Scot Loeffler Ramps Up the Pressure on His Quarterbacks, Gets Good Results

The Hokies took the field for their second scrimmage of the spring on a sunny and beautiful day in Blacksburg, but offensive coordinator Scot Loeffler was focused on making things as gloomy for his quarterbacks as possible.

With returning starter Michael Brewer back to work after sitting out a week with a back injury, Loeffler is now ratcheting up the pressure on his entire group of signal callers to get a feel for where they stand right now.

"I'm putting pressure on them to know (the offense) better even than I know it," Loeffler said. "I'm not the one out there throwing the ball, so they've got to know it better than I know it."

Much of that pressure is figurative, but backups Andrew Ford and Chris Durkin experienced some very literal pressure as well after the staff decided to make them fair game for hitting ahead of the scrimmage.

While working behind the second and third team offensive lines, they certainly took their fair share of licks. The pair took at least four sacks between them (Loeffler doesn't believe in releasing offensive stats from scrimmages) and a number of other big hits as they faced Tech's imposing front seven.

"I think they got the hell beat out of them. That's a good thing," Loeffler said. "As a young guy you have a lot of bad habits and the only way to correct those habits is getting hit. As painful and awful as it looks, great lessons are learned there."

It might seem counterintuitive to building the young quarterbacks' confidence to have them walloped by the likes of LB Deon Clarke and DT Woody Baron on every play, but Brewer believes those hits will pay off down the line.

"You've got to adapt to the game quickly and there's no better way than getting your clock cleaned out there," Brewer said. "So it's unfortunate that they had to take some shots, but I think it'll make them better players. They'll turn on the film and they'll watch and they'll understand why you've got to do the little things, why you've got to make an exact throw on time and get into certain protections. I think it was good for them, and I think they're going to come away with a lot of good learning from it."

The pair only managed a handful of completions between them, and besides a few nice scrambles by Durkin and one first down throw under duress by Ford, there weren't many highlights for the backups. Yet Frank Beamer wants to see them get more chances at contact, not less.

"A couple times they got swallowed up, but I'd like to finish up with that every scrimmage," Beamer said. "Their improvement will be much quicker if we do that."

But even though Brewer and Motley got to keep their yellow "no contact" jersey on, they're still feeling plenty of pressure from the staff.

"I'm putting pressure on those two and I think they're buying into it," Loeffler said. "At times it's not easy in our room right now and I like it that way."

The pair are clearly handling the extra attention well so far. Brewer tossed a total of five touchdowns on the day, going 10 for 14 for 256 yards on his eight series in the game. Motley also got eight cracks on the field, running for two touchdowns and finding Bucky Hodges for another long score.

"I thought Brewer handled himself well. He did what Brewer does. He pulled the ball down and had some nice runs a couple times. He's steady as a rock," Beamer said. "Couple of long plays by (Motley). Some good throws. I thought he was impressive. He's a big old guy that's athletic and can do some things."

Yet the pressure must feel especially acute for Brewer in his role as the returning starter, but he's welcoming that challenge.

"I think it's something that we as quarterbacks need and I think it's what this team needs," Brewer said. "(Loeffler) being intense with us and then us translating it and it kind of being a trickle down effect with the rest of the team, just having a sense of urgency in the quarterback room, as well as the whole team."

When the guys don't show that necessary urgency, Brewer admits that Loeffler can be tough to handle.

"If it's a good day, it's not terrible (to be around Loeffler) I guess, but if it's not a great day, then it's pretty terrible," Brewer said. "You've just got to take it in a positive way, it's not anything personal. You just take your coaching and move on."

Clearly, Loeffler is the type of coach that demands perfection from his quarterbacks, particularly his starter, and he's started to ramp his desire for absurd attention to detail in Brewer's first spring with the program.

"He's real big on urgency right now, attacking everything that we do with great detail," Brewer said. "We have tests and whatnot that he sends us home with, you've got to draw stuff with a ruler, you've got to make sure it's good handwriting, everybody's got to be in the right splits. It's very detailed work that we're putting in right now and it's helping us understand where everybody goes and why they're going certain places against certain defenses."

Brewer only arrived on campus in late May last year, meaning that he didn't get to see the full picture of Loeffler's offense and his obsession with the details the way he does now.

"It's helping us in the quarterback room understand why we're going certain places with the ball and not to go certain places with the ball, and that's kind of something we didn't get to go into depth with last year," Brewer said. "We just didn't have the time, we were trying to learn the formations and plays and get caught up up to speed with these guys and now we're able to slow things down in a sense and learn more and translate it to the practice field."

On Saturday, that translation seemed seamless. Brewer says the back strain that kept him out of practice last week didn't effect him "at all" today, and he downplayed the time off as merely precautionary.

"It was something where I just need to do a little bit of rehab and rest a little bit to get it back to 100 percent so it wouldn't keep re-aggravating and if sitting out one week of spring ball was the price I had to pay, that's fine," Brewer said. "These last three weeks are the most important anyway, so I'm happy I'm back."

Brewer notes that he did have troubles with his back last season, but that this latest tweak is nothing compared to that.

"I had a little bit of a problem with it sometimes last year, but obviously you're able to get shots and take medicine like that if you have to, if it gets bad enough," Brewer said. "But it hasn't been anything that's really affected me, I just wanted to get it 100 percent healthy. I didn't have to take any medicine or anything like that, I can just go out there and sling it and play loose."

Brewer certainly did sling it a fair bit Saturday. While one score came on a fade to Hodges in the end zone and another on a long run after a screen to Isaiah Ford, the other three were long balls over the top to Hodges and Cam Phillips. Brewer says that's the result of some of the timing work Loeffler has been stressing.

"We were able to connect on a lot of basically 'man beaters' that we didn't connect on a lot last year, so we're starting to get a good feeling of where guys are going to be when teams do play man coverage on us and you've got to take advantage of that, and I thought that we did a pretty good job of that today," Brewer said.

That's music to Loeffler's ears. His frequent jumps around the coaching world means he's had very few opportunities to work with a starting quarterback for more than a year, and he's relishing the chance to dig into the nuances of the game with Brewer.

"It's hard to develop a guy and get them to do what you want them to do with one season," Loeffler said. "It's great when you get to work with a guy for more than a year or two."

Brewer says he's noticed the difference in his comfort level with both Loeffler and the whole system.

"I'm definitely really happy about it because I can take a breath and learn for the first time since I've been here really," Brewer said. "A lot of teams played man coverage on us and forced us to throw timing routes and the receiver has to get to a certain depth, the quarterback has to throw it on a certain rhythm and we've been able to time that up and come up with big plays lately. And I think that's going to help us come the fall."

But even for all of those superlatives, today was just the latest example of Loeffler's demanding ways. After offering up Ford and Durkin as tackling dummies and relentlessly drilling Brewer and Motley, it might seem like Loeffler's taking things to an unreasonable extreme.

Yet he says that's the only way he knows how to coach, and he plans to keep the pressure on for as long as he stays in Blacksburg.

"Coming to Virginia Tech was awesome because I wanted to do what I did at Michigan; build a room, have guys stay for more than a season," Loeffler said. "We're going to put as much pressure on them to know it better than I do. That's just the way I've always done it, and something that's always worked when I've had more than a year to work with a guy."