After seeing no playing time through five games and being placed third on West Virginia’s depth chart, freshman quarterback Jeremy Johnson has decided to go another direction.
More specifically, a direction away from Morgantown.
In his weekly radio show, coach Bill Stewart said that lack of playing time and homesickness were factors in Johnson’s decision to leave the Mountaineers.
“There comes a point in life [when] the ‘I’ factor has to leave your thinking and I know its distance, but there is an ‘I’ factor there that you have to leave that thinking,” said Stewart. “There are a lot of young men for hundreds of years that have been overseas and would have liked to have a little bit of ‘I’ factor, but they didn’t use it, they stayed and did their job and they’re still doing that.”
Translation: Johnson was looking out for el numero uno. The Houston native was listed behind starter Geno Smith and fellow freshman Barry Brunetti from Memphis. Sophomore Coley White, younger brother of Pat White, will likely now be listed as the “emergency No. 3". White switched from quarterback to receiver this season to get more playing time.
“I was just hurt by the fact that he [Johnson] just couldn’t stay until December and try it - try a semester in Morgantown - but when you get discouraged when you’re 12 - 15 hundred miles away from home, you’re not playing, you’re not going to play.”
Stewart didn’t give details about what Johnson will do next. The freshman threatened to leave the program before the season started, saying on Facebook that he was transferring to Baylor, but then later retracted the statement.