At 3-3 (2-1, Big 12), West Virginia is still in the thick of a wide open Big 12 race and Brown knows turning to Marchiol would likely lead to enduring some growing pains based on his lack of experience.

Sure, Brown could’ve turned to Marchiol just in the Iowa State game and then swapped Greene back as the starter for their next matchup against Kansas State, but as Brown said, he just doesn’t have a quick hook with quarterbacks.

But if and when Marchiol plays may depend on how the rest of the season goes and if the Mountaineers can get back on track.

For a related story, Neal Brown rants about the officiating after WVU’s loss to Iowa State.