Howard-to-Gibson might become West Virginia’s next big-play connection

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — With the Fort Worth summer in full-broil, Skyler Howard kept rifling deep throws to Shelton Gibson.

Practicing on his old high school field, Howard claimed to be acclimated to the 117-degree heat index. Then again, he was only making the throws. Gibson was the receiver chasing them.

“It was hot, man. He had me out there running go (routes) all day long,” Gibson said. “I was like, ‘Skyler, I’m from Cleveland. I can’t do this.’”

When Gibson agreed to follow Howard home to Texas during the summer of 2014, neither was high on the play-making chain at West Virginia. The quarterback had sludged through a spring practice so brutal he was slotted for a redshirt season long before such decisions are typically decided. And Gibson was coming off a redshirt season of a different sort, having failed to gain NCAA eligibility as a true freshman.

On that scorching high school field, however, amid those hours of self-inflicted torture disguised as pitch-and-catch, the tandem began a transition.

Not that it was immediate.

Howard opened the regular season as a fourth-string scout-teamer. Gibson dropped a red-zone pass that might have swung the Alabama game. They commiserated with a third friend, Jacky Marcellus, the redshirt freshman whose season was lost to a knee injury.

“We were all kind of in a time of need,” Howard recalled. “But we came together as brothers and brought each other out of that situation.”

After the 2014 season—in which Howard ascended to the starting job, threw a 47-yard pass to Gibson in the Liberty Bowl, and Marcellus rehabbed his knee to good health—the three went back to Howard’s home in Fort Worth. There was more passing and catching and discussions of what 2015 might bring, but primarily Howard wanted to enjoy time with his closest teammates: “I didn’t say, ‘Hey, come down to Texas so we can get better at vertical routes.’”

Instead, Howard indoctrinated his guests to Billy Bob’s, a honky-tonk longer and wider than Mountaineer Field.

“There’s a picture somewhere of all of us wearing boots I got for them,” he said. “Little bit of a culture shock.”

The quarterback grinned wide at the memory of all that bull-riding and two-stepping, much like Gibson smiled big while recounting their first informal throwing session. The receiver with 4.3 speed, accustomed to quarterbacks under-throwing him in high school, warned Howard to let it loose.

And Howard, knowing Gibson’s reputation for being “the fastest guy in Ohio,” took the challenge.

“I was like, ‘You can’t overthrow me,’” Gibson said. “Then he overthrew me, and I said, ‘You won’t do it again.’”

The prevailing storyline Tuesday centered on the chemistry between Howard and Gibson. It’s the kind of preseason chatter that rings premature considering the duo has zero completions aside from the bowl-game bomb against Texas A&M. Yet that didn’t stop Gibson from invoking the similarities of previous West Virginia offenses that featured Geno Smith, Stedman Bailey and Tavon Austin.

“I think history repeats itself, at least I hope it does,” Gibson said. “I’m not trying to say that’s who we are, but Skyler plays quarterback like Geno, I play the X receiver just like Sted, and Jacky plays slot and running back like Tavon.

“I just can see it happening all over again.”

More cautious with his own forecast, Howard didn’t invoke comparisons to 4,000-yard passers or 100-catch receivers. He only said he trusts a Dana Holgorsen system that typically creates those kinds of numbers, said he trusts the teammates who reside in a far more positive brainframe than a year ago.

“We were there when we had nothing,” Howard said, “so we’ll be there when we have everything.”





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