CFB is back!!!!!!! Not a great slate but some intriguing matchups today, starting with Nebraska - Illinois. It will be interesting to see Bert back in the B1G.
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They traded opening first downs and then punts on both of their drives and then Illinois pinned Neb inside the 1 with literally the perfect puint
Crushed some yardwork this morning and ready for a cold one and a low scoring Alliance slug fest.
Man what a cluster fuck for Nebraska on that play. Illegal forward pass on a punt that carried the returner into the endzone for a safety but looking like his knee was down before the throw right before they went to commercial. Then the referee gave the loss of down signal for the safety. Everyone is rusty.
Raise your hand if you had safety on a punt return as the first score of the year
This looks like a high school game so far. It is a blast.
Job posting: Nebraska Special Teams coach.
A backup QB, a receiver throwing an illegal pass in the end zone resulting in a safety, a missed XP, and a 6-2 score after 15 minutes of the season. Welcome back college football.
Welcome back Big Ten Football.
Welcome back Nebraska football.
Safety, Missed FG, Missed PAT, Punter being Player of the game so far, trading fumbles, Defensive TD all in the first half.
High school JV game? Nah, Big Ten conference game.
Scoop and score and Nebraska being Nebraska welcome back pigskin season.
How old is Martinez I feel like he's been at Nebraska forever
4th year starting. And then they had Taylor Martinez like 10 years ago too.
Good. I'm not the only one here that thought Martinez had been in their program for a decade.
Is Tech's program in the greatest place? No. But holy hell at least we're not as deep in the wilderness as Nebraska.
It's sad. That proud program has fallen to depths unimaginable. I don't see how Frost survives this season. I bet he wishes he had stayed at UCF.
As crazy as it sounds, a guy like Paul Johnson would do really well at Nebraska I think.
No way - Nebraska has one of the most complex and irrational booster communities in the nation. No way PJ could manage that.
I mean if they wanted to run him out, he would just leave like he did at GT. But it's hard as hell to recruit to Lincoln, Nebraska. With his system I think he could do something similar to what Osborne did in the 80s and 90s, recruiting athletes who fit what he wanted to do on offense with the option. He wouldn't be elite but he would probably get them relevant quickly.
In 2001 they had been ranked in the AP continuously for 20 years. In 2020, they dropped <50%.
Ouch.
I guarantee that Nebraska's gonna be in the national championship conversation again before I'm able to figure out what the hells going on in this graph.
LOL, yeah it was a little messy of a concept. Basically it tracks the team's percentage of being ranked over the past 20 seasons. I thought it was relevant to share because of the comment about how far Nebraska has fallen.
Nebraska is that huge sliver of red across the top, and then falling off of a cliff.
(This was my attempt to explain what I was doing).
Atleast with bo pelini they were entertainment material now they flat suck
I want UCLA's offense...
Who doesn't want Chip Kelly's offense?
People hated the idea because he's not golly shucks homespun like Frank, but I would have loved him in Blacksburg. He's one of the true innovators of the game.
Don't know if anyone caught that last UCLA Td drive, but that was picture perfect execution of the inside and outside zone. Blocking, reads, all of it. And the way he disguises the play call with the stance/positioning of the QB and RB. The TD looked like an outside zone or IVR but it was an inside zone.
True - Chip Kelly was brilliant.
When he had Nike support to get the athletes he wanted. And the training regiment. And the ... cough ... nutrition support
Really it was when he had an offense that no one else in the country was running... 10 years later, 1/3 of cfb is running some form of his offense, 1/3 is running some version of the air raid, and the other 1/3 is running something else.
Probably not UCLA fans right now. They're winning 3 games a year since he got there.
Yeah idk about all that. But Chip's offense in year 4 looks light years ahead of any offense VT has ever had.
Nobody will ever convince me that a good coach needs more than 4 years to get the team playing at full potential. The fact it's taken our coaches 5 and we're still terrible is maddening
UCLA has improved every season under Chip Kelley. He's following the Lose Big --> Lose Small --> Win Small --> Win Big path. We'll see if he can make the transition from 'Lose Small' to 'Win Small' this season.
This is exactly what I have been yelling about for years. Good coaches show progress. Even though they haven't won a lot they have shown obvious signs of progress. VT hasn't and that pisses me off. VT's best year under Fuente was year 1. It's been downhill since. I'd rather have a coach like Kelly who maybe doesn't win right away but shows progress.
I think in hindsight we will realize that Fu and Co do a good job of adapting to the talent they have, but do a poor job of recruiting and developing talent at critical spots. He came in year one and adapted to what the nucleus of talent was good at and had really good success. As that talent eroded and he was unable to maintain the same level, you see things like we have the last few years. He can tailor an offense to highlight what a QB does well, but what they do poorly never gets addressed, and the offense has no identity because it's always geared to the strengths of the particular talent we have at QB.
That may be the case. I've never really felt that these coaches have gotten the best out of their players tho. Recruiting failures have absolutely hurt them, you're right about that. Either way, good coaches find a way to get better. Fuente hasn't. This really is his last chance for me. We'll see if he can finally put it all together.
Agree 💯
Hard disagree on the QB part
"Obvious signs of progress?" Where? They've won 10 games in 3 years.
I'd rather our program be showing more progress right now too. But as of now the best of Chip Kelly at UCLA is still worse than the worst of Fu at VT. I'd rather just win as many games as possible.
UCLA was bad in their first two years, I'll give you that. But last year they didn't get blown out by anyone. All of their losses were by 6 points or fewer. And this year they're in a position to continue improving and turn those "one-play-losses" into "one-play-wins". In year 4. In Fuente's third year we got blown out by GT, Pitt, and Miami. In his year 4 he got blown out by Duke, at home by 35 points. If UCLA gets blown out by 35 points at home by Colorado this year then you'll have an argument, I guess. UCLA has been improving year over year. VT hasn't. Its pretty simple.
If UCLA gets blown out by 35 this year by ANYBODY, he will be gone.
Bret Bielema stars in the cartoon short "Dodsworth Gets a Win"...
These games outside Nebraska Illinois are not very competitive.
Nope. Going to have to hope of the late ones are better.
That Neb game was so sloppy and weird that it was entertaining. Anything was on the table to happen.
OT but FYI: ACC Road Trip: Virginia Tech comes on at 6 ET on the ACC Network today.
Why did Nebraska and Illinois play today? I thought Week 0 was just for teams that play Hawaii and get the 13th game but that apparently is not the case anymore.
I bet Nebraska is asking the same question
In another timeline, this game was actually scheduled to be played in Dublin, Ireland for .... reasons (?? shrug ??). I think Ireland factor was supposed to draw people in to watch it or something.
https://www.illini2ireland.com/game/
Well, Frosty is happy. Bruins are his second favorite team after the Baylor Bears. He is originally from Texas and as he likes to say: Believe me, it is not easy being a polar bear in Texas :-).
You ever do psychedelics?
You like movies about gladiators? You ever been in a Turkish prison?
I'm drinking Fighting Hokies Lager, I'm totally with you on this.
I'm probably in the minority here, but I've always loved watching bret bielema's offense. He could be successful in Blacksburg
Welcome back Mason! And I agree, I think his offense would be a great fit here. I don't think it'll ever happen.
If he does decent at Illinois and Fuente gets canned, I could see him leaving for greener pastures
He has a track record of success, so I dont think he'd have to have a massive season to be considered a top candidate
Maybe I'm late, but don't want to start a new thread. Was half paying attention to the Nebraska-Illinois game, and heard them mention something about an offensive player that transferred to Wake Forest for spring practice, but then decided to come back to Illinois for the fall???? How is that even possible? Was he a senior, so he basically had the 5th year to do as he pleased after graduation? This leads to so many unintended options and all sorts of craziness if you can leave one school, attend spring practice at another, and return back (or even land at a 3rd school in the fall...all within 8 months in theory.)
I'm with you. Know people say that it is supposedly good for the players - and I thought it would be too - but when you see the number of people who have not seen an upside after transferring (Hooker in the most recent thread and other Hokies who have left) I now seriously question if the relaxed transfer rules don't hurt the players more than they help. Remember a while back seeing an article about college football in general and not VT specifically, but a large proportion of the people who entered the transfer portal either end up having to step down a level or did not get picked up by anyone at all. Couple that with the challenges to the programs and fans of teams and if what you described did really happen, I wish they would add some of the restrictions back. Surely there can be something in between what we had 5 years ago and what we have now.
If players had more realistic expectations about the grass always being greener on the other side of the fence, it would probably work itself out naturally, but it does not seem to be the case yet.
Stepping down a level is often a good thing. For the majority of players this is it. If you're buried in the depth chart and want to play then going to a G5 from P5 is great.
The ones that go nowhere is horrible. Its supposed to be about getting a degree, and if people are basically dropping out of college then that is a bad thing.
What also is bad if coaches use its existence as confirmation of shitty roster management. I hate that scholarships are only for 1 year. Maybe in the past a coach would see if a player worked out, but now why not give them a quick boot. The portal giveth the portal taketh away.