Met Bud Foster today

He was at the Ace Hardware in Hampton.

First, I have to say that he was a great guy. Very social, polite, and just left a good impression. I brought my 11 month old son with me and the first thing he said was "is this a future Hokie?" and grabbed a football and signed it for him. It wasn't too busy when I was there, so it was great to talk VT football with him.

A few points:

- He is a BIG fan of Lawson and thinks he is the real deal. He was down in FL recently and is just impressed with the kid. He said that there could be a package with him this fall to get him on the field. I thought that was very interesting.

- He is excited about the team (obviously, he'll say that), but he likes the defense and he thinks the offense will be very solid this year. He likes the secondary with Reavis back there and said that Clark will be the other safety.

- Facyson will be good to go. They aren't worried about his rehab and said the clean break in his leg was a good thing for his recovery. We've seen that stated a few times, but it sounds like a starting secondary of Facyson, Fuller, Reavis, and Clark if everything goes well.

- I asked him who he thinks will be a sleeper on defense this year. He took some time to think about and then said Dooley. He thinks he'll be a big contributor this fall.

- I mentioned that he must be excited about the starting front 4 and he definitely is. He thinks they'll be able to redshirt a guy at DT because they are so deep at the position. They would like to get a couple of good years out of a kid instead of 1.

I honestly could have talked to the guy about VT football for hours, but there were other people waiting to see him and I didn't want to take up too much of his time. There was a great Hokie couple behind me decked out in VT gear that must have been 80+ years old. Bud stood up to introduce himself and they said "why are you standing up? Sit down".

Finally, as I was leaving I heard him say to a fan "Ohio State was loud last year and they had over 100K people, but Lane will be rocking and will be louder with 70K."