2016 NSD "disaster"... A glass half full approach

I did a little (and the key word is little) research post apocalyptic NSD (sarcasm intended) about past recruiting successes/failures and how that affected the Hokies performance against formidable opponents. The two opponents that I wanted to look at and take a sample from are two teams that completely dominated us on the field.

The first is Stanford in the 2011 Orange Bowl. The game was close for a while with a couple of our playmakers making plays. But the absolute domination up front on both sides of the ball by Stanford won out and the Cardinal won big that evening. Did that team have far superior athletes than the Hokies?

The other team is Clemson in 2011-20112 and 2012-2013. In each of those three games, the Hokies managed to do next to nothing offensively and Clemson simply won from start to finish. Though they didn't dominate the Hokies up front quite like Stanford did, we still struggled in that area. Did they have far superior athletes than the Hokies?

I'm not looking at these two opponents just because we lost, I wanted to look at these two opponents because of how they dominated the Hokies on the field. During the same two seasons (and again, this is a small sample size) the Hokies did not dominate anyone on the field that they would have been considered "on par" with. That is unless you add in #14 Miami in 2010 and #24 UVa in 2011.

I wanted to know if Stanford and Clemson dominated the Hokies because they had far superior athletes. In other words, how did recruiting look in the three years leading up to those seasons as the players in those classes would have, most likely, had the larges impact in those games.

2007 rankings: Clemson #17, VT #26, Stanford #46. http://247sports.com/Season/2007-Football/CompositeTeamRankings

2008 rankings: Clemson #10, VT #20, Stanford #45. http://247sports.com/Season/2008-Football/CompositeTeamRankings

2009 rankings: Stanford #18, VT #24, Clemson #31. http://247sports.com/Season/2009-Football/CompositeTeamRankings

I'll let those numbers speak for themselves...

Here is my point. Recruiting does need to get better, however what happened yesterday is not the end of the world of Hokie football. I know the trend has been a downward one, but we aren't completely out of the game here.

Next season, for the first time in a loooong time, the Hokies will have depth on the Offensive line. Next year, for the first time in a long time, the Hokeis will have depth on the D line. Next year, for the first time in forever, the Hokies will probably run 5 or more deep at the receiver position. Next year, there will be depth at RB and a highly touted QB under center (although he may be developing). For the first time in a long time, the staff is bringing in kids who will be playing positions that they were brought in to play.

The staff is filling holes and trying to meet needs so that the system (just like the ones at Stanford & Clemson) can thrive long term. And I can be excited about that.

We won't really know weather CJF and co. can recruit until the 2018 cycle. So until then, I'm excited to see us get a group of "big uglies" who are actually "big uglies" Until then, I'm excited that we are signing receivers as opposed to 4 or 5 dual threat QB's who we hope can play receiver. Until then, I'm excited to see CJF install an offense that will be fun to watch.

Who knows, maybe CJF is going to be able to do to other teams what Jim Harbaugh at Stanford and Dabo Swinney at Clemson have done to the Hokies.