For those who think we are headed in the right direction, please tell me the last time we got embarrassed like we did against Oklahoma? They could have scored 100 points if they wanted to. They scored a TD on their first seven possessions. They only stopped scoring when they took out their starters. That has never happened in the history of WVU football! Not even Testaverde's loaded with NFL'ers Miami team beat us like that.
When Luck fired Stewart, he said he made the change because it was obvious we were not going to win a national championship with him. Luck set the standard. You can't move the goalposts now and say, "Well, a 10-2 season every now and then is the best we can do." No, the standard has been set. "Can we win a national championship with this guy?"
I loved Bill Stewart, but if the standard is, "Can we win a NC with this guy?" then I agreed with Luck's assessment. Stewart had to go. We only gave him three years of 9 wins to figure it out. Bill Stewart could have won an average a 7 games a year in the Big 12. No doubt in my mind about that. But that wasn't the standard. Can this coach lead us to a NC? Well, after 7 years of being able to recruit his own staff, his own players, his own everything, and a Oklahoma team that lost to Iowa State has to mercifully pull its starters in the 3rd quarter, well, we are certainly not headed in the right direction.
Let me ask it this way: If Will Grier doesn't fall into our laps, does this team come back and beat Texas Tech? What happens in that Kansas State game that we barely held on to win? Do we defeat a vastly improved Iowa State squad? No way. We all know it. This program is a lucky transfer away from being 4-8 for the second time in 4 years. If Grier doesn't come back next year, we are toast.
I'm not saying the sky is falling. It HAS ALREADY fallen and Will Grier just gave us a year of fool's gold to prolong the agony. Is Grier good enough to lead us to another fool's gold 7-5/8-4 next year? I think so. He's THAT good of a college QB. But there will be no touchdown Jesus to save us come 2019. Dana will leave after next year ... he'll take some job ... any job ... and get out before someone says the emperor has no clothes. The man is not a leader. We've got some good assistants and some good recruiters, just like Bill Stewart had.
Sadly, after Dana jumps ship, some will say, "see how lucky we were to have Dana," when in reality he's the one whose void of leadership fiddled while the programmed burned. I just hope we don't end up like Nebraska and be so far down it's hard to come back from it. After Saturday, I think we are there.