AMHERST — The students who remember the last time Randall West played quarterback at UMass are dwindling.
It was Nov. 3, 2017 at Mississippi State when West jogged in as the backup quarterback for the final series of the game. He misconnected on both of his passing attempts and the Bulldogs ran out the clock after UMass punted.
At that moment, West was a single-sport athlete focused on beating out Ross Comis and Andrew Ford for playing time. A little less than two years later, West will lead the Minutemen onto the field at Rutgers Friday as the starting quarterback after a marathon that has shaped West into the man ready to answer the challenge.
“It’s probably one of the most unorthodox processes you’ll hear about to be honest,” West said.
West’s story of adversity begins as a senior at the Lawrenceville School, a boarding school in central New Jersey. In a late-season game in 2013, West suffered a catastrophic knee injury that was “extensive” enough that it was unclear if he would play sports again.
But the process of battling through that injury and the long rehabilitation process gave West some perspective that he said helped as he headed into the UMass quarterback competition this summer.
“Was I happy at the time that it happened? No,” West said before training camp began. “Looking back on it, was it a blessing? Yes. It doesn’t happen to a lot of people that you tear that many ligaments in your knee and get to keep playing sports, much less two sports, in college. When you have to deal with something like that and rehab all the time I had to rehab and come back, there’s just a certain mindset that goes into that, that you need to use to get through tough times. There wasn’t going to be any coach yelling at me or any situation that was going to break me.”
The crazy journey continued when Charley Molnar was fired in December 2013, a month after West’s injury. West didn’t enroll at UMass until after Mark Whipple’s first season in 2014 then took a redshirt year in 2015. He earned a role as the backup to Ford and appeared in two games that season.
But as West continued to get healthier and improve on the field, his positioning within the quarterback room started to slide. Comis recovered from a knee injury and became the backup behind Ford for the 2017 season. Michael Curtis’ emergence dropped West another slot as Curtis took the field as the third-string quarterback over West when both Comis and Ford went down with injuries in 2018.
Yet behind the scenes, it wasn’t obvious that West was any further from playing than he was when he first hit the field in 2016.
“As the situation unfolded and it looked like he was dipping in the depth chart a little bit, his confidence kept getting higher and higher,” said Ford, who graduated this past spring. “He’s one of those kids when I got in there, he was a young guy that was kind of figuring it out. Each spring and each fall camp, he was getting better and better and you could tell he understood that as well. I really respected the fact he didn’t let the depth chart determine his preparation or confidence in himself. He knew he was doing what was necessary to put the work in and he knew that if he kept working and putting the time in that he was, his time was going to come.”
The tide truly began to shift when West joined the basketball team as a walk-on in February 2018. The Minutemen were short-handed and needed extra bodies, so coach Matt McCall brought in some football players for tryouts. West earned his spot and took the opportunity and ran with it.
West averaged 13 minutes, 2.5 points and 3.8 rebounds per game in that first season, but his confidence grew as he fully tested his knee in the rigors of a basketball game. His father, Randall West Sr., echoed his son’s statements that West Jr.’s experience playing basketball was the best thing that happened to him at UMass.
The elder West said watching his son play well in the spring game after basketball season ended only reaffirmed the fact he felt like his son was finally back to where he was before the injury.
“At every step of the way, I’ve seen his confidence grow as he started the healing process,” West Sr. said. “The spring before last when he threw those four touchdown passes, at that point, I was like OK, I think he’s sort of back to where he wants to be. Then the basketball situation really gave him confidence. Basketball is an up-and-down and a lateral-movement sport, so he’s overmatched size-wise and he’s down on the block and he’s playing guys at the high post and his lateral movement was tested.”
The final hurdle was the grueling quarterback battle that persisted for most of training camp. West was being scrutinized daily by head coach Walt Bell and quarterbacks coach Angelo Mirando in order to earn the starting job. West wasn’t the favorite going into the summer, but Ford said the fact he won the job is just more proof that he was the right man for the position.
“It shows that he really went out and earned it,” Ford said. “There are three or four guys in that room that have the ability and work ethic to be the starter there. For Randall to be named the quarterback, that just means he proved it, he went out and earned it, it wasn’t handed to him.”
Once Bell informed the quarterbacks of the decision on Saturday, West phoned his parents to share the exciting news. He said it was important for him to share that moment with his parents after all the trials and tribulations they went through as a family over the past six years.
“My parents and I with my football career have been through a lot since senior year of high school when I got hurt,” West said. “It took a lot of time to come back from that, so the first calls I made were to my mother and father and it was really a special moment for all three of us.”
“It was sheer elation,” West Sr. said about that moment. “I know all these kids work hard, but I don’t know what they’ve been through. I know what Randall has gone through and the amount of energy and focus and effort.”
Now the pressure falls on West to perform in his home state against his father’s alma mater. West Sr. joked about the irony of the situation, but said he’s really excited to see his son play meaningful minutes for the Minutemen.
“The nerves will come, that’s for sure,” West Jr. said Tuesday. “Every game you’ll have nerves. Every basketball game I had nerves, every football game I played in high school I had nerves. It’s a bigger stage, but right now we’re focused on game plan, what Rutgers will do and how to combat that.”
Josh Walfish can be reached at jwalfish@gazettenet.com. Follow him on Twitter @JoshWalfishDHG. Get UMass coverage delivered in your Facebook news feed at www.facebook.com/GazetteUMassCoverage.