MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Will Grier is adamant that his sole focus is on the 2018 football season and not the Heisman Trophy campaign that West Virginia’s staff has launched for him.
“It’s important to not be distracted by things like that. It would be a great honor but we can’t let it take away from our focus,” the redshirt senior told media members during the Big 12 Conference’s annual media gathering in Frisco Texas earlier this month. “The main thing that I need to do is make other people around me better. I don’t need to do anything extraordinary. I need to manage the game and put us in a good position to win football games.”
Grier’s Heisman campaign, set up by the athletic department at West Virginia, is showcased at Grier7Heisman.com and features weekly videos showcasing the quarterback’s 2017 season and the qualities that the staff feels represents him. There are also recaps of his statistical outputs from last season, hand-picked articles that have circulated throughout the media and a full biography and look at his family.
The campaign was approved by Dana Holgorsen with the understanding that it wouldn’t take away from how Grier approached the game.
“I would never approve a campaign unless I felt like a player could handle it. That's my job as far as managing players,” Holgorsen said. “And Will is a very older, mature coach's kid. I've made this comment several times. He's ready for this, he’s prepared himself his whole life for us and you will see as you talk to him throughout the course of the day, I got no worries about him not understanding expectations and how to deal with expectations. He's a very mature kid. He can handle this. He's prepared.”
Grier’s name jumped into the national spotlight first while at Florida when he led the Gators to five straight wins as a starter before being hit with a year-long suspension for taking an over-the-counter supplement that was on the NCAA’s list of banned substances. After transferring and sitting out a season at West Virginia, Grier almost immediately supplanted himself among the nation’s best quarterbacks a season ago.
Before suffering a season-ending hand injury against Texas late last season, Grier’s name floated briefly around the Heisman conversation. He completed 250 of his 388 passes (64.4 percent) for 3,490 yards and 34 touchdowns in his first season as the Mountaineers signal caller.
Now, heading into the 2018 season, Grier’s name is floating among lists for national awards like the Heisman Trophy, where his odds sit at 12 to 1, according to Bovada. That’s fifth-best in the country and the best in the Big 12, which produced last year’s Heisman winner in quarterback Baker Mayfield.
But if he’s paying attention to all of that, Grier’s not saying so.
“I don’t know how much these campaigns influence the voters,” Grier said. “I’m not very familiar with how that works. It’s just not really a focus of mine.”
What he is focused on, he said, is simply getting better and getting those around him better. That, he said, starts with confidence. And to do that, Grier said he wants to build off last season’s chemistry.
“Last year we were pretty good, but we did a self-scout and realized how much we could improve on. That’s kind of what we’ve been focusing on this offseason — what can we get better on to take that next step?” Grier said. “I think when you do little things like that you build a culture of hard work and that helps you gain confidence. That’s kind of our deal — we want to be a confident team. We want to be a team that’s just focused on winning as much as we can.”
His teammate and top target, David Sills, agreed, and said the team has been focusing on building better relationships to make sure that confidence continues to grow.
“Last year we had a really good connection and started to build our connection off the field as well,” Sills said of Grier. “I think that's continued to grow over this offseason. Just little stuff like going to play golf and going out to dinner and stuff like that. That’s stuff that people probably don't think transfers to the field but it does in respect to having trust when the ball’s in the air or if it’s a 50-50 ball. He's going to throw it as opposed to throwing it away because that because he trusts I'm going to come down with it.”
Part of Grier’s Heisman campaign plays on the fact that he’s a father and a husband. It also plays up the fact that he’s managed to play for winning programs and that he’s been able to have success in them all the way up, including with his father as his high school coach.
Those aspects, Holgorsen said, were part of the he felt that his quarterback could handle such a campaign.
“From his personality and who he is as a person, he will be able to handle it just fine,” Holgorsen said, “and his dad trained him to do that when he was about two. That job was already done by the time I got him.”
If voters happen to search for Grier’s biggest supporters, though, it just might be his teammates.
“We’re all for it,” Sills said with a smile. “We see what he does day in and day out. We think he’s the best quarterback and player in the country. So now it’s just at a point where everyone else has to believe it.”