Photo courtesy of BlueGoldNews.com
Quarterback Will Grier runs in a two-point conversion during West Virginia’s win at Texas during the 2018 season.
MORGANTOWN — On Broadway or on Don Nehlen Drive in Morgantown, there is agreement on one fact:
“The play’s the thing.”
The two most famous Shakespeare’s, the theater’s William, and the one-time Notre Dame quarterback of the same name from the 1930’s glory days of the Fighting Irish, both understood that.
And, here at West Virginia, it has become a big deal since head football coach Neal Brown announced he’d be calling the plays this year.
West Virginia has a long history of famous play calls that have changed the fortunes of the team, going back even beyond Hall of Fame coach Nehlen, so let’s take a look at the best calls of all-time;
HEADLINE: The fake punt
Sugar Bowl, 2006, WVU’s large early lead over Georgia in Atlanta had been whittle down to 38-35, less than two minutes to play, the Mountaineers facing fourth and 6. Traditional logic said punt the ball away but Coach Rich Rodriguez was never one to follow traditional logic.
He sent his punter, Phil Brady, out onto the field … but he had trickery in his heart.
WVU had worked on a fake punt throughout the second half of the season but never used it.
“I never thought we were going to run it,” Brady said years later. “I thought it was something we would just have in our back pocket.”
Georgia didn’t think Rodriguez would dare, either, but it almost got screwed up.
“I looked over (to the sideline) too late,” Brady admitted. “If it weren’t for Marc Magro yelling ‘Hammer, Hammer!’ I would have punted the ball. If you look at the clip on YouTube you can see I put my hands up near my ear holes and took a few steps forward and probably gave it away to some people. I was listening for what Magro was yelling. Luckily, I heard him.’”
Ten yards later, WVU had its first down and effectively had put the game away.
HEADLINE: Don Nehlen’s draw play
Over the years it became something of a joke, Nehlen facing third and long and conservatively turning to a draw play instead of pass … except that it worked
But maybe the best play Nehlen ever called came on something other than the draw. In fact, it was a play that wasn’t even in the play book.
It was 1983, Nehlen had put WVU on the national scene, but now they trailed, 21-17, in the fourth quarter before a record crowd at Mountaineer Field. The Mountaineers took over on their own 10 and put together a typical Nehlen dive, going 90 yards in 14 plays, taking six minutes off the clock.
Then it came down to one play, supposedly “36 Dive”, which was a Nehlen favorite near the goal line with Jeff Hostetler handing off to fullback Ron Wolfley.
Nehlen, who really wasn’t one to experiment, called Hostetler over. He told him to run “36-dive” but instead of handing the ball to Wolfley to keep it on a bootleg.
“You won’t believe this, but we didn’t even have that play,” Nehlen once told WVU sports historian John Antonik. “On the goal line, back then, we were a full-house team with a quarterback, a fullback behind him, a left and right halfback.
“We had ’36-dive’ a hundred times and I knew Pitt knew it as well as we did,” Nehlen went on. “I told Jeff, ‘Keep the ball’ and he just walked into the end zone. They had 9,000 guys going to tackle Ronnie, and Jeff just executed it perfectly.”
HEADLINE: The Hostetler play, Act II, starring Will Grier
It was Nov. 3, five years ago, No. 13 WVU trailing No. 17 Texas, 41-34, and play calling would produce Dana Holgorsen’s greatest moment before 100,703 fans in Austin.
There were only 16 ticks on the clock when Holgorsen called Gary Jennings’ number deep down the middle, a perfectly executed, perfect call with Grier putting the ball on the money and hitting Jennings in stride at the back of the end zone with two defenders on him.
That made it 41-40 and Holgorsen opted to try to win the game right there rather than kick the extra point and go to overtime on the road against that team and that crowd.
He made another wonderful call, Grier throwing to David Sills V for the 2-point conversion … except someone from Texas had called time.
They had to do it again.
Once more Holgorsen had a decision to make and went for it again. He called a run-pass option and Grier, who a year earlier had been stopped diving for the goal line a yard short trying to bootleg it into the end zone in a loss to Texas. This time he made it.
“It’s an easy decision,” Holgorsen said. “If you put the fate of the game in (Grier’s) hands, I feel pretty good about it. We’ve had this 2-point conversion in our back pocket all year.”
Grier was totally alone as he crossed the goal line with the winning 2-point conversion, waving the ball above his head.
“I had four different options on that play,” Grier said. “I went with the fourth one, which was me running. I stayed on my feet, which was good. Whatever it takes to win.”
HEADLINE: Bobby Bowden’s first play
Bobby Bowden had just been named WVU offensive coordinator and the Mountaineers were playing at Duke in the 1966 opener.
You might expect, especially in that day and age, a conservative run off tackle to get things started, but that wasn’t Bowden’s modus operandi.
“He was a fool ’em coach,” head coach Jim Carlen once told Antonik. “He wanted to run trick plays all the time.”
This wasn’t exactly a trick play, but he did sneak wide receiver John Mallory into the game and opened his WVU play-calling career by calling a 55-yard bomb to the fleet receiver.
“Everyone in the stadium thought Garrett Ford was going to get the ball,” Mallory admitted.
With Bowden, it was whatever hit him, Antonik pointing out that sometimes he would come up with plays by drawing them in the dirt like kids in the back yard.
“And, it worked,” running back Bob Gresham once gushed.
HEADLINE: A rare win over Penn State
WVU owns only nine wins in 59 games against Penn State, a significant statistic since the Mountaineers open at Penn State, playing them for the first time in 31 years.
One of those victories came on a 22-touchdown run by Pat Randolph to help end an incredible 25-game winning streak by the Nittany Lions in the series in 1984. Randolph’s run gave WVU a 17-7 lead in a game it would win, 17-14.
The thing about it was, All-American offensive tackle Brian Jozwiak has said over the years, that Don Nehlen called the play the night before the game in the hotel ballroom after the players finished watching their team movie.
Nehlen had told them that the play he called ’58’ in which guard Scottie Barrows would pull and wipe out the safety, springing Randolph into the end zone.
“Nehlen’s brilliance,” Jozwiak once said, “was that everything he said or did was pre-calculated and pre-planned. It was never on a whim.”
Except, of course, five years earlier when he turned Hostetler loose on that keeper to beat Pitt.
