MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Isaiah Esdale recalls coach Neal Brown asking the running backs and wide receivers to stay after practice earlier this season to throw the football around a little bit.
The head coach had something up his sleeve.
“One day, we were outside on the game field (Mountaineer Field), I messed up a couple throws, but then, at the end of practice, I threw it from the opposite 40, and hit the goalpost twice,” Esdale said. “Then the coaches were like, ‘Yeah, we’re gonna use him.’ ”
Esdale, who’s gotten into the rotation a lot more recently at wide receiver, got his opportunity last Saturday against Texas Tech to show off his arm. Following an injury timeout in the second quarter, Brown dug into his bag of tricks with West Virginia struggling in the red zone.
Quarterback Austin Kendall took the shotgun snap, stepped forward and fired the ball backward to his left to a waiting Esdale. Once Esdale caught it, he stepped back to throw, and launched it down the opposite sideline on the right side to a wide open Kennedy McKoy for a touchdown.
Not only did he have McKoy wide open down the sideline, tight end Jovani Haskins was also all by himself in the end zone. McKoy was Esdale’s first read, though, so he was the happy recipient.
“I didn’t see [Haskins], though — I was so locked in on getting that touchdown,” Esdale said. “I knew Kennedy would be open and I knew he’d catch it, so I threw it to him.”
Esdale, at 6-foot and 201 pounds, said he played a little bit of quarterback in high school, but most of his hidden throwing talent comes from his baseball days of playing shortstop and left field while growing up in Delaware. The biggest reason he didn’t play too much quarterback in high school is he was teammates with former WVU standout David Sills at Eastern Christian Academy in Elkton, Md.
Before Sills became an elite receiver in college, he was a highly-touted QB in high school, so Esdale made the most of his high school days as a receiver and defensive back. When he went on to play junior college at Eastern Arizona College, he was strictly a wide receiver.
After spending one season in Arizona, Esdale was a very late arrival to WVU, enrolling days before the season-opener in 2018. However, despite only being on campus a few weeks, he made his debut in the second game against Youngstown State, but was limited the remainder of the season and redshirted.
“It was hard at first, especially learning the plays and stuff,” Esdale said. “It was tough having to remember it all, going fast and all that. Whenever I had a chance to do something in practice, that’s how I had to show out, mainly in one-on-ones and stuff. That’s when I showed off what I could do. They liked me last year, but I got there too late.”
This year, with attrition at wideout, Esdale is getting more and more playing time as the year goes on. While he threw a touchdown before he caught one, he has seven catches — six in the last three games — for 89 yards.
“I’ve come a long way since spring and I’ve definitely came along,” Esdale said.
