Neal Brown breaks down West Virginia QB battle between Nicco Marchiol, Garrett Greene

West Virginia head coach Neal Brown believes he has a couple of good options at quarterback for the 2023 season in redshirt freshman Nicco Marchiol and junior Garrett Greene. Those two are competing to replace JT Daniels, who struggled last year after transferring in from Georgia.

Greene has more experience than Marchiol, having played in nine games last year and playing well at times. But Brown spoke with ESPN on Thursday from Big 12 Media Days and said the competition is far from settled after the spring.

“Well, we have a high belief in both of those guys, and I think we showed that by not going out and getting somebody in the portal in December or May,” Brown said. “Garrett’s played a lot of football. He won the game against Oklahoma last year and had a great performance. Goes on the road and beats Oklahoma State. Nicco had to come in and finish the game because Garrett got hurt. They both are growing, they’re developing. Extremely athletic. Run guys that can also make all the throws. We’re going to carry this competition into fall camp and may the best man win.”

Both WVU quarterbacks are more athletic than Daniels is, which Neal Brown believes will help this fall. Greene rushed for 276 yards and five touchdowns for West Virginia last season in limited playing time. Meanwhile Marchiol averaged better than 5 yards per carry in the two games he played in.

Greene signed with West Virginia as a three-star prospect out of Tallahassee, Florida in the class of 2020. He was ranked as the No. 36 quarterback in that class, according to the On3 Industry rankings. Marchiol was ranked as a four-star quarterback and the No. 21 QB in the class of 2022, according to the On3 Industry rankings.

In addition to being better and more athletic at quarterback Brown also feels good about the offensive coordinator change that was made this offseason.

Chad Scott was elevated to the Mountaineers OC role after serving as the running backs coach at West Virginia the previous four years. He replaces Graham Harrell, who left for the offensive coordinator job at Purdue.

“Well, we’ll be quite a bit different than we were a year ago. And I think anytime you change the style of quarterback, that you’re going to have that. And so the quarterbacks we have now, they’re going to be able to adlib. They’re going to be able to move around in the pocket. And they can run,” Brown said. “So we’re going to look quite a bit different. I’m excited about this group, because we’ve added speed at wideout, as well. Last year I thought we were able to run the ball well at times, but we didn’t take advantage of some of the things you should be able to take advantage of when you can run the football.”