Scrimmage day y'all. We're so close.
- In reference to reports of chippiness earlier in the week between OL and DL that ended up in the refs throwing a flag and Pry sending a player to the locker room Pry says the focus in this phase of camp is balancing competitive edge with composure.
- Today, 8/19 is last true camp day and will be a scrimmage. Next week is bonus week, will include finishing touches, odd formations, getting healthy, and ODU prep.
- Looking forward to getting 4-5 offensive guys reps in the upcoming scrimmage that didn't get reps in the first one due to injury.
- Hoping QB decision is made in 3-4 days. Scrimmage will be a big test. Will involve perspectives from both the offensive and defensive staff.
- QBs still close enough that both could help us this year.
- Drones understanding of the offense and his confidence has improved over camp.
- Still feels like Wells is one of the more accurate QBs he's been around. Feels like he's making quicker decisions this year.
- 6th lineman still open Ghannam, Garrett, Meadows all mentioned.
- Kicker battle may go into next week. Percentages are close. A 65 yarder was kicked in practice.
- Will looking like Tisdale, Lawson, and Keller. Tisdale looks the best he's been here according to Pry.
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I might have misheard, but my understanding was those 3 guys in your last bullet are the top standing out at the mike/will spots, not just the will fwiw
You're right. They all "bounce back and forth" at will and mike it seems. They've also all been mentioned at getting reps at mike before.
So we all know who will be QB starting the season right?
100% Wells to start the season. TBD who finishes it. Sounds like the staff is putting Drones in as soon as he gets up to speed with the passing game, which hasn't happened yet. Not sure if I should be concerned or if this is reasonable.
My bet is Wells
I think he needs to have a really good September to keep the job, though. If he's not noticeably improved from last year by October and he's still starting by game 6 I think we're going to be in trouble
He has that playmaker feel. He was fun to watch at the Spring Game.
Why do the coaches keep saying Wells is accurate? He has completed 55% of his passes vs P5 in his career.
I'm not a Grant Wells homer by any means, but completion rate does not equal accuracy. There's typically some correlation, but our receiving core did him no favors last year.
He may not be the solution, but he certainly isn't the only thing holding this team back.
For the record, I agree with you. However, the eye test tells everyone watching that he isn't an accurate QB. I'm really hoping he's a completely different player or that Drones is making huge strides. Last years Wells will give us another rough season IMO.
Yes, there is a difference in being accurate in practice drills and being accurate in game. One doesn't matter, the other does. The one that does matter is captured pretty well by completion percentage. It's 55%!!! That's abysmal.
Completion percentage considers accuracy, but is not a good indicator of accuracy. If a qb is on the run, no one is open, and he throws the ball away, that hurts his completion percentage. Intentionally throwing the bal away on a broken play is not a reflection of how accurate a qb is.
A better metric is Completion Percentage Over Expectation:
Good piece from PFF about it.
All that said, I agree Wells was not particularly accurate last season. I do think he can improve his accuracy, and I would expect his completion percentage to go up this year due to the upgraded WR corps and running back room. I think his ceiling is top 5-6 qb in the ACC.
I'll take a more pedestrian approach to the stat - Completion percentage is a calculation of how well everyone executes the play. Getting a completion 55% of the time on any passing play is on everyone - QB, OL, receivers, and the unfortunate soul who has to pickup the loose rusher. If Wells if throwing 55%, he's the recipient of a statistic that everyone on offense is contributing to.
Well put!
I went back and watched the Miami game from last year last night and we dropped so many passes. But also as mentioned above and I noticed as well, there were numerous passes, typically out routes where Wells just fired it as hard as he could and it would be 3 feet away from the receiver. Obviously those are things that can be cleaned up with an extra year of work
I wonder if there are any advanced metrics that show how many passes by a QB were dropped. Plus how many passes were "on target" but knocked away or picked off?
This is a great question. Metrics like that might explain how a a quarterback could be an accurate passer but not have higher completion percentage.
But then you'll need another metric to adjust for "accurate arm but bad decision to throw where it could be knocked away.". The stats/metrics rabbit hole has no bottom.
I'm down for someone to try to find that bottom...
Some day someone will find it. I think baseball was the easiest to solve with metrics because less actions happen at one time, basketball was 2nd and still has some work to do but the 3 and dunk game has been very well defined by metrics. But there is more fluidity to basketball than baseball. Then you have football where at least 9 guys matter every play. There are so many things that can go wrong. But some one will figure it out.
I think we would also need to look at how many times he was pressured and had to abandon the pass on passing plays.
I not sold that Wells is the future but I do think that the inability of receivers to get open plus the constant pressure he had greatly affected him and as a result later in the year he didn't trust the receivers to get open so would just throw to a quick check down or try to get some yards with his feet if his first option wasn't open.
btw, new to being fully dipped....what what!!!
Some thoughts on QB
For newly dipped folks, I did a review on Drones. While he can run, the ideal that he is Jerod Evans part two just isn't fair. He is a big guy who can move, but he isn't going to change a game with his legs any more or less than Wells. Wells issue was that he started looking at the rush and didn't see plays develop down the field. That is on him and the OL.
I heard Pry say Tisdale is one of the top three linebackers. I groaned. I know he is athletic and covers a ton of ground. But it a gap sound defense, we know Tisdale is going to be in the wrong gap at some big moment. At what point do you have to take your lumps from someone who will grow a bit in the position?
This team has to run the football. Chaplin (or Meadows as a backup option- not buying Frady at LT) are going to get exposed a bit in pure dropback situations. Getting ahead of the sticks and throwing play action on first down will make whichever QB starts look much better.
Yeah, the constant chatter all offseason and into camp coming out was that the QB battle was close. I'm a little disappointed that Drones couldn't push Wells more. If Wells ends up being named starter (which I have no doubt he will be), I don't think it is as much he clearly separated himself, but that he wasn't truly pushed. I know he looks good in practice and when on-script can make all the throws, but I just don't trust him when the hits are live and he gets pressured. That's when things completely fall apart for him. With a green OL I'm worried we could be in for another bumpy ride on O still without a clear impact option at QB. To be honest, I'm starting to get the feeling that Watson may be the true answer in a year or two and we'll just have to wait for him to get up to speed.
Starting to think 5-6 wins is very optimistic at this point.
Even with his Tisdale comments I'd be shocked if he got the bulk of the work at either Mike or Will this season. I imagine his experience and athleticism are attractive traits and he can spell both of the starters and may be ahead of any other backups, but I guess we will see.
This is pretty surprising to me. I thought Drones was expected to be a 'true' dual threat QB. Reports out of practice are that he was breaking off multiple explosive runs. What makes you think that he can't be any more of a run threat than Wells?
Evans ran for almost 850 yards in 14 games, scoring 12 rushing TDs. I don't think it would be fair to expect these numbers from Drones, but I would also expect significantly more than ~200 yards rushing and 6 TDs in 11 games (Wells's numbers from last year).
I share these thoughts. The guy played only a handful of snaps in the Big 12, where offense for the QB is pretty simple. Just let it fly.
If he could not push for reps against a fellow sophomore with 6 career starts heading into last year at Baylor, it's not surprising that he is not pushing for reps in a slightly more complicated system where the incumbent is a 3-year starter.
There has been a certain amount of chatter on tkp about how we have upgraded our skill position players on offense. That may be, but we're still missing two extremely critical components: QB and OLine. I don't buy that our offense is going to suddenly jump 30+ spots in offensive rankings because we have a couple more receivers. This offense is in the middle of a multi year rebuild and most of the solution isn't on campus yet.
Our offense is going to stink again in 2023. Until we start getting some depth on OLine and find a good QB it's not really going to matter how good (or bad) our wrs and rbs are. Wells ain't it. And he doesn't get the benefit of a good line to work behind. Without a good oline we need a miracle worker at QB and we don't have one.
Buckle up folks. We're staring at the prospect of having another offense that finishes in the bottom 3 in the worst p5 league in the country
The thing is that 30 spot offensively isn't that much improvement. Thats one long catch for a game and just over an extra FG a game. Think about some of the drops that these recievers would catch, think about an oline that stops false starting. Think about an RB that falls forward for an extra yard. A bunch of little things can easily add up and get us there. It's not guaranteed but a top 90 offense isn't wildly out of reach.
This sounds really simple but lets not forget that all of the other teams are also trying to improve. And, our schedule this coming season is arguably more difficult than our schedule last season. A FG per game improvement doesn't sound terribly hard to achieve, but that might not be the bar this coming year. Offensive rankings are relative every season. If every team improves by a FG per game then we're still the 118th offense in the country even if we also improve by the same mark.
If it was so easy to just score an extra FG each game, or stop false starting, or complete that extra pass, wouldn't we have just done that last year? I just think its a bit disingenuous to say that all we need to do is be a tiny bit better and, voila, we'll jump 30 spots. Every team in the country is trying to be better than they were last year, offensively AND defensively. It's not going to be as easy as everyone seems to think to get our offense out of the basement. I'll be (pleasantly) surprised if we manage to get our offense ranked better than 90th by the end of the year. And doing so will likely take a huge step forward from Wells (which, incidentally, would also surprise me)
Every team in the country is trying to get better, but not every team in the country will. I think overall, we have a good opportunity to have a better offense by fixing some very "fixable" things. Knowing what we need to fix is a big part of that. Last year was difficult not only due to the lack of a talented roster, but by the introduction of a whole new staff and system. Things like certain penalties, particularly false starts and delay of game, are relatively easy to be fixed with emphasis in the off season. I think we've done a good job of greatly improving our skill positions at WR and RB, and QB can't really be worse. I'm cautiously optimistic that we see an improvement on offense. The metrics seem to point more towards that than towards a regression or even staying the same given the improvements in key personnel, continuity of staff and system, and knowledge of what we need to fix.
I'd you look over a long enough timeline the offensive rankings aren't that relative. Without major rule changes scoring will be close to what it was last year, 3ppg might only get you 20 spots not 30 because of variances but I would be very very surprised if we did 3ppg better this year and were ranked the same offensive position, or worse than last year.
If you go by SP+, going from 125th to 95th is about 1 TD per game improvement.
I was using less advanced stats so this is probably a better number than mine. We may not get there, but that's not much if you think about all the drives killed by false starts and passes dropped. Heck, if we get more turnovers this year it makes getting 1 more TD much easier (assuming we get better field positions on some of them)
For context, SP+ counts predicted turnovers a ~2 points per game (because not all turnovers result in points), so we need a lot more turnovers (which are somewhat statistically random) before improving our scoring by a whole TD.
Improving 30 spots would make us just as 'good' as the 2007 offense (79th best offense per SP+ I think - need to check). That's still pretty bad, but it's improvement.
I didn't mean to imply a turnover = 1 td. Or that we'd get enough turnovers to make up 7 points. Looking at what historically VT did was ~25 turnovers under Beamer, ~18 under Fuente and 9 last year. 2021 was our worse year in the span I have data for (2009) until 2022 which was even worse. I doubt we are going to get to a Bud Foster of ole turnover machine, but that's 2 turn overs a game which is 4 points. Better than our expected 1.6 points last season. For 2007 (went to a different source which wasn't as easy to pull data from), we had 27 turnovers. Five were pick 6s. We're never going to get that 7 points from 1 place, but an extra 2 ppg helps get you there.
p.s. I was honestly surprised we had 9 turnovers last year because it felt like we had 1 or 2 all season.
Good thing we got a new QB coach and a new OL coach.
As it relates to the QB situation - the WR corps last season was one of the worst that I've ever seen. Take out a couple Kaleb Smith deep balls per game and it was non-existent.
Wells didn't do himself any favors - but he is more physically talented than Ryan Willis, Michael Brewer, and even Josh Jackson who all had more production because of what was around them. This is hard to admit because Wells was so bad - but he will be the guy and he'll have the first 3-4 games to prove it.
Drones doesn't seem like the QB of the future either based on available facts. There is no buzz around him or his performance during camp at all. Seems to be a viable backup who will have to fight hard to ever become a starter.
*Quietly placing all my eggs into the pop watson and davi belfort baskets*
Just not true. Evan Watkins and Matej Sis have talked a bunch about how's he's a real threat in the run game. Issue is he's not picking up the passing game.
Have no doubt Drones can run and do it physically - not picking up the passing game with three interesting WR transfers is the issue.
Pry made it clear VT wants to run the ball more effectively - but a good passing game will help that more than a QB who can run. Like the Malachi and Tuten combo though.