Why did Grant Wells transfer to Virginia Tech? Inside his path to the Hokies -

BLACKSBURG, Va. — Grant Wells needed to unwind after a tiring season. The West Virginia native hunts and fishes, and a hunting camp his grandfather owns near the Greenbrier River in Pocahontas County, on the eastern side of the state, is perfect for some solitude.

So after Marshall’s New Orleans Bowl loss to Louisiana last December, Wells set out for the camp, ahead of his father, David, who’d meet him there in due time. When David arrived, Grant greeted him after a day in the woods with an oddly specific line.

“I’m standing there, he goes, ‘You know, two Virginia Tech quarterbacks left,’” David said. “And I go, ‘Oh, really? That’s interesting.’”

They chatted some more before Grant got to the heart of what he was thinking.

“I just don’t know if I want to stay in Huntington again,” he told his dad.

The news knocked David across the face. Grant had been a two-year starter at Marshall, an hour down the road from his Charleston home, had thrown for 5,623 yards and 34 touchdowns and was in a pretty good spot despite some inconsistency.

David has always been Grant’s biggest backer and confidant, so they talked it out. Yes, it was a good situation at Marshall, where he had no ill will, but Grant thought he could achieve a little more.

“I think he just in his heart, I just really believed that he had more to give, and I think he wanted to prove himself more from where he was,” David said. “And I think he knew that he could play at a bigger level. And he thought, you know what? I want to try.

“And I said, you can only fail. I mean, big deal. If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out. It’s one of those things where you’re going to regret not trying if you just don’t try.”

When they left the camp, Grant still hadn’t said what he was going to do. David didn’t press him. This was Grant’s decision to make. A few weeks later and only days after he entered the transfer portal, he was a Hokie, setting a course for Virginia Tech’s 2022 season, which begins Friday night at Old Dominion.

“When the planets line up,” David said, “they line up.”

Grant Wells will make his Hokies debut Friday at Old Dominion. (Courtesy of Virginia Tech Athletics)

A natural thrower

Practice and perseverance are great when it comes to throwing a ball, but it also helps to have a little natural ability. And the Wells family found out early that Grant had it. He’s a natural thrower who could chuck a football 20 yards when he was 3 or 4 years old.

His older brother, Andrew, was a big soccer player, going to travel tournaments all the time. Grant tagged along, shocking other parents with how he played catch on the sidelines.

“Parents are going, ‘Oh my god, how does that kid throw like that?’’ David said. “I’m like, ‘I don’t know.’”

“It just always seemed natural,” Grant said.

Being a quarterback was a given, then, and David, who liked to be involved with his kids’ activities, became a de facto coach for Grant.

David knew a little bit about football, having played it, so he knew being a quarterback wasn’t about how far you could throw it. Instead, he focused on footwork and accuracy with Grant, having him practice three-, five- and seven-step drops and rollouts in the yard, being sure to get him to throw to a tiny target to gain accuracy.

Grant had the aptitude for it from a young age, too, which led them to hatch an ingenious strategy for games when Grant was around 8 years old. At that level, one coach could be on the field, standing behind the play, but he couldn’t say anything.

So they came up with a system, with several plays typed up on a wristband that Grant wore. David would see the defense and quietly signal a number with his hands to Grant, who’d look up the play on his wrist and run it.

“And he’d look down on his wristband and he’d go BLUE 48 or RED 32 and he’d yell it out and we’d run the play,” David said. “And I’m not lying to you, it was like taking candy from a baby.”

Grant loved every minute of it, even sleeping with the wristbands on.

“That was what all the big guys were wearing at the time, and for me to actually have one was pretty cool,” he said.

As Grant got older and football became a little more complex, they still didn’t change their coaching setup much. They’d go to camps, and David sought out a few outside tutors to help his son, though there aren’t quarterback coaches in abundance in the heart of West Virginia. As time went on, David’s advice turned more to the mental side of the game and things like being a leader.

“He’s been my biggest critic sometimes, but he’s also my biggest cheerleader,” Grant said. “And even to this day, I’m sure I’ll get a big, long text before the game about how proud of me he is. But then when he needs to tell me I’m doing something wrong, he won’t be shy to do that. And I wouldn’t stop him. I want him to do that.”

A taste of Blacksburg

If things had played out a little differently, Wells might have been a Virginia Tech quarterback earlier. With his high school career taking off at George Washington in Charleston, he began to garner college interest and visited Blacksburg a couple of times.

Virginia Tech always held a special place in David’s heart. He’s a ’91 graduate of the school, though few people know he actually tried to walk on with the Hokies in 1987, Frank Beamer’s first year. He was a slot back with good speed in high school in West Virginia and caught the Hokies coaches’ eyes when they were recruiting a teammate of his who ended up going to Tennessee.

David had already been accepted at Tech, so he thought he’d give walking on a shot. Three weeks after arriving, though, doctors discovered he had a heart murmur, so he gave up football, joined a fraternity and enjoyed a more traditional college experience instead.

“I could tell back in the recruiting process he always wanted to come back here,” Grant said. “He always seemed in a better mood down here.”

In a seven-on-seven camp, Grant tore it up, prompting then-Hokies head coach Justin Fuente to ask him and his dad to make an office visit, where Fuente compared Grant to one of his former pupils, Andy Dalton. Grant and his dad thought an offer might come, but it didn’t. A few months later, early in 2017, they came back for a junior day and were again invited to visit Fuente’s office.

“I said, ‘Oh, he’s getting an offer now,’” David said. “You don’t go into a coach’s office twice. This is it. Nope. Nothing. Then it just kind of dissipated. I’m like, what the heck happened? Like, I don’t get it.”

Around that time, Virginia Tech had a glut of quarterbacks, with Josh Jackson, recent transfer Ryan Willis, recent signee Hendon Hooker and soon-to-commit Quincy Patterson. A 2019 quarterback recruit wasn’t a high priority given the backlog at the position.

Sensing interest was waning, Grant moved on pretty quickly, committing to his home-state school Marshall in October 2017 during his junior season. He and his dad were in the crowd at Lane Stadium for the game Virginia Tech and Marshall tacked on to the end of the 2018 season as a makeup following the East Carolina cancellation, scouting out his future Thundering Herd teammates.

A few years later, he’d be back in Blacksburg as a Hokie.

“It’s weird how things work out,” David said.

Marshall had a 14-9 record in Grant Wells’ two seasons as starting QB. (Ben Queen / USA Today)

The starter, then captain

Wells had pretty good numbers during his two years as a starter at Marshall, first for head coach Doc Holliday, who recruited him, then for Holliday’s successor, Charles Huff. He went 14-9 in 2020 and ’21 and, despite a high interception total, possessed a big arm and some throwing chops that were sure to garner interest in the transfer portal.

Virginia Tech was in on him early. Defensive line coach J.C. Price, a holdover from Fuente’s staff who stayed under Brent Pry, coached at Marshall for Wells’ first two years. He reached out on the Hokies’ behalf. Things progressed quickly, and Wells committed at the same time Jan. 6 as South Carolina transfer Jason Brown, setting the stage for the offseason’s quarterback battle.

Quarterbacks coach Brad Glenn thought he stole one when he landed Wells, whom he scouted on film.

“There were a couple games like versus App — I know what kind of competition Appalachian State is — and he’s making these types of throws against that type of competition that it kind of told me that, hey, he can do it at this level,” Glenn said. “But there were certain games you go back and you remember plays or throws or him moving in the pocket and avoiding the rush and gaining yards with his legs that kind of stood out.

“And then sometimes you just know. Sometimes I can’t just put my finger on what it is, and I just watch them and I know, hey, that guy has it. That guy just fits my eyes with what I’m looking for in a quarterback. And he had it.”

Wells established himself as the front-runner after a big spring game in which he went 11-for-21 for 178 yards and two long touchdowns to Kaleb Smith. He maintained that lead on Brown all summer and into August and was officially named the starter Aug. 17.

Glenn touted Wells as perhaps the most accurate quarterback he’s coached (those early lessons from David paid off), calling him the total package. Pry was likewise complimentary, with Wells’ experience a comfort to the staff and his arm a challenge to defend.

“I’m just so impressed with the ball he throws,” Pry said. “It makes it tough on the defense.”

Wells texted his family the good news, which was met with just the reaction you’d expect. A couple of days later, though, when Virginia Tech named its captains, his parents were floored.

Among the seven captains voted on by the players and coaches was Wells. While top vote-getters like Dax Hollifield, Chamarri Conner, Kaleb Smith, Silas Dzansi and Norell Pollard had all been here at least four years and some as many as six, Wells got the honor after just eight months.

“I started crying,” David said. “Because kids vote on it. To me, that shows his respect from the team. What an honor. To me, that was even a bigger honor than him starting.”

A really good spot

When Pry talks about a comfort with Wells as the starter, some of that is based on his maturity. He’s 22 years old but feels like a grown-up, as he’s engaged to be married in May to his high school sweetheart, Josie Bare, who recently graduated from Marshall and moved with Grant to Blacksburg.

He’s a polished speaker in interviews, smartly not one to raise much controversy in his somewhat buttoned-up answers, and has a general calm on the field, his goal not to get too high or too low.

Don’t let that outward demeanor fool you about his competitiveness, though. He wants to win. At everything, be it football, golf, hunting, fishing — whatever.

“He’s a silent competitor that just sits there and just broods,” David said. “He hates to lose. When he knows he’s right or he’s competitive, he’ll get fired up.”

Pry got a taste of it this August. Grant is mostly composed during competitive periods between the offense and defense at practice, usually accepting of the occasionally subjective outcome the coaches might declare. But one judgment for the other side got under Grant’s skin, and he let Pry know about it.

“All of a sudden, I’m like, ‘Who’s yelling at me like that?’ Pry said. “It’s Grant. Going, ‘Ahhhhh!’ with a competitive period. He didn’t like what I had to say. So he let me have it.”

Needless to say, the competitive spirit delighted the coach, who was happy to have his usually reserved quarterback get fired up about a result. Typically, though, the Wellses, David and Grant at least, are selective when they show their emotion. That doesn’t mean they don’t telegraph their feelings.

Grant’s parents came down for picture day two weeks ago, with families invited to attend the team’s scrimmage in Lane Stadium that afternoon. David and his wife, Tammy, who have been to almost all of Grant’s college games, even in a far-flung league like Conference USA, made the short trip down to watch, staying overnight in Grant’s spare bedroom.

Grant’s an early riser, as is his father, so the two shared another quiet moment the morning after the scrimmage, just like they did in the hunting camp last December when Grant first broached the topic of transferring.

In a nice father-son moment, David told him what he could tell from the scrimmage: Grant looked happy.

“You know your kid, and he’s on top of the world,” David said. “And he wasn’t like that at Marshall. I don’t know what it was, but he’s just talking and he’s smiling and he’s got a different step in him, and he’s throwing the ball, his body has changed, he’s playing with confidence.

“We always talked about that when he was younger about confidence, confidence, confidence. If you play with confidence, you can’t be beat. And he just looked that way. And I told him that on that morning, and he just smiled and goes, ‘Yeah, I really feel good.’ So I think he’s in a really good spot right now.”

(Top photo: Courtesy of Virginia Tech Athletics)

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