MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — No player on West Virginia’s football team, and perhaps no coach either, watches as much game video as Skyler Howard.
So to the surprise of no one this week, the quarterback pored over the last two meetings against Kansas State. What might have been surprising, however, was what he noticed about himself.
Remember in 2014, Howard was heralded after a second-half, pinch-hit appearance brought on by Clint Trickett’s career-ending concussion. He entered with West Virginia trailing 20-3, threw two touchdowns that rallied the offense within a 26-20 final, and essentially proved himself to coach Dana Holgorsen.
“I can’t tell you how impressed I was with him,” Holgorsen said after that loss. “He gave us a chance to win. He was the reason why it was a six-point game.”
Howard’s passer rating of 166.2 remains among his best in a Big 12 game. Conversely, his rating dipped to 109.3 in last December’s 24-23 loss at K-State, when Howard completed only 19-of-42 passes and limped badly on a failed fourth-down keeper with 2:33 left.
Still, among the nuances of his performance, he saw growth in Manhattan.
“Yeah, I had a bad wheel, but it was night-and-day better as far as decision-making,” Howard said this week.
Skyler Howard’s recollection of his 2014 bullpen appearance vs. K-State:
“I was cold as in new to the game, but I was literally freezing cold. Then my blood and my adrenaline got going. … You always look for a moment like that, being a backup. You don’t look forward to a guy going down but to get your opportunity to show you can do it in a real-live situation. I was just a kid playing football.”
The Howard that K-State expects to face this Saturday appears increasingly efficient. From completing barely 50 percent of his passes in 2014 to 54 percent last year, he’s now at 68.5 percent, second-best in the league and No. 9 nationally.
Improved footwork and calmer pocket mechanics became his offseason obsession, and Howard described his performance during West Virginia’s 3-0 start as “not bad.”
If he can help snap the Mountaineers’ 0-4 mark against K-State in league play, he’ll do it against a defense that ranks first nationally overall (179 yards per game) and 10th in pass-efficiency defense. The Wildcats held Stanford 70 yards below its average in a 26-13 loss and combined to limit Florida Atlantic and Missouri State to 4-of-22 on third downs.
After the Stanford defeat, K-State defensive end Jordan Willis said “Everybody walked out of the room like, ‘OK, we have an opportunity if we correct these mistakes, to be good.’ So I feel like a lot of guys, especially that haven’t played before, gained a lot of confidence that we can do good things against a good team.”
Though there’s no Heisman contender to match Christian McCaffrey on West Virginia’s offense, its production is more diverse and explosive than Stanford’s. And the scheme affords Howard flexibility to evaluate defensive numbers at the line of scrimmage.
“They run certain plays that are difficult for the defense to defend, and the problem is, they make them look all the same,” Willis said. “There are certain run plays that will look the exact same, but they’re different, and you have different responsibilities, so you’ve got to be able to see which is which. Then they have a lot of plays that looks like run, but it’s pass. You’ve got to be good reading your keys.”