Earlier this week, when Virginia Tech head football coach Brent Pry pulled Grant Wells into his office to discuss who would be the Hokies’ starting quarterback in 2022, the Marshall transfer didn’t exactly know which way it was going to go.
Involved in an intense battle with South Carolina transfer Jason Brown throughout the majority of fall camp, Wells knew he was going to leave with either a feeling of despair, or a notion of elation.
Luckily for him, it was the latter.
“They told me [a decision was being made] about five minutes before they went into the office, so I didn’t really have much time to prepare,” Wells described when talking about leading up to the conversation.
“I really didn’t have any idea…but I’m excited and I’m happy how things played out.”
A two-year starter in his time with the Thundering Herd, the Charleston, West Virginia native certainly brings a wealth of experience to the quarterback room instantaneously. Something the Hokies had long been craving since immediately following the conclusion of the 2021 campaign.
“Experience is one of those things that you can’t really practice. We can be out here for 23 hours a day, but there’s nothing that’s going to compare to the first snap of a live game,” Wells explained.
“I have two years under my belt of Division I college football and that can only help me going into the season.”
No stranger to success, the 6-foot-1, 208-pounder completed 66.3% of his passes while throwing for an impressive 3,532 yards with 16 touchdowns a season ago. That’s not all.
Wells left Huntington having owned eight career 300-yard passing performances with 5,623 yards in the air, finding the end zone a whopping 34 times, too.
Now with having won the job, it should allow the redshirt junior to relax a bit as the season-opener at Old Dominion continues to loom on the horizon. Something that Wells himself has thought about on occasion.
“This whole camp I’ve really taken the mindset that I’m the guy. Whether that was before the official nod or not,” he disclosed. “Now I’ve changed that mentality [from] thinking I’m the guy to now knowing I’m the guy and really taken on a leadership role. I felt that I’ve done that really well these past couple of days, and that’ll continue to grow.”
Wells noted that both him and Brown were told of the decision at some point on Monday. But it still hasn’t sunk in that he’ll be the guy leading the Hokies out on the field throughout the 2022 season.
It even means more than the common folk may think. Wells’ father, David, graduated from Virginia Tech back in the day. So the feeling for the starting signal-caller to be handed the keys to the offense of his dad’s alma mater certainly has got to be something of itself.
“It’s wild,” Wells said about how the situation has unfolded. “I’ve only had two days to really think about that, but I’m sure that that’ll sink in at some point. I don’t really know how to put that into words.”
Wells told the media that he put his entire family in one massive group chat to deliver the news, sending a text that had to be extremely rewarding for a multitude of different reasons.
But now with the starting job locked up for 2022, Wells is ready to focus on the next steps Tech’s offense can take before the trip to Norfolk. A group that creates a considerable amount of excitement, yet poses a considerable amount of question marks.
“I felt comfortable coming out of the spring in this offense. We’ve worked a lot over the summer on just verbiage and signals and all that. That helped a lot in camp,” he said.
“In the spring it was a new offense. I don’t think anybody looks at it as a new offense anymore. This is our offense. And we’ve put a lot of hours out there working on these new verbiages and signals, I think everybody’s handled it really well.”
So another domino has fallen in terms of what Virginia Tech will look like in Brent Pry’s inaugural season at the helm. Potentially the one with the most eyes on it, too.
There’s still a lot of uncertainty surrounding the Hokies in 2022.
But now with the naming of Wells as Tech’s starter under center, a clearer picture begins to be painted as to what the maroon and orange may look like at one of the more crucial spots to be filled on the gridiron.
