Initial Thoughts
Pop is the real deal. Future of QB is bright and I hope he travels with the team and is able to play in 4 games this year so we can keep the redshirt.
I'm sure French will break this down further, but all the backs look better this year, especially Chance Black. Coney is a pleasant surprise as well.
Very good to have more depth in the WR room.
Not sure how to feel about the defense yet. It looks like the DBs have better hands because they are actually catching interceptions now. Mose Phillips just might work his way into the rotation this year.
Personally, I think JC should be on the hot seat this year. If we aren't getting pressure from the Defensive Line, this will be two years now that he's coaching the DL by himself and we aren't getting any pressure. No more excuses.
Comments
Matthew loves ball is a goated account
Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I'm honestly not sure. I do love these condensed games though.
GOAT = Greatest of all time
GOATED = the title of 'GOAT' has been bestowed upon thee
That said, as a population, we've started using the term GOAT too liberally (IMHO), so now it signifies doing something that is very much appreciated (even if it does not literally refer to being the greatest of all time). So, saying that 'Matthew Loves Ball is goated' means 'I really appreciate that Matthew Loves Ball did this, and I want to recognize his outstanding efforts'
OK, thanks for clarifying. I knew the GOAT acronym but never heard it used like this.
Get off my lawn.
it's a shame how overuse of a word or phrase can really whittle away the power of it
this was a lesson I learned from my older brother when I was a young lad and learned about cussing. He told me that the more I use the word the less impact it has, which defeats the purpose. He helped me to understand the value of swear words and to use them sparingly, but to great effect. A wise bugger, he is.
Language is ever evolving. The GOAT has the 'traditional' meaning (your Brady's, Jordan's, Lebron's, Gretzky's, Ali's, Tigers, etc). A GOAT is someone more like Matthew Loves Ball.
Another way of saying this is that cuss words are like a strong spice- used sparingly, they add a great flavor to something, but dump the whole container in and it tastes like a##!
Army Colonel Glover Johns wrote: There is a salient difference between profanity and obscenity; while a leader employs profanity (tempered with discretion), he never uses obscenities.
That's something I always try to remember whenever I was speaking with coworkers and subordinates.
My main takeaway is the Maroon team offense (seemingly first team) is slicing everyone up. It's so hard to tell from these what it actually means.
I remember in the summer leading up to the '10 season Tyrod carving up the defense and everyone took it as a sign that our offense was going to be awesome. Which ended up being half true in that it also turned out our defense was just "okay" by Bud Foster standards and it was masking issues that we ended up having with our oline (at least early in the season).
If I recall correctly, that defense was foster's second worst at VT (behind 2018).
Worse than 14 and 15? If I remember 15 was pretty bad too, worse than any I remember during the 2000-2013 years
I know its been beat to death by the fandom, but failing to yield a passable offense 2012 - 2014 is so painful to think back on. Bud basically carried the bowl streak by himself down the stretch.
This chart shows why bud foster was a legend. That is some damn fine work
SP+ 11 for 2014? 🤔 They year we got 30-6'd by Duke Johnson and the Canes at home?
So I'll talk about this game specifically. VT had 3 turnovers, got 10 less offensive snaps, and lost the starting field position battle by over 8 yards. None of this is the defense's fault, but all of it makes life significantly tougher for the defense.
SP+ adjust for things like this and says 'hey, if every other defense had to deal with the leoffler offense, there are only 10 others that would be better'
FEI actually ranked our 2014 defense 5th best that season. Here's a breakdown.
Also while that Miami game was rough, we can't forget that the 2014 defense also posted an amazing performance on the road against the eventual national champions.
Then gave up 500 yards to ECU the following weekend
They gave up 500 yards to Lincoln Riley
This is a perfect illustration of the point I was trying to make here a few weeks ago.
And you posted basically this same chart there too, now that I look at it.
VT has long been all about defense. Our offense has been okay at times but it has never truly matched our defense. Based on this chart our defense had finished in the top 10 seven times in 14 years. In that same span our offense had not only never finished in the top 10, it finished outside the top 60 seven times. It was an absolute disservice to Foster that he couldn't even get a top 40 offense paired with his elite defense most of the time. And top 40, though decent, isn't even close to the elite level our defense practically sustained for most of the last 20 years. Is it really so much to ask for a half way decent offense?
BRUTAL. Never seen it explained that way but woof
Yeah, the one thing about the Beamer era that always troubles me is we just insisted on running a very vanilla ball-control offense and relied too heavily on a QB or RB to make a play for production rather than an effective offense. It boggles the mind why we didn't try to actually get a really good offensive coordinator in here through some of our best years. If we had done that and paired an exciting offense with Foster's defense, we probably don't start losing a ton of recruits out of state and we may have at the least won more BCS bowls and maybe even gotten back to the big game a time or two more.
One of the reasons the offense was so average and the defense was so good is that CFB emphasized the D in coaching and recruiting. He recruited defense first and Bud got first pick of the two-way players; so the best players on the team were always on the defense except for special cases like MV7.
I'm not sure if I totally buy this. We recruited some studs on offense (in fact, 3/4 of our consensus 5 star recruits played offense) and often had great talent. We just squandered it, mostly. We had so many great RBs, several solid WRs, and of course a few highly touted QBs. And some solid TEs. And we still have some very good nfl olinemen playing in the league. Talent on offense wasn't really a problem for us until after 2016. We just did a horrendous job of creating a sensible offense with the pieces we had.🤷♂️ Even though we had some really talented players, our offense was pretty pedestrian most of the time. The best offenses we ever had were basically just "put the best athlete we have at QB and let them play hero ball". Mike Vick and Tyrod Taylor carried the best offenses we ever fielded on their backs. But when we don't have a supremely talented athlete playing qb we're dead in the water because there was no real scheme. Despite having lots of decent talent across the board.
Both were the MVPs of their offenses, but both literally had running backs with record breaking seasons in the backfield with them.
Also, Coach Beamer believed in winning through defense, ball control, and special teams. That's not an opinion, just a fact. I've heard the man say "If the other team doesn't score, you only need 3 to win". We give Stiney a lot of heat on this board, but Beamerball was more of an idea than just special teams.
you're sort of helping to make my point here. Our offense wasn't bad because of lack of talent under
StinespringBeamer.via GIPHY
Stinespring called the plays the way beamer wanted to orchestrate the game. Offensive coordinators have to answer to the boss, and the boss liked ball control football. Beamer took chances on aggressive defense and special teams.
"Is it really so much to ask for a half way decent offense?"
Unfortunately, at VT, yes, that seems to be the case. Why just saying the name of Stinespring makes me feel like ...
what's wild is that Stinespring isn't even the worst OC we've had in the last 10 years. In fact, I'd place him above both Loeffler and Cornelsen. TBD on Bowen but if our offense still stinks in 2024 then Stinespring might qualify as the best OC we've had in almost 20 years (I believe Stiney took the OC role in '06). Which is....absolutely. crazy.
Meh, I think Lefty and Corny would've been pretty decent if they had Tyrod, DW, RMFW, DE, a decent OL (which stiney had in some years), Coale, Boykin, etc. Hell, Fuente looked pretty good with Evans, Ford, Hodges, etc despite having no real RBs on roster (Love Sam Rogers, but he's not in the conversation for best VT RBs).
Bringing in that talent is absolutely a part of the job of the OC.
Where Stinespring outclasses both Lefty and Corny is recruiting. Stinespring couldn't scheme his way out of a wet paper bag but he brought in the most talented players. For that reason, he is the better OC of the trio, IMO. Being OC is building an offense and (a significant) part of that is bringing in talent. Loeffler brought in some dudes too, but he wasn't able to get the best out of them.
If you break up the OC job as basically 1. bring in talent and 2. coach said talent, Stiney did #1 better than any other coach did either, even if some of those other coaches might have done #2 better than Stiney. Ultimately, Stinespring resided over two of our best offenses since 2006, so as bad as he was it's hard to call him worse than the other two.
We had this debate before. Just have to point out Corn did the most with least and Stiney did the least with the most. Lefty pretty clearly performed the worst but he also had the least work with.
None of them are any good imo, but the Stinespring, Newsome, O'Cain trio takes the cake as worst offensive staff for me. Watching in person Cincinnati destroying our offensive line in 2012 and Newsome just standing there hands on hips like everything was fine is still burned into my mind like it was yesterday.
Remember Jerry Burns, the of old head coach the Vikings? Always remember an article about him that could apply perfectly to Stinespring. Especially appropriate as those are my 2 favorite football teams.
The truly amazing thing about
Jerry Burns'Bryan Stinespring's tenure with theVikingsHokies is not that he's managed to take so much talent and do so little with it, but that he's managed to keep on doing it for so long.I think an important part of the debate has to be recruiting. Stinespring blows the other guys out of the water in that regard and that can't be undervalued. He couldn't do the Xs and Os but he absolutely got the Jimmies and Joes.
He had the least, in part, because he failed, miserably, to bring in any talent. But his "most with the least" was the 39th best offense in 2016 - which seemed great coming off the heels of Loeffler presiding over offenses in the 70s and 80s - which is well short of the two 12th ranked offenses Stinespring presided over in '09 and '10.
I (and probably many others) would argue that those offenses were good in spite of Stiney, and not because of him. And I believe that to be absolutely true from an Xs and Os standpoint and the structure of the offense generally. But those teams were good because of the talent on them (Tyrod, RMFW, DW, Boykin, Roberts, etc) which Stiney deserves some credit for bringing in. He may have done the least, but he got the most. And doing the least with the most yielded better results than doing the most with the least has. So I'd take Stiney over Corny every single time. Because Stiney will bring guys in who can mask the deficiencies of the scheme with pure talent. No other OC we've had has been able to do better.
I'm not defending Stiney, btw. I'm just pointing out that we have had absolute garbage OCs since Stiney. I didn't think it could get worse than Stiney until he was gone. Then it got worse. Twice. Kind of amazing. Both guys who followed him might have been better schematically, but they just utterly failed to get guys in the door who could execute the offense they were trying to run. Eventually, you have to admit that the lines on the paper mean nothing if you don't have guys who can actually go out and perform. Getting those dudes here is part of the job. A part of the job that none of our OCs have done well enough since Stiney left. Which is why our roster is such a mess.
I think there are still a lot of Hokies that would love to have Stiney come back to tech as either an OL or TE coach. He was GOOD at that to my recollection and was a top tier recruiter. The problem was when he was promoted over his ability level and CFB wouldn't relieve him of his duties when it became apparent until it was too late.
yeah, I think all of this is agreeable. I don't hate Stinespring. I just don't think he's OC material. I would LOVE to have his recruiting chops back - our talent took a nosedive when he left which is part of why we are where we are.
I think his x's and o's were ok, our players did what was asked of them, they were rarely out of position. We ran plays so well that the defenses knew what was coming and we still gained yards. But understanding when to call plays was not his forte at all. He wasn't inventive and didn't really look to copy innovators as much as a lot of coaches did. He was great as an oline coach, and had a lot of other coaches on his staff that failed him. But he could coach and teach plays as well as just about anyone on the staff in the last 25 years.
Corn not Stiney to be sure?
No stiney, if I asked both to break down a play I think stinespring does a way better job than corn
Agreed. No one ever accused Stiney of not knowing how to read film.
Bud Foster was a wizard.
I don't want it to be so, but I do agree that Price needs to produce... on the field and on the recruiting trail. That guy is all Hokie but his coaching role has been subpar thus far. Hope he gets it together. I know he and Coach Pry are tight so this could test Pry's objective CEO abilities.
Yea... That could be a tough one for sure
He was 16th in the ACC last year in recruiting, 2nd for VT. This year, which isn't done he is 44th.
We need to get some more production but he has no where close to been our worse recruiter.
44th in the ACC? How is this counted?
well there are 14 teams and each team is allowed 10 coaches so he is 44th out of 140
Was last year boosted by him seeming to be our only known position coach for a few weeks and bringing in what felt like a slew of players that the prior staff had overlooked/passed on?
Is there a position coach on the staff that we would say had a good year in 2022?
Didn't we pretty much suck across the board?
Jones getting Delane to play seems to be a huge win for that position.
I think Marve did well with what he had for the most part, the LBs looked like the least of the issues on defense.
Mines??? Killed it in recruiting. Might have taken our WR room from worst to first in the ACC in one offseason. Tucker Holloway's development is obvious. Mines also spotted and developed Kaleb Smith (something the previous staff couldn't do).
Jones as well - the secondary looks like it will be the strength of the defense. Strong and Delane are a formidable combo. Stroman appears to be developing as well. Depth will be a challenge, but I think we'll get there soon.
No one really had a great year on the field in '22, but these guys are working hard to flip the roster.
Was Tyrod our last true freshman to get starts at QB?
Yup, and other than r-Fr Josh Jackson we haven't had any freshman play significant minutes at QB. You would have thought Patterson or Hooker managed to sneak in at least one game as starter, but nope. I checked lol
Racking my brain without looking anything up...yes. Josh Jackson was a rs, yes ?
Edit: 👆
Starts yes but also Bullock played some in 2021
Does Matthew provide clips of other sports? If so, he should rename his channel Matthew Loves Balls.
Goodnight folks! Get home safe!
Or is Matthew just seeing things in the room and saying he loves them?
Mathew: I love ball 🤷🏻♂️
Depends. Does he love lamp?
Hot take... VTJ12 is Mathew and he's just testing the market.