West Virginia’s Garrett Greene runs a drill during the Big 12 Conference’s NFL pro day in Frisco, Texas. (AP Photo)

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — We all are dreamers.

It is part of the human spirit, the spot where the fire within us burns hottest.

The dream may be to be a ball player or a movie star, an astronaut or a nurse. We dream of riches, be they monetary or spiritual.

Garrett Greene has always dreamed.

His was an athletic family and his dream manifested itself in that. It brought him through his childhood years in Tallahassee, Fla., and led him to West Virginia University, where he beat the odds and became a starting quarterback in a major college program.

He heard the cheers that come with achieving such goals, throwing game-winning touchdown passes, making thrilling runs.

He gave of himself to reach those goals and the cheers will stay with him the rest of his life.

You pay a price for those cheers, though. You pay a physical price, for he was undersized as a quarterback, more runner than thrower, and for each hit there is an ache or a bruise, acceptable badges of courage to live out his dream.

He heard, of course, boos, too. Not every pass is complete. Not every run is a touchdown. Not every game is a win.

In November of last year, that college dream ended, but he wasn’t ready to give up on a bigger dream, that of becoming an NFL player. He knew the standards of playing quarterback in the NFL did not include standing at 5-foot-10. They demanded you throw better than he could throw.

So, when his days at WVU ended, he recalculated his dream, took stock of his assets and headed off on a journey aimed at making it in the NFL. His career-ending Tweet told of the fork in his road to the future he would be taking.

“Playing quarterback at West Virginia was an incredible honor that I will cherish for the rest of my life. I would like to thank Coach Brown, all of the staff members I worked with, and my teammates who made my five years in Morgantown so memorable. Having sung Country Roads for the last time as a Mountaineer, I would like to announce my entry into the 2025 NFL Draft as a wide receiver. I look forward to this next chapter of my career and the opportunity to continue to play the game I love at the highest level.”

He drove himself hard and while he was passed over in the draft, he recently signed a free agent deal with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who will give him the opportunity to chase his dreams over this spring and summer.

He understands he’s a longshot. He realizes that the 5,370 passing yards and 36 TD passes he threw do nothing to equate to his new dream and that the fact that he caught four passes for 32 yards on trick plays hardly has scouts drooling.

But history tells us it can be done, this move from high school or college quarterback to NFL receiver and no one will give more of himself to make it come true.

Perhaps the two greatest dual threat quarterbacks in WVU history were looked past as quarterbacks by the NFL — Major Harris and Patrick White.

Harris was Lamar Jackson before his time. He nearly won a national championship at WVU but when he left for the NFL he wasn’t drafted until the 11th round with Oakland taking him as a defensive back. It was the wrong player, wrong time, nearly 40 years ago, and he never played a play in the NFL.

White’s skills were obvious but NFL scouts didn’t see him as a full-time quarterback. Bill Parcells in Miami used the 44th overall selection in the second round of the 2009 draft on White with the idea of using him as a “wildcat” quarterback to take advantage of his running skills.

But concussions cut short White’s efforts to establish himself.

It has happened successfully before in the NFL, though. The league offers up any number of examples of such occurrences.

The prime example is of an eerily similar type of player in Julian Edelman, although probably not as physically gifted as Greene. Both are 5-10 and both have speed, Greene having run 4.50 at the Big 12 Pro Day and the veteran Edelman having had a 4.52 listed as his 40 time.

Edelman was a high school quarterback out of Woodside, California, and had no scholarship offers. He decided to play at the College of San Mateo and broke a lot of records as a run-first quarterback, moving to Kent State on scholarship where he started for three years in an offense that was built completely upon his skills at QB.

New England drafted him in the seventh round of the 2009 draft with the 232nd overall pick, but he had them all fooled. His career lasted 12 seasons in which he won three Super Bowls, claiming Super Bowl MVP honors in Super Bowl LIII while ringing up two seasons of 100 or more receptions, also having years of 98 and 92 receptions, and had three 1,000-yard-receiving years, including leading the league in yards in 2019.

There are other numerous examples, many pointing toward the former Steelers’ great Hines Ward. Now Ward was a high school quarterback in Clayton County, Georgia, before heading to the state university where he was primarily a receiver.

However, in the 1995 Peach Bowl, with starting quarterback Mike Bobo out, the Bulldogs used Ward at quarterback and he pulled off a Tavon Austin (who went to running back against Oklahoma and set a school record for rushing). Ward recorded 459 total yards at quarterback against Virginia on that day.

A third-round pick of the Steelers in 1998, Ward won two Super Bowls in a 14-year career and had one of the greatest catches in Super Bowl history.

The Steelers also had success at wide receiver with Antwaan Randle-El, another undersized player who starred for four seasons as Indiana’s quarterback, running and throwing for 86 career touchdowns and finishing sixth in the Heisman Trophy voting.

Like Ward, who was known for his Super Bowl catch, Randle-El took the ball on a wide receiver reverse that was actually a trick play in Super Bowl XL, throwing a 43-yard strike to — yeah, you got it, Hines Ward. The play broke the game open and gave the Steelers their fifth Super Bowl.

It also is the only time in Super Bowl history that a wide receiver has thrown a touchdown pass.

You might recall the name Armante Edwards, who was at quarterback when Appalachian State pulled off its stunning 34-32 upset of powerful Michigan in 2007.

He wound up being drafted in the third round of that draft as a wide receiver and he would wind up revealing just how difficult it is to make such a transition which Greene is trying to pull off.

“Everything that I thought I knew about football goes out the window because I’m looking at it from a different perspective now,” Edwards said at the time. “I’ve got to learn to get off the jam. I’ve got to learn how to run one route multiple different ways. And I’m running without the football. The only time I ran as a quarterback is if I had the ball in my hand or if I’m jogging after I got a first down.”

So there is work for Greene to do, but you know that he will do it.

If he fails, it won’t be for a lack of effort.