MORGANTOWN — The last time quarterback Jarret Doege saw the field for WVU was probably the low point of his entire collegiate career.
In the Liberty Bowl last December against Army, Doege took an inexplicable sack, fumbled, and gave the ball to the Black Knights deep in Mountaineer territory. He also threw a critical interception earlier in the game, so after halftime, head coach Neal Brown decided to go with Austin Kendall to finish out the game, and Kendall helped lead the Mountaineers to a win.
Doege had started all season in 2020, as well as the final three games of the 2019 campaign, so he wasn’t surprised by the reaction he received after the game.
“I guess you could say [the fans] weren’t too kind on social media,” Doege said. “But that’s the way it is. It’s every game. You get on your phone and you have someone saying something about you. It’s part of playing quarterback.”
Kendall transferred to Louisiana Tech in the off-season, and it appeared Doege was still the clear favorite to start at QB in 2021 — the bowl game was just a change that needed to be made to win the game.
Even quarterbacks coach Sean Reagan took Doege’s feelings into consideration, giving him time to process what happened.
“I called him probably 24-48 hours after the bowl game and said, ‘I love you, man. You had a bad game. Sometimes that happens but you can’t dwell on the negatives that happened in the bowl game. You have to use it. You have to grow from it and you have to become a better player,’ ” Reagan said.
Reagan even gave Doege time during January, but when the two finally met one-on-one, Reagan said Doege was in a good mindset and was ready to get back to work.
Instead of moping and perhaps conceding to youngsters Garrett Greene or Will Crowder, Doege took his benching as a chance to get better.
“That hurt him,” offensive coordinator Gerad Parker said. “He understood and embraced the pain. Who would not? We talked through it and let him grow. For a guy who likes to stand in front of a team and an offense and say here’s what I’m going to do to fix this, and be brave and courageous and just get lost in the work and not worry about the negativity of that game, says a lot.”
While his coaches were giving him space, Doege leaned on family, specifically his older brother, Seth, who played quarterback at Texas Tech and is now an offensive analyst at USC.
“Me and my brother had a little talk,” Doege said. “He gave me two days to think about what happened, then it was ‘let’s go to work.’ It helps a lot having a brother who was a player and a coach at a high level, mostly that he was a player because he’s been through everything. There’s a lot of advice he could give me. He’s actually been benched before. He played at Saskatchewan with the Rough Riders and actually got benched, so he got to tell me what that was like and what I should do from there.”
A little family chat helped Doege refocus, and since that faithful sack that prematurely ended his 2020 season, he has worked to get better with his pocket presence and ability to move under pressure. He has also revamped his body, drawing praise from head coach Neal Brown as one of the most improved players, physically, on the team.
“I wanted to come back and get to work — work harder than I ever had,” Doege said. “I thought I worked hard last year, but this year, I put in a whole new perspective in how much I needed to do to get where I wanted to be. I focused on pocket movement and the deep ball, along with all I’d done before.”
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