Frank Beamer went 5-17 his first two years in Blacksburg. What do you think VT football would look like today if the arm-chair pundits had been able to run him out of town? I get that this isn't 1987, but this is that level of rebuild. Give these guys some time.
Frank Beamer built a program from what many of you would term as a dumpster fire. It's a good thing the internet wasn't around then, because he never would have been allotted the time it took. Put down the pitch forks. I was overly hopeful as well, but we were warned that this year could look like this.
This is posted in response to the GT vent thread. I can't believe how Johhny-come-lately people are in there.
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We were correct to give Beamer a lot of leeway. He put the program on the map.
We need to give Pry the support he needs right now.
People saying the roster isn't that bad and that it's mostly coaching are insane. Talent is hard to come by on both sides of the ball this season.
Literally no one is saying that talent level is not a problem.
Not a single person on this board.
Talent level can be bad and in game coaching can be a mess simultaneously.
I think the point is that some people are saying they don't care what the talent level is, that coaches need to be accountable. Which, to me says there is some talent level to which even a coach like Nick Saban should be fired if he doesn't perform to a certain level. And it sounds like people think we have enough talent to expect different and better outcomes.
Based on the amount of production that left after last season, and the distinct lack of 5 star talent, I'm surprised we are scoring any more than 10 points in any of our games. So the real question isn't whether talent is an issue, it's exactly how much of an issue is it, and does it warrant our current performance.
And talent level, as I've said in other posts, ignores experience and spread of talent (do you have an equal mix of talent across all positions). We had a bad mix/spread of inexperienced talent. I think we're over performing given what the coaches had (like I said, I would have expected 10 points or less per game with the talent, and ESPECIALLY experience we had on this team).
Which team do you think has more talent...Virginia Tech or Old Dominion?
Virginia Tech or Georgia Tech?
We all know that we lack talent. But when you lose to teams with even less...that's coaching. GT realIzed their problem and have been playing relatively well since then, to be fair.
Does GT not have more talent? If you go by average rank per player from 247 then GT has beaten us recruiting past 3 years.
They are on a major metropolitan area, if it wasn't for their academic, they should be easy to recruit to.
GT is 5th in team talent per 247 and we are 9th in the ACC.
I'm getting downvoted like it's a good thing that GT is more talented than us.
I don't read recruiting rankings, I stand corrected. You guys showed me
I don't think the majority of people were trying to "show you." I simply gave the numbers on the statement you made.
I think it's important to emphasize that it's not just about the overall talent but really the roster make-up. We had 10 scholarship RBs at the end of Fuente's tenure. His roster management was atrocious. We may have had higher talent scores than a lot of the teams we played but if all of that talent is consolidated into just a handful of positions and the roster is extremely imbalanced talent wise then being "more talented" on paper is a real red herring. We have talent issues at VT, and it's not just overall talent - it's distribution of talent. A few folks have said that our roster is G5 levels of bad and many have refuted that by pulling 247 rankings but that completely ignores where the talent is on the team. Our roster is in worse shape than ODU's even if we have some more talented players all grouped into a couple of positions.
None of this is an excuse for the job (or lack thereof) that these current coaches have done. I have been underwhelmed by the progress on the field thus far. But I do recognize that they are dealing with a much more significant mess than most folks are willing to admit. I'm not sharpening my pitchfork until the end of next year, at the earliest. But, truly, we won't really know whether or not Pry is going to get this program turned around until after year 3. It's going to take some serious recruiting (portal and otherwise) for a few cycles to get the roster re-balanced. Additionally, there needs to be a major culture change (because the current roster is full of dudes who only know how to lose) which probably will only occur with major turnover. Development will have to run parallel but it's going to be challenging to expect much development from players with a losing mentality.
I don't really get how so many people can be so utterly shocked that things are going to get worse before they get better. Fuente really f***ed VT's football program and whoever came in was going to have a tough time. I think we took a big risk hiring a guy with no HC experience. And that guy took pretty big risks hiring coordinators with very little experience in those roles either. I'm skeptical of whether Pry can do what he's being tasked with doing. Not because he's a bad coach, necessarily, but because the task ahead of him is incredibly difficult and it would be a hell of a challenge for anybody. Even Nick Saban would struggle to get this team to a bowl game in year 1. His recruiting might be better than Pry's at this point but that wouldn't help until, at the soonest, next year.
VT is a massive mess and anybody who doesn't realize that is in denial. There are multiple underlying issues, some of which can be blamed on Fuente, others on Whit, and even some on Pry and his coaches. I think the coaching could certainly be better. Also, I think that this team has to learn to walk before it can run. I have to have faith that is what Pry is trying to do. It's really ugly right now, and his coaches are taking some huge hits but hopefully it's because they're laying the groundwork to build off of in the future. It doesn't look good right now but that shouldn't be surprising to anyone. If it still doesn't look good in two years, we have major issues. But there is a fair chance that Pry and his coaches get this thing turned around. It was never going to happen in year 1.
Agreed on raw HC hiring raw OC and DC. The question will be if the OC and DC have to be replaced at the end of year 2 if they underperform next year. This year I think everybody keeps there job (and should) unless there is a scandal.
It's amazing how many unemployed offensive coordinators we have on this site.
I would be glad to take over the OC responsibilities next season. I will need a guaranteed contract, though; one that pays out my entire salary, even if they fire me after one game. (Note - please don't interpret this as me questioning my OC abilities; I'm sure they are great.)
This is a college football message board in case you are lost.
Seeing people on this board complain about people talking about offensive problems is a ridiculous and silly.
This is literally the intended environment to talk about the team good, bad and otherwise.
Just to clarify, are you complaining about people complaining or merely pointing it out?
Hey. I spent many hours in college blowing off afternoon classes to play Madden. Pretty sure I can step into the booth and call the game for the team.
Jeff Saturday legs this comment.
So let's see if Pry signs his Cornell Brown and/or PJ Preston. Virginia kids with offers from everyone staying home.
Beamer only needed to land one "Cornell Brown", pry will need to land several!
And it took Beamer 6 years to land Brown.
At that rate, the next Cornell Brown is one of my middle schools students.
Middle schoolers are a special age - you really don't know what each individual is going to be one day to the next. Hope you enjoy it, I know it takes a special person to teach that age group.
We have to give him a year or two to find him, but I prefer to be positive.
This is fair. Would really be nice to see that Pry can sell the program at its worst. If we can get someone of that caliber, I will be much more on board with riding along on this shit train for the next year or so.
We really shot ourselves in the foot by giving Corn-Fu too much time. I am not saying fire Pry, but I am watching much more closely for real red flags than before. Pry seems to be good at recognizing where there are issues. Can he fix them, or fire people to bring in people who can if needed?
I think it's problematic to call people "Johnny come lately" when there are several legitimate concerns with the coaching staff as it's currently operating.
And yes Frank was probably fortunate that the internet wasn't around then.
But the internet is around now.
And so is the transfer portal.
And so is NIL.
And so is megabucks being spent on TV deals.
And so is realignment forming two super conferences.
I'm not saying fire Pry post haste. But guys don't get "a few years" anymore. At least not if you want to be able to even sniff being competitive in college football in the current landscape.
The irony is, when Beamer went 2-8, who cared that VT went 2-8? Now because of the work he did, going 2-10 or 3-11 at VT is below whatever low expectations the fan base already had for this season.
The saying isn't "over promise and under deliver". Pry said what we all wanted to hear, but at some point there needs to be results. That doesn't even need to be wins necessarily. But if the season ended right now, could you honestly say there was a real bright spot for hope for the next season?
Guys ABSOLUTELY do get a few years. Maybe not in the SEC where they can pay coaches $90 million a year to NOT work there, but at some programs, there's only so much you can dish out in payouts before you have to keep bad coaches for several years.
Plus, a terrible first year doesn't necessarily mean coaches are incompetent. Should Baylor have fired Matt Rhule after his inaugural 1-11 season? Because they went 7-6 the next year, then 11-1 the year after.
I mean, we won 6 games last year and the players that scored, what 95% of the points to win those games all left. The idea that we could win games this year was based not on any abilities we had on offense, it appeared to be exclusively that we won 6 games last year (which apparently automatically means you can win AT LEAST 6 again the following year (if this logic applied, we never would have had a year with less than 10 wins, but whatever)), and that the coastal sucks (with zero regard to ANY other team having ANY returning offensive production which would be more production than we had returning).
People point to the talent level on the team, but, as I've pointed out, measures of talent don't account for spread or experience. Hypothetically, a team could have 40 five-star freshmen running backs (the entire offensive roster), and 40 five-star freshmen cornerbacks, and look absolutely AMAZING from a talent perspective, but how many games do you think they'd actually win?
Yes Pry said the things we wanted to hear, but there's almost no way we wound up being good this year, shy of 3 or 4 of our three-star receivers playing like five-star guys. And yes, there's a portal, but Pry needs time to figure out if he had any playmakers on offense, or if he needed to go get them (he needs to go get them), but how many really high performing guys did we think we could actually get?
This year was going to suck bad, not sure how else to put it. My opinion is the coaches need two years at the very least to get some good progress toward fixing what they inherited.
Strange to me how the conversation has turned into fire or not fire someone. I don't believe anyone will be fired. And I'm not advocating for that. However, commenting on the sloppy play of the team and attributing that to coaching is legitimate. It is put into the mental folder as a record of what we currently are, so that as next season evolve we can refer back to that folder and see if we are improving. Bottom line is that the coaching doesn't look good so far to me. And making such comments on a team message board is appropriate.
Having been there for CFB's 2-8-1 season, I concur that expectations were far different then, than now. But, on the flip side, expectations now aren't sky-high, either. VT's prominence was on the wane, years prior to the Fuente era. The difference was that in 1992, we could count on one hand (with fingers left over) the number of bowl appearances VT had. Beamer changed that perception drastically. And that's a cause for hope - hopefully Coach Pry can leverage that history on the recruiting trail.
Yeah OP's tone isn't great. I've been chewing on it for a few days and this is the most I can say about it without getting DV'd into oblivion.
My worry is that we are still a "few years" kind of place in a CFB landscape that doesn't accommodate that anymore. Time will tell. We're gonna find out real fast how good of a recruiter CBP is. He better be going into the house of every stud he wants, showing tape of the offense, telling them what kind of scheme he wants to run, and going "imagine how much better it would look with you."
That still might not work. But that's what I'd do. Anyway, Go Hokies
I'm not trying to pick a fight, but I am curious. Why is my tone worse than people shitting on a new guy, in a new job, with new coworkers? I mean, that's what this is. I believe in giving people a chance to prove themselves. If he's still making the same mistakes next year, then I will be onboard with the criticism.
The team blew double digit leads in back to back games and lost - and the second game was one of the last "winnables" on the schedule.
Circumstances be damned, any and all criticism is warranted after that.
Disagree with the above if you like, but don't make belittling implications about people's intelligence with words like "armchair" and "pitchfork" and calling them "Johnny come lately." Fan criticism of the team is not as big a problem as the team itself, and when the team does poorly, it's not a problem at all and shouldn't be treated as such.
Going by high scores in this thread, though, I appear to be in the minority.
I think it's because when you read "johnny come lately" you can easily infer one of two things: that the upset folks must be new to tech football, or that a few losses is all it took for them to turn. Both of those things imply that their opinion is less valid because they aren't considering things the way you are.
I mean it the second way. I don't think the opinion I was talking about lacks validity. I think it is a byproduct of modern "what have you done for me lately" expectations. I think it lacks courage and conviction.
I've seen a lot of comments that make me think people are using individual game results (in close games) to determine their opinion of how this team is doing overall and the direction of the program. I think this is a poor way to assess a material difference in where we are moving forward.
Here is a scenario to illustrate my point: Let's rewrite the last two games with one individual play changed in each game.
1. NC State QB Morris on their go ahead TD drive drops back to pass and as he throws his arm back, inexplicably loses the ball and we recover the unforced fumble. We win the game!
2. GT QB Zach Pyron fumbles on his way into the EZ from an inadvertent contact (not intentional) as he was scrambling into the EZ. We recover in the EZ for a touchback and go on to win the game.
These two plays would change our record, but would have no difference on how good this team actually is. These two results changing does not make any difference in the quality of the roster we have, and does not change one single thing about the job we have rebuilding that roster, and getting better as a football team moving forward.
This is why I don't really understand the hyperbolic responses of some to losing these close games. Nothing about our team and the state of the program would be any different if we happened to get one play of turnover luck rather than the team's we were playing. It was tough to lose to NC State in that fashion. It was tough to be in the stands this past weekend, feeling like we were going to win for most of the game, only to blunder it away in the fourth. It's okay to be upset about those things. It still hurt me, but certainly not to the level that these losses would have during the 2000's. The expectation and context of what it means to our seasons are dramatically different this year compared to that era.
That does not mean I think our team should be free of criticism. The players, the coach's, etc. they can absolutely be criticized, but I think far too much future coaching staff assessment is being made off the back of two very close losses, that could have easily gone our way with a small bit of luck, rather than the other team. Something that doesn't really change the quality of the team or the state of our program at all.
That luck against us includes 2 fumbles deep into the enemy territory that would have turned into field goals at the least if the drive had stalled normally.
Exactly. There's almost no chance we lose that game if Keshawn King doesn't fumble. It's really as simple as that. One fumble inside the 10 shouldn't be changing anyone's perception of the program and its direction.
I agree. Both loses were a combination of bad luck and poor 4th quarter play.
Bad luck injury to Thomas and the VT offense completely crumbles without a threat of a run game. Offense is incapable to adjust and does not net positive yardage in the 4th quarter, and poor defensive play and play calling to end the game results in a 1 pt loss.
Bad luck fumble (and lack of recovery) by King at the 10yard line, followed by a poor throw-interception on the next drive, resulting in a 14-28 pt swing. Offense continues to sputter plus poor defense and play calling to end the game results in a 1 pt loss.
All that said, Pry needs to prevent himself from becoming the next Scott Frost, and inexplicably keep losing games VT should win. It's unlikely, but if VT keeps losing games in a similar fashion, it's eventually going to lay at Pry's feet.
This I completely agree with, but we can't figure that out in year 1. My main point is moreso focused on my thought that we wouldn't see nearly this many negative takes about the coaching staff if one or both of those close losses just happened to be wins, even if it was just one or two lucky plays going our way to change the results.
A losing culture is a 100% real thing. Look no further than Maryland football. When they fired fridge and hired that clown Edsall, they quickly learned how to lose and their fans turned on them- rapidly. There is STILL zero juice around that program, and Locks has them playing pretty decent- especially on offense. There is still a funk around that program. VT desperatley needs to avoid this.
I don't disagree with you at all.
In Maryland's case, there's also the resignation to the fact that they're virtually never winning anything in that conference in the foreseeable future.
This can go a lot of ways. Pry can find his way onto a Scott Frost type of position, he could also find us in a Lance Leipold type of position for all we know. Neither is likely, as things will likely work to the middle of both extremes, but both extremes started at the same place.
The only good thing about constantly losing small, is that you are not to far way from often winning small.
Next year will be way more telling than this one. The talent level will not likely be much better than it is now, but if coaching improves, the improvement under the right circumstances can have a disparate impact on the teams win total.
Honestly, I think that this, the "two plays change our record, but would have no difference on how good the team actually is" would apply to the late Beamer years and ABSOLUTELY applies to Fuente. There were a bunch of games that came down to a fluke play that made it seem easier to either hang on to an aging program great (which I honestly can't fault...who fires that guy?) and made it a lot easier to hang on to grumpy ass Fuente as he kept clowning himself into 6 win campaigns. Its hard to separate the final score from the quality of the product. I think we can measure success from Pry by coaching moves should those prove to need making, and recruiting. Get better players.
No question about this.
A couple iconic Fuente games were won by the slimmest of margins. In contrast, the 2014 and 2015 VT teams were completely snakebit in one score games. 9/12 losses across those two seasons decided by one score. The only 3 that weren't one score losses were 2014 Miami (30-6, fumble game), 2015 Ohio State (Brewer goes down), and 2015 Miami (10 pt loss 20-30). That isn't to say Beamer didn't get his share of close beneficial losses, but I have long been a champion that the 2016 VT team that made Fuente look so great, probably wasn't so unexpected in hindsight between the talent he inherited, and how barring some one score game bad luck + injuries those 2014 and 2015 teams were probably closer to 8-4 or 9-3 teams than the 7-6 teams they ended up.
I think this is true, but I don't think it means the people freaking out are wrong. The turnovers are a problem, the penalties are a problem, the inability to run the ball is a problem, and even if we happened to back ourselves into a win with those problems, they would still be problems. Not only that, but solid to good players have been playing like bad players. That's both confusing, and a problem. A win would have been nice, but it wouldn't have changed any of those underlying issues that desperately need to be addressed.
Then we are in agreement on almost all of this? I said the criticism is okay (penalties, inability to run the ball, etc.), though turnovers are mostly luck that's not something I'm going to fret over. However, I think the difference is that there is no question for me that the fact that we LOST these games has been heavily impacting the number of sky is falling posts and reactions we've seen. If we won these last two games, we'd all be worried about the same underlying problems still, but I'd bet every dollar I own there would be significantly less sky-is-falling-type posts all over VT message boards right now.
I would be curious to hear which players you're thinking of here, specifically. I think Dax and Garbutt are having arguably their best seasons at Tech. Mansoor Delane is a bright spot. Dorian Strong and Malachi Thomas have been hurt for most of the season so there isn't much to weigh in on them negatively or positively. Keshawn King is having his best season at Tech. I'd be willing to hear arguments on Conner or Tisdale, but honestly Tisdale hasn't played much, and both have been about as inconsistent as they have always been.
Funny enough, I think there have been less sky is falling posts after two 1 pt losses than there were after the earlier losses. The games were closer, more competitive, and basically losing to luck rather than poor planning. I think the play calling has definitely improved for the OC in the last 2 games.
Previously good players who aren't performing as well as expected would be mostly on the offensive line, IMO.
Dzansi is playing out of position so I can't really blame him as it's a roster management issue he is there. Can't really argue about the rest.
But the TEs have been not great in blocking. The fact that a true frosh has gotten a ton of looks vs Gallo who started most of last year ....
Where we have a new coach implementing a new system. And it's known that it usually takes at least 2-3 years to really get an O-line up and running.
So until Rudolph can get his guys in and get the machine going, I'm sure the O-line strategy is a patchwork of old and new. You want just enough old stuff to keep the older players able to function, but not so much that it hinders the younger players from picking up on the new techniques.
I totally get what you're saying from a fan's perspective, but this is always the mentality of losing coaches. We won two games my senior year of highschool, but in film review our head coach would always say this kind of stuff. If we had this one play back on defense and this one play back on offense, we would have won the game... Fuente used this argument quite a lot, if I recall correctly.
This argument is part of a losing mentality, in my opinion. It's a route to complacency because it allows the players to think "we're good enough, we just got unlucky." You have to be irate that you lost. I know we're only discussing the fanbases assessment of the coaches and not culture of the locker room, but if Pry is using this kind of language with the players and coaches, we're F'd.
FWIW, I'm not for firing anybody at this point - I wrote the season off after Fuente's tenure was ended. But the regression on offense, after all those years of Corn, is just shameful to say the least. My perception is if the offense was operating anything like last year's, we would not be talking about a play here and a play there.
I wonder if part of Pry saying these things is just because the current players on this roster come from the past regime and a losing culture. They do not have enough dog in them and don't hate to lose without needing some external motivation by the coaches. I think this is what Pry is trying to recruit/build, a roster that is bought in together and absolutely will not accept losing and take ownership/self-police themselves on accountability. I just think Fu built an entirely soft culture, and he's probably afraid if he goes ballistic that the team may check out. He's probably trying to do what's best to motivate this particular current roster at this time, not necessarily what he wants moving forward.
All our best players on offense from last year left my man: Tre Turner went pro, Tayvion Robinson is at Kentucky, James Mitchell is with the Lions, Lecitus Smith is with the Cardinals, Raheem Blackshear scored a TD for the Panthers last weekend, etc. The ones who stuck around, Malachi Thomas and Keshawn King, have been either hurt or productive when they are on the field.
The pieces on offense were straight up better last year. It's not fair to compare them 1 to 1.
That was definitely more of a Beamer thing. Fuente would just scoff and say the players need to execute better. The latter years of Beamer were so many close losses. While Fuente had his share of 1 score losses, I think over half were more than 1 score.
Its also a way to illustrate how the little things matter, and that you have to be focused and ready on every play because you never know which could be a turning point. It's up to the coaches to instill the latter mindset instead of the former.
Ironically enough the turnaround for Frank happened after he let go of his defensive & offensive coordinators lol
Things are very different now than they were in the late 80s ...... let alone the late Twenteens -- NIL, Portal, MegaTV dollars, consolidation of conferences via realignment, etc.
Having said that -- it's clear to me than many people actually expected quick fixes and a quick turnaround. Lots of people saying "Pry told us what we all wanted to hear", but neglect to mention that he also said we should prepare for a long year.
Many of the same people who are indicating that heads should roll were also on TKP 10 months ago saying that we would be awful this year. The fanbase has been spoiled by a long stretch of consecutive 10-in seasons, a long stretch of consecutive winning seasons, and a long stretch of consecutive bowl-eligible seasons. A large portion of the fanbase has not seen an objectively bad Hokies football team. We collectively understand in theory that a rebuild will be painful and take a little while, but it's different to live through it and see what "ugly" actually looks like on the field.
College Football is ultimately results-driven. It's how Urban Meyer can be scummy and cover up for a domestic abuser and still find jobs, it's how Brian Kelly can kill a kid and still get a big money move to the premier conference in the land. But often process and results go hand-in-hand -- it's clear that the last few years at Tech, the Fuente regime had a broken process that led to bad results: cycling through recruiting strategies, weird insistence on pre-determined reads/outcomes on offense, odd internal evals for QBs, inability to self-scout, loyalty-to-a-fault with coaching staff, so on and so forth.
We all want results and process -- In the absence of results, people are quick to question and doubt the process, and I'm not sure that's fair. We don't see what's going on behind closed doors, we don't see how the coaches are coaching the kids in practice, we aren't privy to any alignment of the staff and administration on short-medium-long term goals. All we see now are the results. But it's like the equivalent of having ACL surgery and wondering why your knee isn't better yet. Yeah it was broken, but the repair required cutting stuff open and physical therapy to regain the strength.
This season is cutting stuff open. It's earnestly evaluating the players. It's learning to be selective in which redshirts to burn and which are too important to burn. It's rebuilding recruiting relationships in VA and getting in kids that are dedicated to being part of the solution -- it's telling to me that we're in the middle of the worst season of the last 30 years and there's only been one decommit (none from In-state kids) from the 2023 class. This class wants to be here and fix things.
This upcoming offseason, the next season, and the 2024 recruiting class are the big signifiers of the process. Do we see a large roster overhaul via the portal? Do true freshmen and r-freshmen crack the 2 deep and contribute on the field next year? Does the OL play better? Do fine-margin losses turn into some fine-margin wins? Does the 2024 recruiting class represent a clear raising of the floor and ceiling relative to what we saw under Fuente?
I'm willing to give Pry the benefit of the doubt for this year. It's a huge adjustment from what we're used to. Do I know if it's a positive and beneficial course-correct? Not with certainty or confidence. Do I think it's worth giving him a shot to see if the process leads to results without reading too much into the first year? Yes. Do I think cleaning house and taking a chance on another new staff after the first bad year in basically 30 years is a better route than giving Pry a chance to execute the vision with continuity and cohesion? I think it's really really unlikely.
edit: a word
Most people knew this was going to be a bad year.
I don't think most people were looking at this schedule with the expectation of a possible two win season.
This record is worse than most people expected.
I think this is fair. I'd say most people thought we'd be in the 6-win range.
I do think our schedule is particularly soft (being in the weakest division of the weakest P5 conference helps) but we're also a really, really bad team. I tried really hard not to have any expectations re: number of wins.
A lot of us are accustomed to VT being at least a bowl team (for nearly 30 years in a row, we were) so seeing our team look UVA-bad is shocking and, frankly, unbelievable to many. There were a few folks who were beating the drum of "we're going to be really bad, we might only win two games" in the off-season but most folks didn't want to hear it. That's where we are, though. I don't think we'll beat Duke (I'll be in Wallace Wade to see that one) and I think Liberty administrators have a better shot at getting into Heaven than VT does of winning against their football team. UVA is almost as much of a mess as VT is, which is kind of shocking because I thought Bronco did a better job managing his roster than Fuente and I thought Elliot would be at least half way decent for them. I think, optimistically, we'll finish the season at 3-9 but there is a very real chance we'll lose to UVA and finish 2-10. There were only a handful of people who thought 2 wins was remotely possible. So most peoples' expectations have been dashed.
It's incongruence between what an actual bad team is and what a relatively bad VT team is.
Not intending to put the spotlight unfairly on HokieinFLA specifically, but something just doesn't add up when saying "I think 2022 is going to be pretty ugly even with the best of luck in the Portal. Fuente screwed this Team up royally." and "We will be bad in 2022." and then also saying the team "looks like a 4-5 win team" for this year but now also being one of the commenters on the board most vocal in criticism and skepticism that the coaching staff in place now can turn things around. Either we're that bad and our expectations collectively should have been lower and the coaching staff gets more time accordingly, or things weren't actually that bad. But a 5 win team isn't inherently "ugly"!
Yes the record is worse than most people expected, but i really don't think this year about about on-field results at all. Nice-to-haves, not must-haves.
Others have said it as well, but I think it's the difference between expecting bad and experiencing bad. Even if you thought we'd be a 2-win team this year, actually experiencing it is likely worse than many thought.
I think it's also telling that before NCST (a game pretty much none of us expected to be close) we were talking about silver linings, but after 2 close losses we are ready to burn the house down. Having a lead in the last two games have us hope, which was quickly extinguished. That's way worse than just losing by 30, from an emotional perspective, IMO.
Basically, the difference between preseason expectations of being bad and the in season experience of being bad is that expectations are based (largely) on a rational analysis of information, whereas many folks' reactions now are based on emotion.
It's not so much the wins and losses as it is how they happen for a lot of people.
I thought we would be anywhere from a 4 to 7 win team, with 4 more likely than 7. I expected a lot of games to look like WVU, Pitt, and UNC. Hang around, make a few plays, but ultimately just not be good enough to win.
We now have three games (ODU, NCST, GT) where everything is going our way and we metaphorically turn into Kevin Malone trying not to spill the chili pot on himself only to be sitting on the ground trying to scoop it back up.
Big picture, as others have pointed out, does it matter that we won't be playing in the Beef O'Brady's Chicken Finger Bowl this year? No. But depending on your vantage point, it's either frustrating (optimistic view) or troublesome (pessimistic view) that this has become a trend. I'm going to try stay on the optimistic side of things, but I don't think being pissed about these losses means that people had unrealistic expectations neccessarily.
Is the glass half-full or half-empty?
If we were 2-7 with nothing but blowout losses would we really be in a better place than where we are now?
Some people are understandably angry about the Kevin-with-chili nature of our close losses, but others are happy to see us improve from getting blown out to having a chance to win.
Who's right and who's wrong is anybody's guess, we won't know for a while.
Cherry picked stats aren't worth the paper they're printed on, but emotions and eye test will look different for everyone watching a given game. If my math is right, between halftime of the WVU game and halftime of the Miami game, we were out scored by 84 points. From halftime of the Miami game until now we've out scored our opponents by 12 points. That's still resulted in nothing but losses, but I don't blame people who are hanging onto the little positives that have been sprinkled in the past 10 quarters of football or so. I also don't blame people who are focused on the 6 consecutive losses and finding innovative ways to lose.
Such a classic reference. One of the best cold-openers of that series.
I don't know man, I don't think there's any way to lose to teams like ODU, GT, etc. Posters here say they're okay losing to 'better players' as long as 'our guys are trying' but then when get mad when we can't run the ball. The team hasn't quit; we can't run the ball because the other teams' front 7 is better than our OL + DL.
I think most VT fans really can't fathom a 2 win season, because a lot of us have never seen it. That makes it hard to imagine (much less be understanding) of less than 5 wins.
The issue with the 2 win thing is that that was the lowest of floors. This team is arguably worse than many people expected and should still have at least 3 wins.
If this team had come out and look the 2018 team where they're just being pushed around by everybody and their mother on their way to a 2-10 season I really think the rational majority of our fanbase would be ok with it. It's the fact that we're pulling a UVA and seemingly finding a new way to lose every weekend that is upsetting.
Again - I'm still optimistic about the overall direction of the program because the on field results of this season are one of the least important parts of this rebuild. I just think it's really oversimplifying to say that people don't know what sucky teams look like
I will keep saying this until I'm blue in the face - most people who expected more than 2 wins were basing that on 2 things, the fact that we had six wins last year and/or that the coastal is perceived to be the worst division in the P5.
This 100% ignores what actual players they thought would be getting yards and TDs. Almost all of our production left and 60% of our O-Line. That means that people thought exclusively unproven players would be better than whatever the rest of the Coastal has, just because there's a perception everyone else sucks, regardless of whatever ACTUAL production they returned and the fact that the production we did have (that left) was only good enough to get us 6 wins in a very crappy Coastal last year.
; Being a student from 1983-88, I'm definitely in the minority here that HAVE seen objectively bad Hokie teams. Granted the sanctions from the Dooley years didn't help). I got to see Bruce Smith play in person(23 sacks in 11 games-despite being double-teamed 90% of the time is a feat probably never to be seen again);also present at VTs first ever bowl win in the Peach Bowl after 10-1-1 season. But also saw us drawing crowds of 30-40,000 at best for most games with opponents other the WVU or UVA; and going 3-8 the next year. Average PPG of 16 with 6 games scoring <14 and 5 of them with only one TD scored-10 pts or less (we are at 20 ppg this year(with 4 games <20 points scored). BUT I'm a eternal optimist, so I'll continue going and cheering them on (and praying we don't find new and inventive ways to lose lol-not what I thought 'inventing the future' meant!)
At my job, I've had plenty of supervisors come in, newly promoted, and ready to just shake everything up to fix all of what they perceive is wrong. The issue is that a lot of things are happening for a reason, and you need to get in there and figure out those reasons before creating mass chaos. I've even had one of those supervisors admit after they moved on to another position that that was their biggest lesson learned -- take some time to figure out what you have when you come into a new position.
I feel like Pry is taking that more measured response. That's what those notes on the sideline are. That's why he's not worried about yelling at the refs for any blown call. This year is basically a stress test for the team, and Pry will soon know (hopefully) the best method to move forward and have the guys with him.
I like this analogy. I think there just needs to be a little more Gordon Ramsey-esque pressure from above as well. But who knows, he may be doing that in the locker room.
[Coack Pry enters the locker room with two pieces of bread.]
Pry: Where's Keyshawn?
[Looks around the room, spots King in front of his locker, and heads that way.]
Pry: What have I told you?
King: Sir?
Pry: What is rule #1 for a RB?
[King drops his head.]
King: [softly] Protect the ball.
Pry: I can't hear you!
King: Protect the ball.
Pry: That's right. Protect the ball.
[Places the pieces of bread, one on either side of King's head.]
Pry: What are you right now?
King: [having seen this before] An idiot sandwich.
Pry: An idiot sandwich. Don't do that again.
King: Yes, coach.
Leadership 101: Humiliate in public, praise in private
Shouldn't that be "Humiliate in private, praise in public"?
Only if you want to be effective and not a tyrant
I've said before that this was going to be a big rebuild and the results of year one could be pretty terrible. But not necessarily telling. There were folks who thought we could go .500 this year. I thought it was possible but unlikely. I still think it's important not to let the results of year one turn those same folks into pessimists.
There just is no really good way to tell what you have in just one year. Justin Fuente won 10 games, the Coastal, and was a TD away from taking the eventual national champs to OT in the ACC CG. Then he capped the season by beating Arkansas in one half. Then in year two he took a modest, but understandable, step back before absolutely shi**ing the bed in year three. By the end of year three we should have known that things were headed in the wrong direction.
My point here is that Pry could've won 0 games or 12 in year one and we wouldn't know whether things are going in the right direction or not. Years two and three will be telling. I'm not suggesting that he should be meeting our expectations in year three but I think it should be clear by the end of year three whether or not we're on the right path. It was clear with Fuente. We just acted three years too late and now Pry has a much, much more serious problem to fix.
I will admit that I don't have a tremendous amount of confidence in Pry to get us on the right path. But it is just way too early to pass final judgements yet. I'm concerned that he has no HC experience and he's learning on the job. It's been bad. I'm concerned that he, being a defensive guy, brought in a pretty green, unproven, offensive coordinator to fix a mess of an offense that hasn't been good in over a decade. And we have the worse offense we've seen in nearly three decades. He has definitely stumbled out of the starting blocks.
I like Pry a lot and I really want him to be successful. I'm not convinced that he will be, at least in Blacksburg, but there just isn't enough information to really know for sure. I'm also not convinced that he's not the right guy for this job. This offseason will be long, painful, and interesting to follow. Years two and three will paint the picture for us, IMO. We don't know right now whether Pry can fix VT football. We'll know in a couple years.
I think the biggest hope for pry is that kids on the recruiting trail like him. Fuente couldn't keep or recruit talent (a few portal gems aside).
But being liked and feeling like family on a team is powerful. I just hope pry can work that magic, because that seems to be his greatest strength so far.
I'll admit, I was thinking 6 and 6 before the season. Wins over ODU (can't lose to them again), Liberty (No Malik), Duke(New coach), GT(Soon to be fired coach), and UVA(LOL) were the givens. I was hoping we would steal one other (WVU on Thursday Night).
6 and 6 is out the window, but I still think we get at least 1 more. My guess would be UVA. That one should mean enough to the players and Pry. Is it ideal? Not in the least. At least we would still have the Commonwealth Cup though.
It's great that Beamer got 5 years, but it's not 1987 anymore and the stakes are exponentially higher in 2022 - 2026.
IMO, there couldn't be a worse time to either be pretending to, attempting to, or even successfully taking on a complete 3-4 yr rebuild. It's entirely possible that even if Pry and Whit get things to where they envision them, the rest of the college sports world will have moved on and VT being 10-2 or whatever will be a tree falling in the forest.
But Pry and Whit will probably get a better jobs in the B1G or SEC.
I was loudly saying that I wanted to follow the 5 year plan with Fuente, with the caveat that years 3 and 4 would show us what we were getting.
I was wrong. Years 3 and 4 weren't great but they were halfway down the downslope.
With Pry, I'm more hopeful that he's the right fit for us but now I'm thinking more along the lines of a 4 year plan. Between now and then we can get a sense of how he recruits and, after that, how he coaches those recruits. I still contend that year 3 should be the year when we get to see what he can do with the program, but without having the opportunity to recruit before his first year, I'm thinking year 3 will actually show up in year 4.
So 4 year plan. That's when I'll either be a Pry fanboy or I'll be sharpening my pitchfork.
At Clemson, Dabo had the following: year one (partial): 4-3. Year two: 9-5. Year three: 6-7. Year four onward: 10+ wins. It takes time. Little by little the team improves. You see it on the field first and in the scoring later. My concern: we have not seen a lot of improvement on the field so far this year. Disconcerting. It better happen next year. I still think Pry gets three years to right the ship, and if we did not see improvement by then he's toast.
He also had the guts to pay players when that money went a lot further. VT was too squeaky clean to have the kind of rise Dabo and Clemson had. And now we're too poor
2-9 and 3-8 in the late 80's early 90's very different than today.
80's VT teams weren't getting smoked by the ODU's and Liberty of the era, and we weren't exactly pushovers during the early 90's. Beat some pretty good UVA and WVU teams. Remember the #1 Hoos?
Beamer was pretty much a laughing stock in 1993 when I was in school at VT. He was on the verge of turning it around but there was very little respect on campus for him at that time. I don't think it's a fair comparison or even relevant in today's climate to link Beamer to what Pry has to overcome.
You said '80s, so I went back and looked. '81 we lost to VMI and '85 we lost to Richmond. However, I think you were really referring to the late 80's early 90's. We played ECU almost every year and split with them. We also played Temple frequently and split with them. We did beat our 1 MAC opponent every year and JMU when we played them.
I bet UCLA is glad they didn't fire Chip Kelly after 3 years. Let's give Pry a chance. Sure, he's made mistakes. But, he's trying to turn half of a yard sale Mr. Potato head set into Batman. Going to take a little while.
Pry should and will get the same chance Fuente got. Pry also didn't inherit NFL draft pics and landed Wells instead of Jerod in the portal, so perhaps even more time than Fu. Any talk of canning a coach outside of a cheating or off field scandal is nonsense before they have 3 recruiting classes at minimum anyway. Now if Keonte Jenkins gets in trouble and it blows up the entire defense, chemistry and locker room ala Mook Reynolds...then we might have problems.
Me after reading this fantastically level headed and logical take that hasn't been seen enough on TKP lately and then realizing it was made by dcwilson
This gif might put me in the holiday spirit.
If I had the embed skills on my phone, I would be posting the Paul Rudd double take from Wet Hot American Summer
got you fam:
What happened to Keonte?
Nothing, just using him as an example of an important player on the team like mook was.
I just want to say that this thread is fantastic pretty much top to bottom and makes me proud to TKP. Calmly presented well reasoned positions and polite disagreement without invective.
Well done, assholes!
via GIPHY
This was my first post, at least I don't remember posting before. I was kinda worried how it would go over. I'm pretty pleased with the discussion as well.