By Bob Hertzel
For the Times West Virginian
MORGANTOWN —
Geno Smith figured last year, when Marshall came up to Morgantown to face the Mountaineers in the Friends of Coal Bowl, it would be another easy afternoon for him.
He was a true freshman, playing behind a senior in Jarrett Brown, and his job had been mostly to learn in practice, be ready in games and go in at mop up time, if there was any mopping up to do.
Then, early in the game, a hush fell over Puskar Stadium as Brown went down with what would be diagnosed later as a concussion, one that would really take the smoke out of his season, and Smith was summoned to rescue the Mountaineers.
He had played in games before, but this was different. He had gotten the inheritance before the person leaving it was dead. This was his team in a big game and he stood tall.
Babied through the first half as he got his feet on the ground, he went into the locker room trailing Marshall, 10-7, but he pitched well enough in the second half to get the Mountaineers a 24-7 victory with 15 completions in 21 tries for 147 yards and a touchdown.
Unexpected as that performance was, it gives him strong footing as he starts this time against a Marshall team that will be, if nothing else, eager to punish him as the Mountaineers only experienced quarterback.
Smith understands what he’s up against on the road in Huntington.
“They were playing hard last year, we were playing hard,” he said.
In many ways the most important thing to come out of the opening 31-0 victory over Coastal Carolina last Saturday was that the game’s main purpose was to ease Smith into the starting quarterback roll, with an eye toward this game.
It began as early as the opening coin flip. Coastal Carolina won the toss and deferred. WVU took the ball, as is normal, but Stewart was planning to try and take the ball no matter what.
“My thought process was very simple,” Stewart said. “I took the ball in windy conditions because I wanted Geno and our offense to know that we had confidence in them. That’s the first statement I made.
“I wanted the ball, now they won the toss and deferred which helped us. But I told our four captains to get that ball. By hook or crook get that ball. So I wanted to send that message.”
It turns out that Stewart was sending more messages than an office fax machine on this day.
Later in that first quarter, at the end of a 16-play drive, the Mountaineers were faced with a fourth-and-4 situation. Everyone thought the field goal unit would come out, knowing Stewart would not want to waste a 16-play drive and come away with nothing.
But he had another message to send.
“Secondly, and I told the staff, if we’re in there close we’re going for it. I want Geno to know I have all the confidence in the world in him and the other 10 players out there with him. I wanted that young man to know he’s our guy, we’re going with him and I wanted to showcase him right from the get go,” Stewart explained.
“That’s why we went with the fast pace. I wanted people to know here it is, this is what we’re going to do. That was just the thought process, right or wrong, good bad or indifferent, that was my thinking.”
Considering that the gamble paid off and J.D. Woods caught the season’s first touchdown pass, it proved to be the right thing to do, especially against a team that you would not figure would challenge you anyway.
It certainly got Smith moving in the right direction, not that he needs a boost in confidence.
If anything, Smith bubbles with confidence. He does it quietly and without boasting, but you just hear in his voice and in the things he says. He believes he belongs at quarterback on a big time college football team.
It goes in part to the way Stewart handled him in the opener and maybe even more so to that relief performance against Marshall last year, especially the touchdown pass that he threw.
“That gave me confidence, you know, my first college touchdown pass. It let me know I could make the throws and do some good things,” he said.
He showed the confidence, too, after he made a mistake, throwing an interception in the Coastal Carolina game, one that almost cost the Mountaineers’ dearly.
A less confident man might have come undone, but Smith was determined to just learn from it.
“I understand that’s part of the game,” Smith explained Monday. “The guy made a great play, you can’t take that away from him. I tried to fit it in there, but he intercepted it. Turnovers are going to happen. You’re going to have mistakes, penalties and fumbles and interceptions, but we can’t let that get us down as a team. We have to move forward from those things.”
Jock Sanders said don’t mistake the analytical way Smith approaches the mistake with indifference.
“He’s mad about that interception. He’s really mad,” the receiver said. “He told us he missed a couple of reads and that it was on him. He wants to step up and be the leader and take that role. [Monday] he was fired up and making all the passes, being a lot more vocal. He was ready go. It picked us up, like an energy drink. It was an energizer.”
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
