grier7heisman.com
by Jim Buzzerd
West Virginia University football fans hope number seven is their lucky number. That’s because returning quarterback Will Grier wears number seven on his jersey, and as one of the top retuning signal callers in the nation, the WVU Sports Information Department has launched a ‘Grier for Heisman’ campaign for the rapidly approaching 2018 football season.
The theme of the campaign is heavily tied to the numeral 7. The website was released Saturday which happened to be 07/07 at 7 a.m. The website’s overall theme is the ‘Will to Win’ and every seven days an attribute will be released on Sunday’s at 7 p.m. until seven such attributes have been released which will take fans to the season opener against Tennessee.
The ‘Will to Prepare’ is the first one available this coming Sunday followed by Will’s to love, compete, succeed, lead, give and culminating with the ‘Will to Finish’ on August 26. The accompanying videos will be four minutes in length. The website will also have other information about the quarterback such as old video highlights of him playing in high school, a section on Will and his wife, Jeanne, and their daughter, Eloise and other personal information.
Grier was on the cover of all four major preseason college football magazines this summer, including an on-campus photo shoot with teammate David Sills V that appeared in this year’s Athlon Sports College Football Preview. In addition to Grier and Sills, WVU also has position campaigns planned for receiver Gary Jennings, offensive lineman Yodny Cajuste, linebacker David Long and safety/linebacker Dravon Askew-Henry.
Now it’s time to pump the brakes a little. For Grier to win the Heisman a number of things have to fall into place. First he has to put up Heisman like numbers. He should be able to do that, but that may not be enough. The team will need to put some wins on the board. Heisman voters typically vote for players with good numbers, but who also are on teams that at least stay in contention for a league championship.
This is just pure couch potato speculation, but a 7-5 regular season could spell doom for Grier regardless of his stats. Eight wins probably hurts him a little, so for a real chance WVU likely needs nine or more wins. That means much improvement is needed on the defensive side of the ball. Last season the Mountaineers finished 106th out of 129 FBS teams.