This is severe, and in the today-matters-more-than-tomorrow world of college coaching, it might not even matter. But what WVU did by playing William Crest Saturday night is value the 2015 season greater than the 2018 season. There will be no William Crest in 2018 — presuming, of course, he doesn’t redshirt later in his career, which seems unlikely — and that means we ought to see an appreciable amount of Crest in 2015.

Or as one wordsmith put it, “…Dana Holgorsen lit fire to William Crest’s redshirt and poked the embers of intrigue when it comes to the quarterback position.”

Did Dana burn a redshirt? Did he add a spark to the offense? I trend toward the latter — and I’ve been going that way a while — because I have to think there’s a plan. It’s not like WVU presumes it will hand its freshman a mop at the end of a bunch of games the rest of the way. Something is afoot and about to be unleashed. Or not.

This is not necessarily a problem because, for all we know, Trickett gravitates toward the norm or gets hurt or makes room for Crest’s unstoppable surge, should that come. If this is a problem, it’s mostly a good problem, especially relative to what the Mountaineers were made to deal with last season. 

But let’s address two intersecting realities:

1) Trickett is in command. He’d dealing. He’s managing. He’s strutting. He’s succeeding.
2) Crest is here. He’s real. And he has to play now, doesn’t he?

So let’s not fix our gaze upon what happened Saturday. Let’s consider this: What happens now?

“What we feel comfortable with him doing out there is not the whole deal yet,” Dawson said. “The kid is talented. There’s multiple reasons he played tonight. We thought we need to play him and we thought he was ready.”

But how does Holgorsen juggle Trickett and Crest during the final 10 weeks of the regular season? Does Trickett carry the load between the 20s and Crest handle the offense in the red zone? Does Crest get a planned workload — like every fourth series — or will the flow of the game dictate his usage?

“There’s going to be a lot of coaching points with him, but the sheer physical nature of the game is obvious,” Dawson said. “The whole run-game stuff he brings to the table, the perimeter stuff. His ability to throw the ball is really, really good. We’re at infant stages right now. He’s an extremely talented kid and he needs to continue to fine-tune his skills, but he’s talented. He’s a very talented kid.”