https://twitter.com/footballpapi/status/1489363874491121667?s=21
"Also spoke with Virginia Tech wide receiver Tre Turner. "Big Play Tre", as he's known in Blacksburg, said he was excited to go against this level of competition and said he's worked on route running to polish the tree, as it wasn't a focus in Tech's offense."
I know I shouldn't dwell on it, but how hard is it to emphasize a sharp cut on a slant route? Ugh.
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Tre was an awesome hokie, but I also groaned that the pre-draft game he's playing in had his weight at 179?? How do you spend 4 years in Blacksburg and not gain any weight
Hopefully that problem has been addressed with the new strength coach
As a former player told me "we lead the league in skinny legs."
Not great, Bob.
Hilgart was the worst coach on Fu's staff and its not close. Tyrone Nix paid with coupons apparently was a distant second.
You're not wrong.
I loved watching the Last Dance. MJ's trainer talked about how he'd watch videos of the games to see what he needed to work out the next day to keep him healthy and balanced. Then he talked about the drastic change from a basketball body to a baseball body and then back again.
The contrast to Hilgart and how all he cared about were before and after photos was shocking.
Jafar Williams has to be in the conversation as well, our receivers barely improved at all during the 3 years he was there
+1
He was a huge downgrade from Wiggins.
This was the most perplexing part of the Fuente tenure for me. There were players who got great results. The Edmunds brothers and Dalton Keene come to mind. Armani Chatman looked the part last season. Barno too (even though his play dropped off).
On the other hand, you had so many guys not make any good progress. Dorian Strong, Alan Tisdale, and Tre Turner come to mind. I don't think it was necessarily what they were doing when players were lifting. I think it was an accountability issue to get players to actually lift.
Couple that with the poor nutrition situation up until last year, and you get less-than-favorable results. For reference, I read a story somewhere that they were giving guys Jimmy John's subs, and the players were eating them in the hallway.
The facilities are there. They have a nutrition center and a nice weightroom. Now it's all about accountability. My early, not-so-educated opinion makes me thing guys are going to be held way more accountable than they were under the previous staff.
We have some attrition that needs to take place between now and August. I think a plurality of it is going to be guys not wanting to put the work in to look the part.
Jimmy Johns is not helpful when exercising like athletes should, they skimp on the meat, you need way more protein than that.
So...you're blaming the turkey bacon???
I can't bring myself to do that. I recently started eating avocado toast with turkey bacon. Undefeated.
I would be keeping that fact to myself if I were you
Checked TKP expecting the five new replies notification to be about the route running comment I made or the weightlifting comment. Nope. It was about turkey bacon. How Fuente has scarred us.
I know I have always been against turkey bacon as I believe it is morally wrong to call it bacon. And I pretty sure the thread was against it, not because of Fuente at all, because turkey bacon is just a lie. Remember players were upset because he wasn't providing it. I think every player should be eating bacon everyday. It's a reminder to the WRs to run crisp routes like the crisp bacon. Or to the linemen that a little fat goes a long way. Or for our DBs to be a bit salty. Or to the FB to be the grease to make our running game work. Bacon would have revolutionized our team, yet they gave in the Big Meat propaganda of so call turkey "bacon"
I propose that we call it turkey breakfast meat, or that which is disgusting. Though that 2nd term might be reserved for chicken hot dogs.
Are we making Canucks rebrand their ridiculous "bacon" as well? The best part about that breakfast meat is the John Candy film that shares its name.
I mean I'm opposed to it, but it is just and inferior cut of the same meat, like a flank steak vs filet mignon. I would also get behind removing Canadian bacon as a thing and just calling taylor ham Canadian bacon as its really what Canadian bacon should be.
Fixed it for you.
hells yeah brother
I'm not from NJ so I don't care if you call it pork roll or Taylor ham but my experience is that it tastes more like bologna than Canadian bacon.
Yes and make them apologize for it.
You won't have to work hard to make a Canadian say soory.
Ugh, chicken hot dogs. My wife likes those.
To me they taste like poverty and summer boredom.
Dang. I thought I was living large when I got them.
Taste like hope and freedom.
That's why you can't afford a house
Now I am starting to believe that Sean Penn was right.
Avocado with turkey bacon ain't played nobody Pawwwl! Especially Avocado toast with real bacon.
No great story ever started with, "Well, I was just eating my avocado toast..."
The edmunds brothers were absolute monsters and were Beamer recruits, not Fuente. They both declared after one year under Fuente so that doesn't really count. The players like Dalton and Armani Chapman...It's not that Fuente and/or his S&C worked out for two guys but not the rest, it's more likely those two guys took it upon themselves to be better.
So prior to last year we didn't have the very best nutrition center in the country, thus it was an "issue"? I'm sure there is some middle ground there, lol
I agree with the the assessments by you and others in this thread that our S&C fell off a cliff during the Fuente era. That's part of the reason I am so excited for this specific offseason to see how much progress we can make.
I don't think we need to single out Tre. Some guys really are just hard gainers. If we hadn't struggled on the field so much I doubt anyone would be talking about Tre's weight. Devonta Smith weighed 170lbs at the combine at a similar height to Tre, but nobody in Bama was complaining about him not gaining weight. The issues with our S&C have become apparent over the years on a broader level.
Tre played hurt so much too, hard to do a lot of lifting when you gotta jacked up shoulder and whatever that freaky chest/lung thing was this year
I only wish it was such a struggle for me to NOT gain weight. Maybe I could sign up for the Fu-Hilgart plan
I now it has been said at TSL that some players didn't buy in and would essentially throw their protein shakes in the trash on their way out of the door
I dont understand this - protein shakes are good, why throw them out?
I heard Mike Golic Jr. complaining about this - His calorie goals as a linemen at ND were so insane, he was waking up in the middle of the night to eat peanut butter. He felt like he ate as much as his stomach could hold during the day but still couldn't hit his calorie goal, so the only way to do it was to eat in the middle of the night.
I know nothing of the reports on TSL, but I could understand why someone who is (1) exhausted with consuming calories on a schedule and (2) not bought into the current leadership would not be interested in eating based on leadership's instructions.
Also, if it was the same protein shake flavor multiple times per day, or it just tasted bad, I could understand why someone would trash it.
Here's the solution then -
edit: it legit tastes like Fruity Pebbles
this is so good. I put a little in my oatmeal every morning, with a little peanut butter and fruit.
This sounds like a really efficient way to ruin a good bowl of oatmeal.
This thread from a penn state player was pretty eye opening on what some of that looks like
That was a tough read, thanks for sharing.
TSL podcast pointed out that those in the know said there was little accountability in the S and C program. Custom protein shakes for players' calorie goals etc were tossed in the trash nearly full. Stuff like that was going on.
It's pointless to emphasize anything when the QB has to pull and run if the 1st read isn't open, and you, or your teammates are not the 1st read.
How many reviews have we had where the unused receivers just go through the motion?
I'm excited to see how Bowen and co utilize the WRs in the new offense. Spring Game 4/16
One of the weird things about the Fuente era is he came in hot on the need to develop 6-10 WRs and have them all ready to play significant snaps. But we could neither recruit that many talented receivers nor could we develop them. We never really were able to get more than about four receivers to contribute in any of his seasons. Tre was the best, but he was underdeveloped and underutilized. But, at least we had 10 RBs by the time Fuente left. 🙄
It's almost like Fu was determined to play Monopoly on a Parcheesi board
Most years didn't even get 4 receivers that actually contributed and caught more than a couple passes the entire season. WR was a consistent failure.
yeah, then as you say that evaporated in record time and now we have all the RBs
Par for the course
I mean, it makes sense. Our quarterbacks were one read and run. Our offensive line struggled in pass protection. They chose Burmeister who is obviously way more limited in the passing game than Hooker was.
If only one receiver has a shot at getting the ball a majority of the time and everything else is going to be a run, why worry about running routes? Just teach them how to block.
I'm not condoning it or supporting it in any way, shape, or form. It's ridiculous that that's what we were doing. But if your quarterback is one read and can't throw, your offensive line can't pass block, and you're going to run way more than you should (all those third down QB draws come to mind), you might as well focus more on blocking than route running.
(For the record, I do think Jafar Williams was extremely underqualified.)
the more we learn about that staff, it's a miracle we won any games at all
I'm just so confused how Fuente did so well at Memphis, but so poorly here. I understand that at a P5 program, you need to recruit at a higher level and deal with donors, but it's not like the rules are different in P5, or like you forget how to coach.
The only thing I can assume is that Memphis had so little going for it when Fuente got there, that he had ability to focus only football. When he got to VT, all the other things (recruiting, gladhanding, etc) took him away from football, and the product suffered.
Regardless, some of the stories that have come out since he left (on the field, in the medical tent, in the locker room, and off the field) are not good.
Odom and Dickey were how he did well there.
Agree on Odom. I see no evidence that Dickey was essential to Fuente's success. I get that he made a vertical career move on his own, but (1) TAMU runs a completely different offense than Fuente did at Memphis (it's basically the same offense Jimbo ran at FSU), and (2) Jimbo has always and (to my knowledge) still does call his own plays.
The only reason people think Dickey was some essential piece of Fuente's winning formula in Memphis was because he was there when Fuente was winning, and gone when Fuente was not. There's tens of other factors to consider as well.
inferior competition?
You can beat Temple, Tulsa, Navy, UConn, Houston with Corn, Galen Scott, Shibest. You can't beat Clemson or any physical ACC team with those guys. Simple.
In my opinion, it all comes down to talent.
For players, every position in football requires some combination of smarts, speed, and size. At the top of the P5 you get players that are maxed out with each at most positions (with some exceptions like Davonta Smith who was not big). As you go lower in the P5 you get players with lower levels of any three. In the G5 pick two at the top unless you identify a diamond in the rough.
For coordinators and support staff it's the ability to adapt to different conditions and understand your opponent's tendencies. It's my understanding we used a lot of statistical methods for making decisions on down and distance. I'm fairly concerned that there was not more analysis into the conditions under which those probabilities are valid. You might say that at any given time on planet Earth there's a 20% chance of precipitation (I made that up), but if you're standing in the Sahara desert with a rain coat you're probably going to be disappointed as you failed to realize that the probabilities of that happening are not uniform across the planet.
What does this have to do with Fuente? His scheme is all about misdirection. The problem with that in the P5 is that players are smart enough and fast enough to recover from the "mistake" if they even make the mistake. As time passed, opposing teams had little work to do to "decode" our scheme. Meaning the coaching staff made sure that they were in position and now you're at an even more significant disadvantage. Don't get me wrong, there were some brilliant plays sprinkled here and there over the years, but our basic foundation seemed no different than later Beamer offenses: Hope your QB can make a play.
A perfect example is a play from the 2017 Clemson game: The Clemson players were out of position, but quickly corrected themselves and stuffed the play for a loss.
I think choosing a coordinator from a well-managed P5 program was wise. Whit likely realized that the experience Pry gained as the DC at PSU in the B1G could address some of the shortcomings of the previous staff in terms of making the leap from the G5 to the P5. P5 college football is not well suited to OJT.
I don't know that I entirely buy this. Coaching and working cohesively can overcome talent gaps. Coaching and working cohesively with much higher talent will move the performance ceiling up.
But based on what you wrote, it shouldn't have even been possible for us to score 35 points on Clemson in 2016 and Ohio State turn around and get shut out by Clemson in the playoffs. Ohio State, across the field, had more talent than we did. Sure, we had some draft picks that year, but it's hard to imagine Ohio State didn't have more on the field than we did.
That 2016 roster was one of our most talented in the last decade.
On the offensive line, you had Nijman and Teller, both of whom are starting in the NFL. Ford, Phillips, and Hodges were all borderline NFL talents. TMac was a 1k rusher under beamer and then again at Colorado. Sam Rogers got drafted. Jerod Evans was a special talent.
On defense, we had 5 drsftees in Tim Settle, both Edmunds, Facyson, Adonis, and Stroman were all drafted. Also, Woody Baron and Ricky Walker each had a cup of coffee in the league before catching on in the CFL.
Joey Slye is going to be in the NFL for a while and extended our number of scoring opportunities with his leg strength. Think about how many times we got a field goal when we ordinarily would have punted. Hell, Beamer let him try one from 67 yards.
All of this is to say, people don't realize how much talent Fu had to work with in all aspects of the game that year. Once Fu had to establish his own culture, with his own recruits and make adjustments to his scheme in response to defensive tweaks based on his tendencies, his performance fell off a cliff.
I understand we had a lot of talent. My point being - was it so much higher than Ohio State, who routinely has recruiting classes in the top 5, that we would be able to put up 35 points on Clemson, whereas Ohio State would be shut out? Pointing out the talent we had isn't going to convince me that we had so much more than Ohio State and that's why we scored 35 against the eventual National Champs and Ohio State (the Big 10 conference champ) got shut out.
Ohio State's recruiting rankings by year, leading up to 2016 (according to 247)
2015 - 7
2014 - 3
2013 - 2
2012 - 5
Ohio State's NFL draft picks by year:
2017 - 7, 3 first round
2018 - 7, 2 first round
2019 - 9, 2 first round
VA Tech's draft picks by year:
2017 - 4, 0 first round
2018 - 5, 2 first round
2019 - 0
Again, I hold to the point I made and was responding to. If talent on the roster allows for overcoming mistakes (if they're made in the first place) and they can overcome misdirection, etc., how did we score 35 when Ohio State got shut out? I maintain that, according to the post I was responding to, it shouldn't have been possible (and using the above stats to counter your point about how talented we were - Ohio State, by these measures, was more talented than we were).
Out of curiousity, and lack of football knowledge, if coaches did NOT value route running, what did they value? What did they work on and focus practices and development on? I think we know they valued blocking. But that is a secondary skill for that position. What else would they focus on?
I would value catching the ball with your hands, but based on all the drops that didn't seem valued either.
Same. Not fumbling?
Doing what you are told without asking questions?
Blocking
(For the quarterback, specifically)
Grit?
The more things I hear about the previous regime the more it just makes me wonder how they ever got themselves to the P5 level.
riding coattails, obviously.
Fuente built a reputation as an offensive guru by being on the coaching staff at TCU when they had Andy Dalton (whether or not that was deserved is TBD at this point) and then furthered that reputation by hiring good coaches at Memphis (Dickey, Odom) who carried his reputation on their shoulders. Then when he got to VT, and failed to bring any competent coaches with him, he, and by extension, his buddies, were exposed as frauds. It's not a mistake that only one of his coaches has landed in a job somewhere else. Everyone else, as far as I know, is still unemployed.
which one? i never saw any news
Ryan Smith got hired by Northwestern
Doh! I knew that.
I really need to stop drinking.
Holmon Wiggins might have something to say about competent assistants. There were serious issues in the last coaching staff but let's at least try to be honest.
I'll give you that. But Wiggins also bolted pretty quickly...he was only here for 1 season I think. I'm sure one of the factors in his decision to leave was the fact he was surrounded by incompetence. Fuente might have hired a couple of good coaches in his time but his inability to hang onto the good ones and break ties with the bad ones is ultimately his legacy. By and large, his coaching staff by the end was woefully overmatched. That's why most of the coaches who worked for him in 2021 are still without jobs. Most notably, Fuente himself and Cornelsen. I don't think it is coincidence that those names haven't even been entertained for any other coaching jobs. I think it's unlikely either will be hired in the P5 any time soon. Fuente has a nice golden parachute but Cornelsen is going to have to find some form of employment. I imagine he'll wind up as a QB coach or something at some low level FCS team or become the HC at a high school in the southwest somewhere.
He left because it was Alabama and a giant pay check. No need to read in to it more than that.
that's sort of immaterial to my larger point. Fuente didn't have any good coaches on staff at the end - he couldn't keep the good ones and he couldn't part ways with the bad ones. Based on his track record, bringing in Wiggins who has arguably proved he is not incompetent was more of the anomaly. Blind squirrel - nut.
His hit rate wasn't high enough to be successful but you're really going to argue none? 🤡
,call me a clown all you want. Point out more than 1 good coach on the out-going staff. I'm arguing that he didn't keep good coaches around and didn't get rid of the bad ones. Sure he had a couple decent coaches while he was at VT but by the end all he was left with were pretty bad coaches.
That is a tough answer, not because I believe there weren't some good coaches, but more so that our S&C program was very poor and our scheme was suspect (particularly on offense, but defense still felt like a work in progress as well) that even if a position coach was really good the individual results would be vastly overshadowed by the team result.
Having said that, I do believe Vice, Teerlink, Price, and possibly Lecht were good in their individual areas. Ryan Smith is a maybe because I don't know enough to distinguish bad calls/scheme from bad individual performance in the secondary.
I don't think it's this even. We won 10 games Fuente's first year. Yes, we had talent, but we scored a bunch of points, including a much better performance against Clemson than Ohio State had against them. I still maintain that they just needed the right players to do well, the problem was that they didn't know what players they actually needed. Hence having 10 RBs and the revolving door at QB.
The ability to get to the P5 was probably based on them having a right player (Lynch) who stuck around 4 years. Who knows, maybe without Lynch, they might not have succeeded at Memphis.
I shudder to think how 2016 would have looked if Evans hadn't come here. Beamer basically didn't have a QB for the last 4 years of his tenure and it showed. We were bad. But, as you noted, the talent was otherwise pretty good. Fuente brought in Evans and Evans almost single handedly made this offense look light years better than it had in years. It helped tremendously that he had NFL caliber veterans to throw the ball to but ultimately the success of that 2016 offense can be attributed almost entirely to Evans. I can say this because without Evans our offense has been pretty mid. The common denominator is the coaches. Anyone who says "they just needed the right players to do well" is saying that the coaches are garbage and the only way they can be successful is to have incredible talent to bail them out. That's precisely the issue we're talking about. These coaches didn't know what they were doing and the only way they could have success was if they had extremely talented players who could make something from nothing. 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 were all evidence that 2016's success was much less about the coaches and much more about the players (Evans in particular).
Agree - look at games with Herbert vs games without. They got another player. Think of what the season would have been like without Herbert.
Yes, this is an excellent example of a single player elevating the output of the entire unit. VT's offense with Herbert was, overall, better than most VT offenses. But that same exact offense without Herbert was one of the worst in the league. A clear indicator that any offensive success VT had over the last 6 years was entirely on the backs of supremely talented individuals.
i also think once ACC defenses figured out Fuente's scheme after 2016 and he hardly anything was ever adjusted.
I have seen this take too many times and have to completely disagree. Yosh Nijman is an NFL starter at LT. Wyatt Teller is one of the top guards in the league. Ford is an all time leader in some categories and still playing on Sundays. Phillips still holds all time records and had a cup of coffee in the league before dominating CFL. Bucky had incredible physical gifts and was an elite college athlete (gods gift). T Mac rushed for 1k under two HCs not named Fuente. Sam Rogers was drafted as a Swiss army knife and solid solid college football player and leader. Kyle Chung is of NFL pedigree and a smart player. Eric Gallo was a multi-year starter. That team had loads of talent on both sides of the ball and it is completely disingenuous to say it was all because of Jerod.
Were there other good players? Yes. What was the core difference between teams over the previous average at best 4-5 seasons where they struggled to get bowl eligible and being a contender? A higher level college QB as that position is more important than the others.
It's true everyone needs each other to be successful in football, but rarely are there contending teams who do not have top flight QBs for their leagues in a particular year.
College QBs deserve a disproportionate amount of credit and blame and that applies to the 2016 team. Not all the credit, but clearly it was a revelation for that year.
not to fan this any more, but 2020 had a lot more to do with the defense and less so about the QB.
Defense was weird that year. Started off rough, then had a ~4 game stretch where it looked vastly improved... then Farley got hurt and a bunch of new issues popped up to end with two poor showings against UVA and Kentucky.
Edit:... I'm thinking 2019 so disregard. The 2020 defense was all out of sorts. The personnel was always on the Fritz with Covid at the start and then the second half really exposed our scheme/execution issues.
Sadly, it was at our expense.
Lesson learned, I hope. Dont be tempted to lure a non-G5 HC to be the new HC. Find another HC from another P5 or a strong assistant that has been under great leadership with first hand experience at success (e.g., Pry, Napier). Dont rely on the hot coach that rose to prestige by beating up a bunch of cupcakes (e.g., Chadwell).
I wouldn't say a G5 guy can never work out. It's just that part of the hiring process in that case should be "you're not in Kansas anymore. What is your strategy going to be to address these areas of the program that weren't as critical at your previous job?"
If they have a well thought out plan then why not? If the plan is non-existent or complete crap then they're probably not your guy. Obviously a key part of having a good plan is having seen one executed previously at a high level (P5 program), but I wouldn't say they're mutually exclusive.
This.
I forgot where I heard/read this (I think RJ said it on SZD, but can't confirm), but the argument is basically (1) attention to detail and (2) making good hires are the two things that all successful college coaches do in the modern era of CFB. You can come from a G5 program and be able to do these two things.
Didn't Meyer coach Utah and beat alabama in the sugar bowl before going to florida? Wasn't Utah P5 then?
Also, I guess BSU wasn't technically P5 but their record of success against the P5 was outstanding and much greater than Memphis under Fuente.
Utah was in the MWC until 2010 - Meyer coached there 2003-2004. They beat Pitt (Big East) in the 2005 Fiesta bowl post 2004 season after an undefeated season.
Whittingham beat Alabama in 09
Technically Brian Kelly Killed a Kid but never coached a P5 team before LSU.
Technically Brian Kelly killed a kid and coached a quasi-P5 team during the covid season 2020 when ND was in the ACC.
Not the gif I was looking for, but I'll go with it. Hat tip to you, sir.
You can never go wrong with Kristen Bell.
And feel free to look THAT up.
Then you are going to love episode 5 of her new Netflix special.
Whoever was left defending the previous staff on this board the day before Fuente was fired has been silent as crickets ever since because of shit like this
Let's be honest here. Nobody was defending Fuente at the end.
People were defending Whit's decision not to fire during the worst of the pandemic.
This, I understood Whit's decision, but it sucked at the time. The more I sat on it, I was willing to give Fuente a chance.
I still believe that the whole "year 1" thing from Whit was him putting Fuente on a performance improvement plan. Performance didn't improve, and Fuente's gone.
It's funny that a lot of the other Fuente defenders have had such a drastic about-face since.
Amazing what happens when people learn new information rather than rumor and innuendo, huh?
For what it's worth, I was off the Fuente train a couple years ago. But I can't hold it against people who were skeptical of rumor and message board chatter without really anything else to go on. People are allowed to change their minds as more information comes out and I don't think they should be shamed for it.
Changing your mind is fine, although I think the pieces were there for people to put together even without any rumors, but I don't like that the turncoats are calling out people who held on just a little longer. You're all recent turncoats to me. Get off my lawn.
tjbhokie out here like
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I think it's fair to say >99% were on board in the beginning and >99% were over him by the end, but the journey people took to get there varied. I think I can point to the Liberty game being exactly where I personally jumped from "frustrated but hopeful" to "okay get this joker out of here".
Was this the greatest fraud ever perpetuated by a staff in P5 history? Other than what's going on in Auburn right now.
Not by a mile no
I know some UCLA fans who would like a word
Lol read up on charley weis and his time at Kansas
Oh yeah, Charlie Weis was a huge fraud considering decent success at ND.
Kansas? ND paid Charlie 10 times what he made as a coach there to NOT be a coach there. Over his life, Charlie has been paid more to not be a head coach than to be a head coach.
I wish I had his agent.
Hahahahahahaha.... No.
Fuente is arguably a top 4 VT coach in the AP Poll era. One or two more wins and he would have been equal to VTs historical winning percentage.
This wasn't Steve Kragthorpe (sp?) or Derek Dooley, or a number of coaches that were way worse.
I would argue that Fuente's success came at the leisure of shitty competition, not coaching acumen. Derek Dooley was not a fraud, everyone knew he sucked. The fraud in that juncture was the Tennessee athletic department.
You could argue the same thing about most of VTs coaches from Claiborne and further back. They were playing Citadel, Richmond, William and Mary, Davison, Furman, and VMI yearly. Until we became independent half way through his tenure, we played WVU, UVA, and what are now FCS teams.
The next best record in AP Poll era is Mosley's with 11 more wins and 11 more loses than Fuente. He quit football to coach baseball after coaching us. Out of his 54 wins, 18 were against teams that are now P5, another 5 against G5 (3 were Marshall which didn't become FBS until ~1998)
Yep, as crazy as it sounds, he wasn't that bad
Record propped up by the 16, 17, and 19 seasons.
Not to mention, we had some draft picks, including several first rounders. Don't care who recruited them, Fu got to coach them.
I don't think you can equate fraud with incompetence. The man did not succeed here and was visibly stressed the whole time. Fraud would indicate purposeful ill will to me, and I do not believe that was the case here.
This. I was actually in the middle of typing something similar...
"Fraud implies he intended to screw over the program. I'm not at all on board with that assessment. He was brought in, made a lot of decisions that turned out to be poor ones - particularly in staffing. He got paid to make those decisions and I'm sure he knows he now gets to take heat for those decisions. That's the profession he chose.
But anyone who thinks he was gleefully wringing his hands in a dark basement while things were heading south like Sherman needs to take a deep breath. Turns out he was in over his head, was too unaware or too stubborn to make changes when they needed to be made and now he's out of a job. I'm hoping people will stop heaping dirt on the grave sooner rather than later. It's done, let's move on."
I disagree. I think it started off as innocent incompetence, but at some point refusing to make changes becomes malicious
They tried making changes. Look how many QBs they went through. Also, they don't know how to develop people, so they'd have to get all their players from the portal.
Basically, making changes requires the competence to understand what the right changes are to make. If you say he should have fired Corny, that assumes Fuente thought Cornelson was doing something wrong. So we're back to revolving through QBs.
They played like 8 different QBs in their tenure. The most successful left early and had choice words about how they ran the program. In year 1. Like actual year 1. They knew. They knew where the issues were coming from. Let's not play coy.
but let's play dumb and pretend they actually thought rotating to the next quarterbacks was the fix. My opinion is that trying that is fine, doing it over and over and over and over 7 times is malicious.
Bringing in Blumrick, an "athlete quarterback" when our current room was a qb made of glass with a chronically hurt throwing shoulder and an unexperienced backup we snatched from JMU is malicious.
I've honestly thought about this for a while, and I think by the end of 2019 when Fu flirted with the Baylor job, he knew he couldn't get it done at VT. I think he was hoping he could bounce to another job and still keep his stock as a coach relatively intact before people saw through him here and the seat got hot. I think he would have taken that Baylor job in a heartbeat had they actually offered.
He probably thought VT would just recruit itself when he got here. Unfortunately that only really works for a handful of the blue blood programs, and even still you have to be 110% invested in recruiting in today's game. He had built up a bit of a rep (warranted or not) from some good years at TCU and turning the Memphis program around. He didn't have a Darrell Dickey to help him on offense at VT and thought he and Corn could get the job done. I think he was hoping to reel off one more good year by chance at VT and bounce at the first opportunity. Unfortunately for him, the bottom fell out and he ran out of time.
As I've said in another thread, he had the opportunity to audition for the TCU job this year, and he crapped the bed.
He was absolutely looking to leave, but as I understood it, he wanted P5 only. Now, I doubt he sniffs G5.
and I think by the end of 2019 when Fu flirted with the Baylor job, he knew he couldn't get it done at VT. I think he was hoping he could bounce to another job and still keep his stock as a coach relatively intact before people saw through him here and the seat got hot.
Agree! I've thought about that too. And some head coaches have done this with success. They aren't capable of building/sustaining a program but they move on before the word gets out.
I can agree with that to a certain degree. Where I see fraud is he did nothing to improve his results and walked away in a much higher tax bracket than he showed up in.
I said it in another post, but here it is again. He didn't WANT to lose games. Yes, he made a lot of money in a buyout. But he would have been better off financially if he had won a lot of games, or even a decent amount of games, anything where he could keep earning millions of dollars. It's not even remotely fraud, it's incompetence.
I wasn't reading fraud as in "took money while not trying to do his job."
I read fraud as "passed himself off as worthy of a P5 job then he wasn't."
Either way he ends up wealthier than he started.
What do you mean "passed himself off as?" It's not like he floated around a resume where he claimed he won more games than he did. ESPN considered him an excellent candidate for a P5 job based on what he did at Memphis. Several different sports news articles rated him as an A or A+ hire - again based on what he accomplished at Memphis. He didn't materially misrepresent anything, he just wasn't (anywhere near) as good as people thought he'd be given his past performance. Throwing "fraud" as a label is a far cry from "didn't live up to expectations." I mean, there's a coaching carousel every year for coaches that didn't live up to expectations.
Regardless, as the other guy said - why are we taking so much effort discussing Fuente? Who cares? He's gone - let's focus on what Pry and his new staff are doing. I get it's hard to not be excited about it and wonder if it's overreacting based on our experience with Fuente, but I even went and started watching Napier press conferences to compare against that hire. And I gotta say, I think Pry gives a much better conference than Napier. To me, Pry comes across as very personable, sharp, and has a plan that he's working. I feel like Napier is more like Fuente - has an idea of what he wants to accomplish, but I don't see a plan. Granted, that's based off very limited watching, but I honestly feel more confident in Pry than Napier, and Florida should have gotten the better candidate. I think some other people thought Elliot might be a good get, but based off his staff hires, I like Pry over him as well.
Basically, I think Pry is winning at everything he can in an offseason. Now we just need to see results start coming in on the recruiting trail and on the field.
Yeah, I don't think Fuente was a fraud in the sense that he was knowingly duping VT. I do think he thought much higher of himself (or, perhaps more accurately, his buddies) than was warranted, though. Either he knew they didn't belong in the P5 but couldn't bring himself to fire them or he just had no idea how incompetent his staff was overall. Neither is good from the head coach. He looked good when he was working with decent coaches. But when he wasn't able to keep good coaches on staff, well, you saw how that went. Can you imagine how much faster VT would have dropped off if Bud Foster hadn't stuck around for a few years?
I don't know much about Fuente, the man (never met the guy) so I can't speak to whether or not he's a decent guy or a model citizen or whatever (I know some people like to fall back on that) but as a coach he just wasn't cutting it. He had success as the OC at TCU and then found a way to win with Memphis (albeit with the help of veteran coaches on his staff) but the further he got into his career the less and less help he was getting and it really showed. Probably the smartest hire Fuente made during his entire tenure at VT was bringing in Jerry Kill to give him an honest, outside perspective of the program. Then when Kill told him what he didn't want to hear he took none of the advice and Kill quickly moved on. Fuente had the opportunity to course correct and for whatever reason didn't take it. Maybe it's Safety Bias. Maybe it's loyalty to his friends over all else. Maybe it's just straight incompetence. Whatever it is, it's not a quality that will help a coach find success anywhere. Which is why he's unemployed.
Close, but the true legal definition of fraud is the intent to deceive for the purpose of personal gain (typically financial gain, but can be any type of gain). So, there is no requirement of "ill will" or an intent to harm, but an intent to deceive is likely going to cause harm to the person or institution being defrauded.
But you're right, this isn't fraud, but I think OP was really referring to the fact that Fuente (and his staff) were frauds in the colloquial sense, portraying themselves as something they're not. Fuente was never the QB whisperer, offensive genius that we all believed he was based on what we knew about him, his track record, and how he portrayed himself.
This comment was kinda, sorta /S. Of course there have been bigger frauds, and some down right criminal coaching staffs in P5 football. Fuente and crew though are up there with them, I would say Top 10 in fraudulent staffs in the last 25 years.
I am sure there are several other examples. I tend not to dwell on the past but, this is relevant to the OP. I am excited for the first time in about 4 years of the future of VT football!
It could be fast worse. Enjoy the thread:
Dude, trust me. I live 45 mins from Auburn and interact with their fans daily, that's why I said in my OP "other than Auburn right now" LOL
Every time I learn about a story like this where some older guy in a position of authority loses his shit over something ridiculous I wonder if he's on testosterone therapy. I could swear it happens all the time but maybe that's not the case.
Have you ever tasted the 23 flavors in Dr Pepper yak!?
Top 10 hardly; Greg Robinson, Willie Taggert, Chad Morris, Dan Hawkins, Jon Embree, Rich Rod , Mike London, Charlie Weis x2, Joker Phillips and David Beaty would like a word. There are certainly others that could be tossed in there too.
That doesn't include the coaches like Bobby Petrino, Art Briles, Mike Price and Michael Haywood who got canned for off the field stuff. Fuente wasn't a good coach, but he isn't even close to top 10 bad.
No, it was surely incompetence, but not fraud. Fraud is what George O'Leary did in embellishing his resume.
https://vault.si.com/vault/2002/04/08/lying-in-wait-as-george-oleary-cli...
Fraud ... sure, stupidity 150% yes. He was hired based on his on field achievements, his fake degree played no role in his hire. I mean honestly I am surprised it was ever caught, had to be some routine process that everyone goes through, but I doubt anyone doing the hiring looked at his resume.
This is a good example of fraud with no real intent to cause ill will or harm, but for his personal gain. His fraudulent statements were in his resume initially to get hired (and promoted), but he never removed them as he continued to climb the ladder. It didn't really cause any harm, and in fact his personal gain benefitted the schools that hired him because he was successful.
That former regime failed so many young men.
Good luck to Tre going forward. I really think it's time to give up on ragging on Fuente. Tired of debates on the same failings of his time here. I'm much more concerned and interested in what's next for the Hokies under Pry's leadership.
Here's a thought. Let's quit wasting time discussing the failures of the last regime and focus on the future.
But that takes the fun out of Monday morning quarterbacking
Moving on puts the fun back into TKPing
Agree. I'm tired of reading about the Fu failures and explanations. He failed to build the program. Whit has moved on to CBP, let's move on too.
I was thinking about this comment, I actually think he's referring to route trees, not just general route running. Because we ran a simplistic offense with single reads, there were no route tree options like there will be in the NFL. Tre will have to learn to read the defender and run one of the routes predescribed in the tree for that playcall. Maybe I'm misinterpreting it, but I don't think he's talking about basic route running.
I mean...WTF?
So I guess Fu and a few assistants are still living in the area. That's gotta be awkward. Extremely telling how none of them sans Smitty have landed a job.
Think Pry runs into Fu at Kroger and goes..."Hey.............so.....what's up?" Lol
Honestly this has probably already happened and I bet they just ignored each other.
I thought I read that Pry bought Fuente's house?
Well that would certainly be interesting.
That's a power move.... Reminds me of this:
Hmmm.... I thought we needed to burn the house down and rebuild...
I think it was just the kitchen. Pry and his wife took one look at the grout work and said it needed to all come down because there was too much grit.
This needs to go plaid.
Is there a point that looking back and processing the past bad experience stops being therapeutic and starts being sad sack whining, I mean counter productive?
Sure that time will come.
But whining that people are still talking about the previous regime before we've literally been allowed to have one single practice under the new coaching staff is just noise.
I was simply posing the question...not whining about the whining per se. For me I'm trying to move to acceptance that we had a coach that couldn't find the winning formula. He even had some good moments along with the many terrible ones. He's probably not the worst coach, ever nor was he just on the cusp of success. I think a little a post-mortem of the experience can be healthy. But I'm not sure how healthy it is to run Fu completely into the ground making him the worst coaching disaster ever (see previous posts above on this). Especially to the point that it blinds us to some of the endemic challenges this program faces. When is it time to move on? Well that's probably different for all of us. Probably for most of us, Spring ball can not get here fast enough!!!
This is good therapy. Good headspace in our favorite virtual sports bar.
Also, it's the off-season and we are bound to jump on any news that comes out.
Don't worry, If we start off the year a little rocky, even though everyone says they understand it's essentially a major rebuild for Pry, the conversation will quickly move to "Is Whit a competent AD?"
Wow. That was prophetic.
Live look-in of StineyDraw at his desk....
I think its important to recognize the failings of the prior regime were for reasons not just that were VT. We basically went through the program equivalent of the wife dying, dating for the first time and going for the hot stripper. Needed to take a step back, see where we went wrong, and went for someone our own age.
Now imagine I am your friend and you have found a promising woman your age who seems to check all the boxes. You and I are sitting at the bar and instead of focusing your conversation on the positives going forward with this potentially wonderfully compatible woman, you are obsessed with bringing up your stripper ex and how terrible of a job she did as your girlfriend. I may put up with it for one or two nights at the bar with you but at some point I'm going to say enough is enough and call you out on it or stop hanging out with you.
I can't speak for all TKPers but I'm sure many of us feel like that friend at the bar and are just waiting for some of you to move on.
(Not saying you are doing this btw, just extending your example to express my frustrations)
This is also valid. It's just nice to get confirmation that "its not you its them" and I get people being into it. Also, offseason and off recruiting crunch so basically dead period.
This conversation has me so confused.
Do I get to see somebody's boobies at any point?
Are you okay?
lol yes, just an analogy. We went from a unique situation of having a legendary coach and were clearly not used to sometimes coaches can't get it done.
Are you sure you didn't coach at Texas at one point?
I can neither confirm nor deny.
Is the stripper named "Pole Assassin"?
I mean, we're technically closer to our last game (Pinstripe) than we are to our next one (Spring game)...
If we win a big game next season and one of the first things people talk about it "well Fuente would have lost this game because..." it might get annoying. However, I do remember in Fuente's first season in Blacksburg, we smacked ECU. A lot of people were bringing up how Frank always seemed to struggle with ECU. It's just something fans do.
Pry is making VA recruiting a priority, Fuente couldn't and wouldn't do it... so there's that 😁
Fuente was here for a long time, and did a lot of damage to the program / overall psyche of the fanbase.
It hasn't even been three months since his dismissal, I'm not sure we're at the "stop living in the past stage" just yet.
EDIT: I will say, there is a point at which we do need to shut up and move on from CJF. There's no perfect answer to when that is, but I personally don't think the offseason post-fire is it.
I think for some of us dumping all blame for anything bad on fuente helps absolve the rest of the school/team/program of issues and provides more hope for the future that enough change has been made
to your point, I think that time is going to be different for everyone. Some people are already there. Some people won't get there for a while yet. And all of that is okay. I like to dunk on Fuente, personally, because I find it funny and, in some cases, slightly cathartic. That said, I have no issue with folks who just want to move on and never hear about him ever again. Similarly, I don't have a problem with folks who want to keep raining shi* on him and his staff.
I'm at peace, personally, with the situation. I know that we will continue to feel lingering effects of his tenure for some time but I'm not letting that stop me from being excited about the potential of the new staff. However, as excited as I may be, I'm trying to keep that excitement slightly in check. My experience bias has me acting more guarded than I was when Fuente was hired. It's going to take time, and data, for me to fully recover my unbridled fandom from the hit it took over the last 6 years (although, it's really the last 3 years since I was relatively satisfied with Fuente until he failed to part ways with Cornelsen following the 2018 season)
Realistically, we're probably going to keep talking about Fuente and Pry vs Fuente until we have actual football to talk about.
In terms of peak-offseason, we ain't seen the half of it.
I mean we haven't even had a thread on which cheese makes French vomit the fastest.
Pretty sure I've TKP'd hard enough to know the answer to this. I believe its Arby's cheese sauce which is also possibly the root of his cheese hatred.
Just for you French:
Unwrap American cheese slices and place them back in the 'fridge for about a week or two until they dry out and harden. Put a teaspoon of peanut butter on top and voila, you have yourself cheesy peanut brittle 😁
Well that will teach me to TKP while eating breakfast
EDIT: Mods can we get a ruling if downvoting this is allowed, cause it feels like it should be/s
What the hell is wrong with you
PreCrime. We need to report this. It is our civic duty.
yumm dry aged Kraft singles