MORGANTOWN, W.Va. —
The 1988 WVU football team forever ingrained itself as one of, if not the best squads the program has ever seen, and for good reason.
The Mountaineers finished the regular season at 11-0, the first unbeaten and untied season in school history, before losing to Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl for the national championship. The team was filled with star power, including quarterback Major Harris, who was a Heisman finalist that season as he dazzled as a multi-dimensional threat rarely seen in those days.
Others were running backs A.B. Brown, Undra Johnson and Craig Taylor, who all eventually got shots in the NFL. Receivers included Reggie Rembert, Calvin Phillips and Grantis Bell.
While the more notable players were on the offensive side, the defense had its fair share of studs, including Renaldo Turnbull, Chris Haering, Alvoid Mays, Jim Gray and Bo Orlando.
And then there was Willie Edwards, a local product — though not for long — who had established himself over four years as a steady corner on the outside. Edwards and his family moved to Morgantown from Greensboro, N.C., in the middle of his junior year of high school, and as a senior, he helped the Mohigans win their first state championship in school history in 1983.
After deciding he wanted to stay close to his new home and play at WVU, Edwards made big plays early for the Mountaineers, including a interception to preserve a 10-10 tie with Pitt in 1985.
His role continued to expand as he got older, culminating in about as good a senior season — individually and as a team — one could hope for. Edwards opened the 1988 campaign being in the right place as the right time as Darrell Whitmore blocked a Bowling Green punt in the end zone as Edwards fell on top of it for a touchdown — the first score of Edwards’ career.
However, he ended the regular season with another touchdown — one that is immortalized as one of the greatest moments in the 129-year history of WVU football.
The pick-6
The stage was set.
The No. 4 Mountaineers had one more game standing between them and a date with No. 1 Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl — a home contest against No. 14 Syracuse.
A night game at Mountaineer Field in front of 65,127 fans was the perfect stage to play your final collegiate home game, and for Edwards, he used it for his own greatest moment.
Midway through the third quarter, WVU held onto a slim 14-3 lead as the Orange were marching to try and get within one score. On 2nd and 13 from the Syracuse 46-yard line, quarterback Todd Philcox thought he had fullback Daryl Johnston open on a route to the flat until Edwards quickly — almost too — quickly shut that window.
“We were playing Cover 2 and I was the squat corner, so I jammed the No. 1 receiver to bottle him in toward the safety, so I was working back out,” he said. “They tried to run a hot route on us — the receiver ran a post-corner and then pulled up in front of me. What they do a lot of the time is work the fullback in to bait the corner and throw to the receiver, but what I saw on film was that they go to the fullback.”
What he lacked in athletic ability, Edwards believes he made up for with being a film junkie. This exact play showed up a lot throughout the Orange’s previous 10 games.
“When I saw the play start, I knew what was going to happen,” Edwards said. “I almost jumped it too quick and ran past it. I bobbled it a little bit but got control of it and ran 51 yards down the field for a touchdown.”
Edwards sprinted down the right sideline toward the corner of the north end zone and after he scored, went down to one knee, said a short prayer and gave a small fist pump before he was mobbed by teammates as the fans went nuts.
Following his touchdown earlier in the season on the blocked punt recovery, Edwards did a little dance in celebration, but to the chagrin of his father.
“My dad told me that was a little pretentious and I shouldn’t be doing stuff like that,” Edwards said with a laugh.
Shockingly, in the heat of the game and the moment against Syracuse, Edwards consciously thought about what he was going to do once he scored after making the pick, and decided say a prayer. His mother and uncle were ministers, and Edwards knew that was something he had to do.
“I was just going to thank God and then get off the field,” he said.
The play was also a relief, because Edwards’ secondary teammates — all in good fun — had given him a hard time about not getting a pick-6. Orlando returned an interception 56 yards for a score against Maryland and Whitmore did the same 34 yards against Rutgers.
“They always gave me a hard time for that and I was thinking, ‘Man, this is gonna suck if I don’t get one of these before it’s all over with,’ ” Edwards said.
Edwards may have celebrated a little too hard, forgetting he was on the kickoff coverage unit for the next play and received a tongue-lashing by his special teams coach.
“That brought me back down to Earth real quick.”
Edwards’ touchdown was a gigantic exhale after a close first half as the stadium was rocking until the final whistle. He recalls sitting in the locker room and still being able to hear the fans with no one leaving. The Mountaineers went out for a victory lap.
“That was a special moment for me,” Edwards said.
After football
Edwards ended his college career with 113 tackles and seven interceptions. He did pursue a career in professional football after his playing days at WVU, trying out with the Pittsburgh Steelers as a free agent. He then had a tryout with the Canadian Football League but decided it was time to hang up the cleats soon after.
Instead, Edwards used his degree in industrial psychology and worked in Morgantown briefly before a move to Pennsylvania and South Carolina. He and his family returned to Morgantown in 1995.
It took Edwards a while, though, to get back into football after his playing days came to an end.
“After I graduated, I didn’t want anything to do with football,” he said. “I didn’t even go to [Mountaineer Field] to watch a game. It was too hard not being a part of it or being on the field.”
It wasn’t until Edwards was asked by Doc Fogarty to work with his son Seth, a star receiver at MHS, that Edwards did anything with football. Prior to the 2001 season, Edwards was asked to go to a Mohigans football practice and coach Glen McNew asked Edwards to come down and offer some advice.
McNew asked, “If a receiver does this, what do you think a defensive back should do?’ I gave him my suggestion, and he said, ‘Yeah I like that, that’s a good idea.’ I came back the next day, and then a couple days after that, he asked if I could just coach the defensive backs because he didn’t really have anyone else to do it, and I said sure.”
That was the start of a long assistant coach stint from 2001-2016, where Edwards was a part of three state titles in 2002, 2004 and 2005. He took a year off in 2017 before returning in 2018, and then another year off in 2019.
However, if time permits, Edwards hopes to coach with new head man Sean Biser this season.
In all, Edwards has been a part of four of MHS’s five state titles as a player and coach.
“Now that I think about it, that’s not too shabby.”
He was inducted into the MHS Athletics Hall of Fame in 2008.
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