What ultimately ended up being some of the main factors that led you to pursue other roads in your college career?
"I graduated early and still had some years of eligibility. I had been at Virginia Tech and did everything I told them I was going to do. I stayed and finish school and after that I felt like it was time for new beginnings. A lot of the guys out of my recruiting class that came in there with me pretty much left, so it was only about a handful of guys that I came in with that were still there. Just sitting down and having a conversation with my family we felt that it was best to split ways."
Really well-done interview by SoS, gave a ton of insight on what happened to HH this season and his rationale for transferring. HH comes off well in this interview,
Comments
Kid sounds like he has his head on straight.
He had a shot to throw shade and avoided it entirely. Seems like a good young man. I wish him well in his future endeavors.
His still on campus. I wouldn't say anything etiher
😂😂Say Less...
*trevon hill has entered the chat*
Or there could be no shade and he was just done with VT. I know I look upon VT much more favorably now than when I was there. And I was only there 7 semesters and ready to leave. I've never missed being in school. I'm happy I went and happy I left and didn't go back.
You must have missed his deleted tweet about Corny a few weeks ago
Or - maybe his relationships with former teammates and friends still at the school outweighs the differences he had with the coaching staff. Maybe despite all that, he still appreciates his time here. You cite the tweet, but I say shit all the time I immediately regret, but I'm also not a starting quarterback in college. Why are people constantly trying to pit him against everyone here?
Lol when did I pit him against everyone. My point is that the dude most likely has a few hard feelings towards some people at VT, but clearly not the whole team or program. You're probably correct in your first sentence, and I bet he does appreciate his time here, but there was still an opportunity to publicly air out the full reasons why he left and he chose not to, which is admirable.
I missed it. what did it say?
I wish we would have started him against UNC.
The fact the coaches didn't offer an explanation to him as to why he didn't even play against Duke doesn't make sense to me. Sure, they don't necessarily owe it to him, but that's one way to lose trust with your quarterback.
I disagree, I think they do owe it to him. There should be no confusion about why a player is being put in the situation that he is.
Edit to elaborate: If I were to get passed up for a project at work, or not promoted, etc, I'd want to (1) know why and (2) understand exactly what I need to do in order to get a similar opportunity in the future. I think this is the same. Fuente can easily say "I'm going with QBx instead of you because you haven't practiced in X weeks, and I'm concerned about your ability to last an entire game" (or whatever the case) - regardless, there's no reason to not tell a player this.
I feel like I'm between you two. The coaches don't need to tell him everything, but a basic "hey you're not the starter but we're going to try to work in a series or two to see how you do" would have at least let him know what to prepare for mentally.
If Hendon felt like they owed it to him then that definitely helps explains the situation
IMHO - the strategy coming into the UNC game was ball control, keeping everything on the ground, and keeping the ball out of Howell's hand. BB is a more prolific runner so it actually makes sense to make him the starter v. a cold Hooker. When we couldn't execute on that vision and got behind big, we need the better QB in the passing game to come in.
Agree that this was the logical strategy and even agree that Burmeister was likely the QB best suited to run a ball-control gameplan, but when you look at what we actually did with our early possessions, we didn't really run ball control at all. If anything, we avoided it and for reasons that only Brad Cornelson can understand, we essentially kept Herbert on ice for the majority of the 1st half.
Not sure that you can use ball control as a logical reason to start Burmeister over Hooker in that scenario.
In either case, as a player, not feeling like you have a clear line of communication with your coaches is never a good scenario. It's a more than reasonable expectation. I don't think Fuente or any other coach owes players an explanation for them starting or not, but for players to feel left in the dark about their status is really unfair and neglectful. And if there is any truth to the smoke surrounding the supposed interaction on the sideline during the Clemson game, I commend Hooker for being professional and taking the high road on this one.
Herbert should have had a stat line like Darren Evans in 2008 vs. UMD. Pretty inexcusable by Cornelson.
I forgot about this, I remember listening on the radio and wondering where Herbert was
I was thinking the samething. Herbert ate,thats for sure. Corn never let em go back for seconds though.
Tell the coaches Burmeister was the better runner, maybe they wouldn't have run Hendon 15+ times per game
I think it's as simple as Burmeister had been playing well enough for us to win games up to that point and practice was probably a mixed bag early in the season, with Hooker shaking off COVID and Burmeister getting live practice reps for the first time. UNC's defense didn't present much of a challenge on paper so the coaches rolled with the lineup that had been winning games.
And like you said, when the offense stalled out on a few drives in the 1st half, the reason to make a switch at QB materialized.
He was a less efficient runner by every metric. I'm not upset about it, but I'm certainly confused where this narrative has emerged from.
Hendon Hooker last season: 120 car, 620 yards, 5.2 ypc, 9 TD's, long of 53
Braxton Burmeister last season: 47 car, 193 yards, 4.1 ypc, 2 TD's, long of 22
The raw numbers are just volume, so I'm less concerned about that, but less ypc and less big plays is what I'm seeing. I tried to find some deeper splits to see how many 10+ and 20+ yard runs each had to determine frequency, but I am reasonably confident the answer is Hooker.
This is a genuine question I am not trying to be snarky. I simply do not know where this line of thinking came from.
During the pre-season, BB was touted as being the better runner by the coaching staff
And during the season we saw that he was not. Which is why I'm curious as to why this is still being stated now that there is evidence to the contrary.
It was explained that at that point in the preseason, relatively speaking, Hooker was more of a passing threat and Burmeister was better at executing the running game (e.g. running read-option).
I'd be very surprised if they didn't give him some kind of explanation as to why the depth chart shook out the way it did, but I would not be surprised that he did not consider the explanation valid or didn't accept that he was not meeting the goals/criteria laid out to return to being the starter, and therefore he "doesn't know why" he was not starting.
To echo the workplace example you put out there, at a previous job I've seen a similar kind of situation where an experienced, technically skilled colleague didn't get a promoted because they didn't have the conflict resolution skills needed to be a manager. They complained that they "didn't know why they weren't promoted" that "they had put in their time" and that they "knew the subject area better than anyone in the office" even though they had been advised multiple times to work on their communication style and hadn't shown any progress on that front. That blind spot both kept them from being promoted and from understanding (or maybe from admitting) why they weren't promoted.
The vibe I get is that Hooker was not a great practice player and that his performances in practice made it difficult to justify selecting him as the starter over players (even with some clear limitations) who had led to the team to some victories (e.g. Willis, early 2019 and e.g. Burmeister early/mid-2020).
As we saw in late 2019 and again in late 2020, Hooker has his own limitations in the normal passing game. Maybe those limitations were more evident in practice, lowering his stock from the coaches perspective while as fans all we see is gameday when he executes a great play-action / option-pass offensive attack for a few games and we wonder why he wasn't starting all season. Then D-coords catch up, or we get behind against a team with a decent defense and Hooker can't pass the ball effectively without the run-action threat.
So then we're back to an open QB competition during the offseason, or another player being favored over Hooker at QB because the coaches see that player as being able to execute more of the offense.
Yes, at Sam Linebacker....
Warm bodies were not going to stop UNC that day, but take your leg. I enjoyed the laugh this morning.
This is only the last part of HH's answer about why he didn't start. The whole answer paints a picture of confusion about fitness to play due to COVID related health concerns. Though he was cleared to play, he also very briefly references adverse effects of medication he had to take for the tests to be performed. He also describes in response to another question the importance of continuity in practice in terms of being game ready.
Its a good Q&A and worth reading the whole thing.
I read the whole thing. The practice concerns were more related to the Duke game. Those were no longer in play when UNC rolled around and he was fully ready to go and had been practicing.
I'm really surprised nobody has posted that tweet from vtfootball yesterday about how VT's QBs posted a season high 62% completion percentage with Burmeister as the main photo
Our social media is so bad for the football team. Hooker had a 65% completion percentage and Burmeister had a 58%. It would've been higher without Burmeister.
We knew we could count on you to post about it.
Bigger issue for me with the tweet is the fact that 62.2% is our single season record, which is really not worth bragging about.
wut?
I feel like you're just trying to pick a fight with me because we have disagreed in the past. But I don't disagree with you here
Yeah the stat is the problem. There was a better study that was linked in the replies that compared each qb in the ACC versus the expected result of the defense. I think HH was 5th or so and BB was 11th. I could have those rankings wrong.
Nah the biggest issue was definitely that our official football account tweeted out a stat about completion percentage and paired it with a picture of the QB who was well below that number and was actually bringing it down in comparison to Hendon Hooker.
I am sure it would have been better received to use Hendon's photo. \s
There was no good way to tweet that stat. A meaningless stat that neglects a putrid traditional passing game.
And maybe if Hooker got rid of the ball instead of taking drive killing sacks, his completion percentage would have gone down.
I think the tweet is pretty useless is general. I think criticizing the staff for using a picture of our current QB to go along with the tweet is airing on the side of nitpicking. Keep in mind this is coming from a guy that blocked the Tech and Pete Morris twitter accounts after about 6 months into their tenure.
All of this is subjective. So what you think is nitpicking, I think is an outright social media faux pas, and bordering on straight up misinformation propaganda. Burmeister was a hindrance to the statistic they posted, not debatable, his low completion percentage brought that number down.
If it was a one time thing I'd be way more willing to look past it, but when this is hundredth time we've tweeted this kind of stuff I'm not giving anyone the benefit of the doubt anymore.
I agree, BB is our QB, until someone knocks him off the spot. Hooker is gone, and I hope he has a great year. I suspect that 20 runs per game in the SEC will equate to injuries, though.
Great interview and Hendon gave out a lot of details that we don't normally get. Just from reading it, he seemed very sincere and forthcoming.
I'm not blaming Hendon at all for transferring, he did a lot for our program bringing us out of a funk when we were 2-2 in 2019, won games this past season. It didn't quite make sense to me why they kept making him run when Herbert was so good - I was hoping we could have some play action and pump fakes to use his Arm. But never the less, that is on coaching. I liked that we had Braxton as a back-up who was ready to go when needed but I thought Hendon was the clear Qb1.
I wish Hendon the best of luck. And hope that Braxton has a great off-season to continue to perform like he did against UVA.
Hopeful that Knox Kadum is prepared to continue this grand 'tradition', because there is little doubt that someone other than BB will be taking snaps in at least a game, given BB's size and the fact our O scheme relies on him running (and getting tackled) fairly often.