Bowling Green transfer Jarett Doege wins WVU quarterback job
After training-camp competition lasted longer than Neal Brown anticipated, West Virginia coach’s named junior Jarett Doege to be his starting quarterback for the opener Sept. 12 against Eastern Kentucky.
“We really feel like we have two quarterbacks on our roster that can win Big 12 games right now, which I think is a huge positive,” Brown said Thursday on his radio sow. “We hoped the competition was going to go through the spring and we would be able to name a starter a little earlier, but it didn’t work out that way.
“We went three weeks into camp, had two true scrimmages and one kind of partial scrimmage.”
The derby was a competition among transfers, Doege from Bowling Green and Austin Kendall from Oklahoma. Doege’s promotion is even more significant, given Kendall was WVU’s starting quarterback for most of the 2019 season.
Doege, however, started the final three games last year when he led West Virginia to late-season road victories at No. 24 Kansas State and TCU.
Overall, he completed 79 of 120 passes for 818 yards with seven touchdowns and three interceptions. He passed for a season-best 307 yards in a 20-13 home loss to No. 22 Oklahoma State.
Kendall, a fifth-year senior, started nine games before Doege seized the job. He completed 187 of 304 passes for 1,989 yards and 12 touchdowns with 10 interceptions. Kendall threw for a career-high 367 yards in a home loss to Texas and totaled 355 while losing to Texas Tech.
“Austin Kendall is much improved and this was a true battle right down to the last scrimmage,” Brown said.
Jerry DiPaola is a TribLive reporter covering Pitt athletics since 2011. A Pittsburgh native, he joined the Trib in 1993, first as a copy editor and page designer in the sports department and later as the Pittsburgh Steelers reporter from 1994-2004. He can be reached at jdipaola@triblive.com.
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