Will Grier - Almost Unfamous

Will Grier’s family is Instagram-famous, but the WVU QB is scrambling to duck the spotlight.

- Hallie Grossman

Will Grier sits in a bathtub and takes stock of his upended life. Everything in the summer of 2016—his new home, school and state—feels unfamiliar as he reboots his football career with West Virginia after an acrimonious split from Florida. He and his soon-to-be-wife, Jeanne, had rented a Morgan town town house sight unseen, loaded a U-Haul and Jeanne’s Maxima, and hightailed it north, then navigated the boon dock roads of the Appalachians to their new place. Will’s teammates would later joke he lived so far off the beaten path that he had made it all the way to Pennsylvania.

In truth, Will doesn’t mind the isolation. Thanks to his insta famous younger brothers, he has seen firsthand celebrity and its attendant madness.

Thanks to his own mistakes, he too has been scorched by stardom.

So there, in the tub, with phone in hand, he makes his isolation more complete.

“What were you doing in there?” Jeanne asks him.

“Look at this,” he says.

He pulls out his phone and shows her his Twitter account. Or at least what is left of the feed. Will has wiped it clean.

Two years later, the Griers live more squarely on the grid, just 10 minutes from Mountaineer Field. Wide receiver David Sills, Grier’s closest friend and one of his favorite 2017 targets, lives down the street. A couple of coaches do too.

But even as he lands on every Heisman short list for 2018, Will is still in a self-imposed social media exile. He’s a phantom. And that’s exactly how he wants it.

On a stiflingly muggy late-June evening in Morgan town, Grier, 23, is content to park his 6-foot-2, 212-pound frame on his couch, a polka-dot blanket draped over his torso and a toddler trapped between his knees. “She’s a mess,” he says with a laugh, then frees Eloise, his 19-month-old daughter.