West Virginia Beat Texas Thanks To The Late Heroics Of Will Grier

Man, there is nothing like good college football, eh? The latest example of this came on Saturday afternoon, when the 13th-ranked West Virginia Mountaineers walked into Austin to take on the 17th-ranked Texas Longhorns. It was a wild, back-and-forth, delightfully Big 12 football game, and thanks to the heroics of their star quarterback, West Virginia walked out of Darrell K Royal–Texas Memorial Stadium with a thrilling 42-41 win.

With 9:38 left, Texas kicked a field goal to go ahead 34-27. Then, in very college football fashion, West Virginia tied things up with an 11-play drive that took less than four minutes. The Mountaineers put the ball in the gut of running back Martell Pettaway, who scampered 13 yards to tie things up.

The ball got put back into the hands of Longhorn signal caller Sam Ehlinger, who has been a bad, bad man in crunch time this season. This time around, he connected with Devin Duvernay for a 48-yard score to put Texas back ahead.

https://twitter.com/ftbeard_17/status/1058861415648247808

The issue here is that West Virginia has Will Grier, who might be the best passer in the sport. Grier marched the Mountaineers 75 yards down the field in 2:18, throwing the definition of a dime to Gary Jennings Jr. to pull things within one. Gus Johnson responded by making a bunch of Gus Johnson noises. It was extremely good.

Conventional wisdom would say to kick the PAT and take it to overtime, but Mountaineer coach Dana Holgorsen is a different breed of cat. Here, look:

Holgorsen decided to go for two, but it took him a while to run a play. That’s because Texas called two timeouts to either get a look at what West Virginia wanted to do or try and ice the offense.

This ultimately did not work, as Grier — who is known for his arm and not his legs — scampered in for two.

Texas got the ball back but wasn’t able to pull a rabbit out of its hat. Still, fans were treated to quite the quarterback duel, as Grier went 28-for-42 for 346 yards and three touchdowns, while Ehlinger went 25-for-36 with 354 yards and a trio of scores.