COVID-19 affected everyone differently this season and some more than others. I thought it might be interesting to look at each game from our schedule and see if it was affected and how if yes. So, here it is.
NC State: this game was originally scheduled for two weeks before until NC State had to postpone. Then when they were getting over it we started having our issues. We ended up dominating despite our roster numbers being down more than theirs. I wouldn't say this game would have been any different without COVID-19.
Duke: we were still having our fair share of issues with COVID-19 while Duke was okay. We won by 7 despite this. This game likely would have played out similarly without COVID-19.
UNC: we were still hurting from COVID-19. This is the first game where it showed. The defense playing in a scheme they didn't even get to implement in the spring got torched, and the better quarterback didn't play the entire first half because it was his first game back. This game could have been much different had we had a full team, the defense had spring practice, and the best quarterback played all four quarters.
Boston College: we were starting to get our full roster back and dominated this game. I can't recall if Boston College had any glaring COVID-19 issues, but I don't think it would have mattered. We outmatched them.
Wake Forest: COVID-19 had little effect on this game. I think we would have outnumbered their fans, but it wouldn't have mattered. We were unprepared and played as such. Pandemic or no pandemic, we lose this one.
Louisville: this was the first game I think where we were helped because of COVID-19. Louisville was pretty depleted, especially on defense, and we took advantage. I don't think this one goes the same way without COVID-19.
Liberty: some might disagree, but I'm going to say COVID-19 had an effect on this one. For whatever reason, G5 as a whole had a good season. I have no clue why. Maybe the small crowd sizes wherever they went helped. Either way, I think we beat Liberty in a normal year with Lane rocking. I don't think they would have come in with the same momentum either. Chalk this one up to COVID-19 (yes, I know some game management decisions should have been better).
Miami: Lane would have been rocking for this one. In a one-point loss, I think that could have made a difference. Maybe it would have helped Miami, maybe it would have helped us. Who knows with our recent performances in Lane? I definitely do think this would have been a different game without COVID-19, though.
Pittsburgh: Heinz Field curse. We were dominated. No chance. We would also lose this game during Spanish Flu, the Bubonic Plague, etc.
Clemson: I actually think the lack of a crowd helped us not get boatraced. Clemson has superior athletes all over the field, and a crowd would have just given them more adrenaline to hit us in the mouth early. They didn't hit us in the mouth till the third quarter. The result would have been the same regardless, though. COVID-19 had no real effect on this one.
Virginia: no effect. They were coming in on a four-game winning streak. We were coming in on a four-game losing streak. Despite their excellent discipline and commitment to the (mediocre) program, we dominated. Had that been played under normal circumstances, we would have just won by more. Bryce Perkins wasn't walking into the stadium to save them.
Does anyone have any disagreements or anything they'd like to add? I wrote this mostly assuming each game as if the previous results up to that point would have been the same. For example, maybe the Pitt game goes differently if we have a little more momentum coming in, which I think we might have without COVID-19. And of course, everyone else would have been playing without COVID-19 as well, thereby affecting the entire landscape of college football. I just thought it was a fun little exercise to put things in perspective and talk about something other than lack of staff changes and poorly executed press conferences.
Comments
Every game according to fuente and whit. Hence the reason this year didn't count right?
This is probably going way beyond what you intended, but given the loss of practice time across the board, the last-minute schedule changes, and the players and coaches opting out, we could wonder all day about how the season would have looked if COVID weren't a thing.
So, I'd say COVID affected absolutely every game.
Yea, I second this. There's a lot of proven coaches who struggled to deal with COVID (Coach O, Franklin, Harbaugh, etc), so while I recognize that 'everyone had to deal with it,' not everyone was capable of dealing with the same way. Different state laws, different amount of support from athletic departments and universities, different rules for contact tracing, etc. Not every coach has the skills to coach through a pandemic, not every college athlete has the mental resilience to compete during a pandemic, and not every university set their athletic department to successfully support a team in a pandemic.
This is NOT IN ANY WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM intended to excuse the staff, 'give them a pass', or suggest that they should be 'graded on a curve.' It's just the reality of the season; goofy shit happened, and for reasons both in and outside the control of this staff, they underperformed.
And not everyone had to deal with it in the same way.
Every team was in a different place of their collective development. Alabama probably wasn't affected too much in terms of what happened on the field because Saban's been running a well-oiled machine for over a decade. Plus they're in a position where they probably could just sit back in their offices and literally do nothing all offseason and still pull in a better recruiting class than us just based on reputation.
Meanwhile at VT, we were trying to break in an entirely new defensive coaching staff. It also sounds like Fuente was trying to do something different in recruiting, but all of that got shut down before it could even get past the drawing board.
COVID highlighted a lot of deficiencies in the world, including some on our team.
Does that count as posting a link to a paywalled site? /s
Not to mention a new DC
Correct... pretty much an entirely new defensive staff.
I rolled all that into the lack of practice time.
I think the logic is more about not having a real fall camp because so many guys were out with COVID.
That being said, if we had real depth, it wouldn't have been a problem especially with the secondary. It's sort of fair to mention that two of our projected starters (Farley and Hunter) were unanticipated losses but it's completely fair to blame recruiting that we didn't have the necessary depth.
The only problem with having depth is that only 5 teams really have that. Unless you are Clemson, OSU, Bama you dont have that. Look at Michigan's QB situation, it was terrible and Harbaugh has been recruiting quite well, but one opt out and they were trash at the position. PSU lost their team to the draft and they had nothing this year, LSU the same.
The best case for a school like VT is to have enough depth that you can work around a few injuries, not losing 4 DBs (Hunter, Farley, Waller, Rodgers).
The counterpoint is that JHam should at all times, regardless of what the COVID / injury situation was, have 11 guys who can execute the basic tenants of the defense, not this dollar menu shit we heard about during the season.
I think the dollar menu was the basics of the defense. He just couldn't roll out a McRib combo when he wanted.
So you should be able to plan who gets sick and when? They were trying to keep entire position groups from getting it, but what happens if all the scholarship DBs got it for example? Do you play exclusively walk on DBs and a couple LBs there? And don't forget it wasn't just who got sick, but contact tracing as well. Fuente/JHam had zero control over who could and couldn't play. This sounds like an unrealistic expectation to me. And even if someone is able to "execute the basic tenets" doesn't mean they'll be any good at it. See Matheny getting run away from. The dude just wasn't as fast as the guy on offense, and he shouldn't be expected to be because he's a walk on.
All of them. Not an excuse just a reality. The season would have been completely different. I don't know how much better it would have been though.
Which games did Covid 19 effect?
affect
deflect
Reflect.
Inject
Erect.
Reject
Object
Perfect
Abject
Infect
If we are in an editing mood, I would have also moved COVID-19 to the front as the subject: COVID-19 affected which games?
Your a mean grammer policeman. There meaning was clear.
grammar
I had to fight autocorrect to even get it in there. Anyway, I think all the errors have been corrected below unless you want to make their his/her instead.
nvrmd
Their
You're
I don't know. Its impossible to figure out this hypothetical.
The best way to tell if COVID19 had an impact would be to peer into the other dimension where COVID19 didn't happen and see what our record was there (keep all variables the same except COVID19).
So, you are about to enter the Twilight Zone.
let's hope that by June of 2021 the majority of us will be vaccinated and then we can see what happens in the 2021 football season. Let's hope the Hokies win 8 games or more. If we're still looking at needing a win against UVA just to go bowling maybe Whit will reconsider his options?
Hoping I'm wrong, but don't be shocked if a win against UVa still won't make us bowl eligible for any remaining year of the Fuente regime. With all the transfers out yesterday and today, last year's recruiting class, this year's recruiting class, and Corn directing the offense, 6 wins is being optimistic. Again, hope I'm wrong, but afraid I won't be.
Come on Fuente, surprise me.
I hear one of the symptoms of Covid-19 is that it forces you to impulsively call timeouts when the G5 kicker is about to boot one from a billion yards out. Did Fuente violate protocol by coaching this game? Was he positive all along? *dramatic music*
The only reason people are mad about that is because they saw what the outcome would have been without it being called. I agree it was dumb, but the far worse decision was whatever the defensive call was on the play after.
I'm mad because even if we take the block and return out of the equation and the kid straight up missed it, the time out gave Hooker King Hugh a chance to think over how silly it is to kick that FG from another time zone.
The games it affected the team most are the games we won (with the exception of UNC). So...
Red Dead Redemption 2 and The Division 2 and Cyberpunk.
It certainly caused me to go back and play RDR2 and fall in love with it all over again
I think one of the biggest impacts was that we limped into starting the season and then went straight through the schedule without much break until before the Clemson game. Fatigue, both mental and physical, had to be tremendous, all while trying to go through practice during the week that probably felt like two steps forward and one step back constantly. Again, everybody had to go through it, but the entire season was just bizzaro.
I would say that all the games were affected by COVID in some capacity. Obviously we had the games that were impacted by it causing scheduling changes and whatnot. But you have players who tested positive and even if they were able to and did play later in the season, they may not have been 100%. One of my really good friends who happens to be a firefighter had it earlier in the year and after he went back to work, he said that he still felt the effects of COVID and he was not able to perform the same--he was running slower and such. In addition, players were worrying about getting sick, worrying about friends and family, and having to go through testing and new procedures. Throw in the weird environment of no fans at games. I would say that yeah COVID cast a shadow on every single game of 2020.
Except for the part where the only reason we played these games this year was due to COVID.
I enjoyed watching football this season, so I'll count my blessings right there.