Stanford Did have Some of Each
The prompt for this take on the Good, Bad, and Ugly review was the DVR session with the Stanford game. While it was a win, and a welcomed one at that, there were definitely highlights and some lowlights that upon thinking about it, pretty much summed up the G, B, and U for the entire season.
Football Reality
2024 football is not really anywhere near the football that was played for my first game as a Hokie (well, Fighting Gobbler) as we marched in for the Texas A&M game on Sept. 17, 1977. Football was a rougher sport with fewer rules. It was more difficult to block, you could beat a receiver into a pulp before the ball was thrown, and only a few teams were occasionally running the “shotgun”. As to the conduct of the game status there was no instant replay, and there was no routine overtime. OT was “sudden death” and only played in playoff situations.
Why bring up a revisit the “Caveman Football” situation for this article? Because, if this was the October 1977 rules the Virginia Tech Hokies would be 4-1-1 and looking like a dominant football team on the field and a contender to receive one of a limited number of bowl bids at the end of the season.
That prompted me to take a hard look at how close Tech is to 6-0 instead of 3-3. The trail led me to this particular take on the review of the Goods, the Bads, and the still Uglies of the first half of the season.
The Good Things from the First Half
Tech has not had a whole lot of success in first halves this season so maybe we should at least try to balance off the low game to game success level with some good things that are becoming potential major factors in the final 6 games.
Bhayshul Tuten will get some serious NFL draft interest. Now it’s prudent to remember that running backs are rarely drafted in the first few days of the big show in April, but Bhayshul Tuten looks like he’s made his presence known. His game is balanced, he can run. His one cut and go style fits for the Read/Option and he complements a strong running QB. He’s a really good receiver out of the backfield and presents a really good protection angle when he needs to block. Along with Tuten, the running back room is pleasantly talented, and we are likely to see more from them as time goes on. Malachi Thomas and PJ Prioleau are capable (of course Prioleau is now injured and there will be more competition for that #3 slot). Needless to say Tech’s running game is reasonably solid until the team gets inside the 10.
The defensive secondary is surprisingly good. We expected Dorian Strong to be near the top of his game. Mansoor Delane struggled in Nashville, only to bounce back and pull himself back to relevance over the next five games. The loss of Greg Stroman over the top as the Free Safety was a scary situation until the next players in line managed to step up in every game. They are still struggling with the intermediate passing game but Tech hasn’t been ripped by too many deep passes, and their run fits have often been more reliable than the linebackers’. Mose Phillips has shown some serious growth in the position. He can be counted on for quick adjustments, ball hawking, and can cover both the run and the pass.
The defensive line has been tonic for a change. It hasn’t been perfect, but it’s been very good. The “Sacksburg” label has come back. Antwan Powell-Ryland has given everyone a major show in getting into the backfield and harassing, sacking, and scaring quarterbacks into making mistakes or losing control. Inside the Tackles are deep enough for a healthy relay, and Aneas Pebbles is producing a banner year for himself, and his new team.
The Linebackers are finally finding themselves and how they fit in. Standouts Caleb Woodson and Kaleb Spencer seem to have become constant presences with more heads up plays and quicker responses as the season wore on. Keonta Jenkins is solidifying his presence at the Star position.
The receiver corps has had some struggles, but the consistency of the Gosnell brothers and Jaylin Lane have elevated the capability downfield under the zone and through traffic. The addition of the impressive Ayden Greene to the “notable” mix is a welcomed increased presence.
Everyone has been concerned with Kyron Drones’s sort of slow start performance but yours truly hasn’t. Drones is not a machine, and he certainly can’t completely put the team on his back (though he’s done it too many times) but when he’s on and clicking with Tuten, the Gosnells, and Lane things on their side of the line of scrimmage are high powered and fast.
Brody Meadows and Right Guard, and Johnny Garrett at Right Tackle were a marked improvement that should be elevated to starting positions for the game on Thursday. They both worked well together, kept Drones on his feet, blocked well on runs, and that’s a good thing. (We’ll look at the upshot or ‘downshot’ as it were in the Ugly section.)
Of course, you can’t forget the golden foot of John Love. Not only has Love demonstrated solid accuracy, but he’s also now proven that he has distance to go with it. In modern football a good kicker can mean the difference in too many games to have a mediocre Field Goal game, and Love provides an excellent chance within the 35 (and now 40). Peter Moore has his leg back and proved it with several punts in Stanford that went 50-60+. This bend but don’t break defense needs all the field position that Moore can give them.
The Bad Stuff – Defies Obvious Cures
This team is still stuck in some sort of clutch, gearshift, acceleration tangle. Like so many Millennials and Gen-Z’ers the current staff is really having problems driving a manual.
The Offense is still broken. It’s fixable, but only to the degree that the current pedestrian playbook will allow. It works best when Kyron Drones gets a chance to riff because the initial play broke down. The intermediate passing game (There he goes again!) takes tons of practice, lots of pattern development and key reading, speed in execution, and rhythm. This offense just has way too little of any of that.
Nothing is particularly “crisp” in a description of its execution, or in the results. It bogs down horribly inside the 10-yard line where the OC seems bound and determined to ram a player’s head through a cinderblock wall tanking plays and allowing the defense to load the box without taking advantage of it. There were some hopeful signs in Stanford, but short of Drones’s gut fake QB reverse power for the TD on third down… the general attempt series was still aimed at the line of scrimmage, not past the goal line.
There is no 2-minute offense present. That hurt the team in OT, greatly, and also doomed any comeback effort against Rutgers. Of course, as noted several times and ad nauseum, that is tied to the lack of an intermediate speed passing game.
The defense isn’t getting away free of charge in this pass, either. The Linebackers are learning, and really working at stepping it up, but the defense is still not good at defending against running quarterbacks and intermediate passing plays. It’s getting better, but game 7 is sort of too late to have it figured out. Sort of is operative, because Tech’s not a “fakeoff” team and therefore any improvement at any time in the season is beneficial.
The defensive line is doing A-/B+ work this season which is a great improvement; HOWEVER! They are still losing containment on the QB by over rushing, both past the player, deep, and past him parallel to the line of scrimmage. The ‘A’ Gap is getting forgotten too often and scrambling QBs can make their escapes there, too. It’s much better than 2022 and 2023, but still needs to be a full notch on the belt tighter to win the next few games against some pretty capable running QBs.
In general, the injuries are beginning to pile up and present problems. That’s not something that can be done much about. There are the “strength and conditioning” issues, especially in the lower body and legs, that probably could improve on nearly every team besides Tech’s but more often than not, it’s the cumulative effect of each individual players’ physical tolerance for hits, pain, and ability to recover. Some are just never going to overcome critical injuries. It’s a sad part of the game, but there are many good football players who are now coaches, or dentists because they eventually had to “retire” due to chronic injury problems.
Bad Luck. If you had to peg one of the worst problems that the Hokies have encountered over the past few seasons, it’s just this constant pulse of bad luck. The person saying this is probably long forgotten but it bears remembering; “there is no substitute for good luck.” Right now, Tech is just not getting the luck bubble to bob its way to Blacksburg’s gridiron often enough. They (The Gand and Powerful “They”) say that you make your own good or bad luck by the work that you put in and the effort put on the field every day, not just game time. We’ll leave it there except to say that there is definitely something to that.
It Might have Been Just Bad… But Now It’s Gotten Ugly
The right side of the offensive line started off in bad shape this season and just got ugly before we saw anything happening to change things up. Adjusting has taken way to long, and the reality that the coaches don’t feel confident enough to make any substantive changes is worrisome. There was a bit of good new in the ugly side of this, with the much-improved performance levels of Meadows and Garrett on the right. Will the depth chart that will be released before Thursday evening reflect that better performance? It remains to be seen, but if the move is not made the issue is more likely to remain ugly.
The tone of many unrealistic perfectionists in Hokie Nation regarding results on the field is beginning that ugly edge pressure steam stream that began to disassemble the former coaching regime before it really got started. There are many things that can be addressed, as noted above, but the reality that the Virginia Tech Hokies are a peloton football program that makes a modest amount of money (and an athletic department short of cash) in an era of forced professionalization is an ugly problem. This program does not have the Gate revenues and Premium structure to compete with programs filling 90-110K seat stadiums every Game Day. The ACC Grant of Rights is stingy with the media revenues, and subpar with much of the coverage and exposure. There are too few ultra-rich alumni to pad the NIL and Scholarship tils, and the ugliest part of all of it is that given the reality of the structure of the new “fakeoffs”, is basically invitational and few ACC programs will get anywhere near qualifying even with “championships” (And the ACC “championship” isn’t real, either.) Far from helping college sports prosper, the NIL factor has just become a pay-for-play sort of farce and has lit the afterburner on the way to collegiate athletics’ collective suicide. The best that we can expect before the current system implodes are some decent seasons and a few nice bowl games. That’s the unfolding reality, and until we are on the other side of whatever forms out of the unraveling mess we just won’t know where Tech will be. So, be up, support the team, and look for things one game at a time.
Tech has always seemed to get the short end of the ACC officiating stick from critical holding calls that weren’t really holding, to flaky targeting calls that hit the Tech defense but often for a similar series of events not the opposing team, Tech’s “Luck” with the ACC has not been the best. The latest fiasco with a poorly and lopsidedly called Miami game has to be in the Top 10 Ugly things to happen to any team in the 2024 season. The Miami/Cal game merely seemed to confirm the realities in suspicious minds. The lack of public reviews, review boards, and transparency on the part of the ACC just reflects badly on the conference. The official retribution for valid public complaints filed by programs including fines and other “off the books” actions is a truly ugly reaction by an imperious management chain unwilling to accept constructive criticism or correct obvious errors and injustices.
Wrapping this one Up with a Poll
There are other issues, but just squint, look at the last article on the Risk Assessment adjustment for the next three games and tell us how you feel things will go before the home stretch.
Poll
The next three games are winnable, and pivotal. BC, GT, and then ‘Cuse (Away) these are the best 3-in-a-row chances to win, remaining. What’s it gonna be?,
0%
3-0 the games might be toss-ups but Tech is headed in a positive direction and all three of them are now struggling.
(0 votes)
0%
Tech goes 2-1 with wins at home and doom at the old Carrier Dome, regardless of its new name, again.
(0 votes)
0%
Tech goes 1-2 with nothing solved and inconsistent play. Lose to BC’s running QB, Cuse’s danged dome, and maybe Georgia Tech’s radiator has finally boiled over.
(0 votes)
0%
It could be 3-0, it could be 0-3. There is just no telling. It all depends on which Hokie team shows up on which particular game. That’s sad at this point, we should know the outcomes with reasonable certainty.
(0 votes)
0 votes total
Vote Now
It’s going to be a long wait for Thursday. We’ll talk about the schedule, look for the game news, predictions, and poll for Wednesday afternoon. Bryan will have the preview up by then.
We have two ranked soccer programs going so we’ll get a general sports summary out by Monday.
