He’s on the West Coast now, rooming with another former WVU player, but Ford Childress is finally throwing a football again, two years and two schools removed from that fateful start against Maryland in 2013.

Childress was an aggressively recruited prospect out of Houston, a 6-foot-5 player to whom WVU devoted a wealth of time and attention so that he might one day start and star for the team. That day arrived on Sept. 14, 2013. In his first start, he set WVU’s freshman passing record with 359 yards and had three touchdowns in a 41-7 victory against Georgia State.

The Geno Smith era ended long before at WVU, but the search for his replacement ended that day. After the recruiting cycle and a redshirt year, the time had come for Childress and the Mountaineers.

It lasted four more quarters and, in reality, it was more brief than that.

“I tore it on the first play,” Childress said Tuesday following a practice at Fresno State, the school he now calls home, his third team in as many years and the place where he shares an apartment with former WVU running back Dustin Garrison.

His 42nd pass with the Mountaineers was the first of 22 against Maryland, a short throw to running back Charles Sims that turned into an 11-yard gain. The pectoral muscle on his right side ripped on the throw, and it would be a long time before Childress was even close to the same again,

“It had been bothering me a little bit before that,” he said. “That first play, I threw the ball kind of side-armed because it was a quick screen outside, and I kind of felt this sharp pain. It felt weird, but, whatever. The next play, the pain wasn’t that bad, but it got progressively worse throughout the game.”

Childress was once the future, but his eventual replacement, Skyler Howard, currently leads the nation in pass efficiency rating, two years and two other quarterbacks removed from the day Dana Holgorsen looked like a man running out of time and options. Saturday’s game might serve as a bookend for Holgorsen and the Mountaineers, who are better now because of when they they looked broken long ago.

A year after the embarrassment, WVU went to College Park, Maryland, and again allowed 37 points and found a way to win with a field goal as time expired. This time, they’re 17-point favorites at home.

“It motivated us, and I think we improved a whole bunch going into the game a year later,” Holgorsen said. “We fixed a lot of those problems. There were snap issues. There were quarterback problems.

“Clint played really well against them last year. Offensively, we played really well against them last year. We played a lot faster. We played up-tempo. We took care of the ball. We made plays downfield. We ran the ball effectively. I think we are as good right now as we were back then.”