Time out on 4th and 10 with 25 seconds left prior to kicking a 58 yard field goal.
Squibbing a kickoff with 20 seconds left.
Absolutely mind numbing clock usage in 2 minute drill.
The fake fg was at least aggressive but id prefer we just ran it twice on 3rd and 4th.
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Yep. Don't let the refs fucking us distract you from the fact Brent Pry gift-wrapped this game.
I can't say plane crash, but maybe mechanical failure so they can walk their ass to Stanford and think about things.
just... doubling down, huh
Jfc sober up
There's nothing wrong with wanting this shit team to walk home.
Why does the team need to walk home? They played well and deserved to win. It was Coach Pry who gave the game away.
Coaches can walk home. Team played their asses off., they earned a first class ticket back.
It could give the team time to figure out why they could get up for #7 Miami, but embarrass themselves during the 4 other games they've played.
You should change your avatar.....
I thought about it, but I don't know how to Photoshop what I have to be Pry Wolverine clawing himself.
Admins on this site are so soft. It's a vent thread yet they disallow any form of the matter if they don't agree with it
Theres a pretty clear line between venting frustration at game management errors by thebcoaching staff and partaking in what you got into trouble for in this thread
Telling people to walk home?
At the risk of reigniting this -- i nuked it because you alluded to wanting the plane to crash but you cant say it. Cant seem to get it through to you that it isn't okay to wish ill harm to the team physically, doesn't matter how drunk you are. Alum got a temp ban from Joe for starting a significantly less awful thread after the Vandy loss than your comments and you're lucky he calls the shots and not me because i would have perm canned you after the Rutgers game for that comment.
Taking an antagonistic approach isn't the right course either. Do better.
Agree to disagree
Sure fine, disagree. That doesn't give you free reign to comment whatever you want in future vent threads though.
And recognize that in all the downvotes you've caught in the last two weeks, it was only twice that a mod (me) hit the nuke button. Everything else was the community telling you to take a hint
I get your frustration. Believe me, we all do. But when you say "I can't say plane crash," you've just said "plane crash."
I don't think anyone here believes you actually want VT's plane to crash, which would of course kill the entire team and staff. But how do you think it makes Joe and the rest of us look? It's a community.
There's plenty of things to absolutely hammer the team about right now. Focus on those, and not just raw anger (which again, we get).
So you confirm it's not my fault people see a word and assume it's meaning. Maybe "crash" isn't the best word, but crash doesn't insinuate harm and nowhere did I insinuate harm to anyone. Maybe I say "break down", but regardless, the ability for folks to get their panties in a bunch over wanting this team to be inconvenienced and walk themselves home is astonishing. I got threatened this way growing up all the time so having to walk home isn't new to me.
Like I said, I doubt anyone here actually believes you literally want a plane or bus to crash. You're trying to make a point. But the mods can't just let that slide without it reflecting badly on the site.
Instead, say exactly what you're pissed about. There's certainly plenty to choose from.
Yeah, man, most people in plane crashes walk off scot-free, so no insinuation of harm at all there.
Where do you bury the survivors?
In my case, a bottle of bourbon.
I said I couldn't say it in reference to the fact that when I said "bus crash" people clutched their pearls. Which would've been counter intuitive because how would I expect the team to walk home if they had harm done.
Stop analyzing everything typed in a forum like it's a political debate to try to have a "gotcha" moment. But, I understand reading compensation is hard though.
"This team doesn't deserve to board the plane home, make them walk" - doesn't cross the line
'I hope the plane crashes' - does cross the line.
Not that hard.
Considering I didn't say that....
It's a community/em>
All this time I've been living in a community and I had no idea... - Jerry Seinfeld
I'm tired of watching a program that only knows how to lose games. The only thing we've learned under Pry and his staff is how to lose. We just keep finding ways to shit our pants, and I'm really fucking tired of it.
I'm tired of Marve and Bowen. Fire their asses into the sun. I'm tired of watching Parker Clements take a shit all over everything we try and do offensively. He shouldn't be anywhere near the field, he might be the worse offensive lineman in college football.
I'm just tired. I'm tired of this shit. I'm tired of watching this fucking program kick itself in the dick week after week because we have a bunch of dumb players and coaches who don't know how to win.
I'm fucking tired
Me too, but the coordinators did enough to win tonight. The head coach didn't.
Tyler Bowen called a hell of a game. He cannot throw and catch the passes. Kyron has got to be able to put it within reach of guys who are wide open and when he does they got to catch the damn ball.
There were so many little easy pitch and catch plays that we missed for big yards. You have the perfect play called and we can't complete a seven yard slant or a five yard out
Also, Parker Clements. Every week.
I mean you are completely correct. There were plenty of plays to be made last night that just weren't. Drones missed several open players on crossing patterns that either would have hit a huge first down or a walk in touchdown. One of those poor throws led to a INT and I want to say another might have been a few plays before the fake FG attempt. He also made some very questionable decisions on the read option with at least one play where Tuten breaks a huge run if he hands it off only to get stuffed in the backfield.
But at the same time player development has to also be a part of Bowen's responsibility and I have seen absolutely no growth from Drones this year. At a certain point when your experienced players are still not able to execute, that's on you.
There was another read option in the 4th qtr that Drones pulled from Tuten and he throws to the sideline for 6 yards. Tuten completes the fake walking through a GIANT hole up the middle and puts his head in his hands. I couldn't see the whole field, but it was at least 20 to 30 yds and maybe he houses it. Was Drones trying to show up his sibling w his arm, affecting his decision making, or does he just not read the field well when he has to do it quickly?
I put a lot of that on Pry. He made the decision not to replace Glenn as QB coach. No matter how many times he says it was a good decision, it wasn't.
Kyron has absolutely regressed. This is the 3rd game where he has missed really easy/wide open throws (I counted 5 from the stands against Rutgers). The interception against Miami was on him and not on Greene. It's in the rain and you throw it low and behind the guy. There are just so many examples I've lost count. Like Tebow in the NFL. Can't run a normal offense because the QB cannot deliver on easy pitch and catch and you're constantly behind the sticks.
Drones had a lot of easy misses last year too
Problem was not making Glenn OC to start with
Yeah it's incredibly frustrating. You can see what the coaches want to run and there are players getting open and hell, the RPO should be working as well. But we just have a QB incapable of executing it. He's missing the easy throws, he's making the wrong reads in the option game. He mixes that up by pulling a rabbit out of his hat to get us back in games late, but it's hard to ignore just how hamstrung our offense is right now because of the QB.
Reminds me a lot of the Panthers with Bryce Young. Looked like absolute dog shit with him behind center to the point where everyone said it was the worst collection of talent the NFL has ever seen. First game with Dalton behind center they explode offensively burying the Raiders. Sometimes, it really is that the QB is in over his head.
I'm a little confused by your Glenn comment. Glenn is the OC for Cincinnati now. Brian Crist was the defacto co-QB coach last year after the position coach shuffling (officially an offensive analyst) and is officially titled oc-QB Coach this year. Bowen is the OC and Co-QB Coach.
Now to your main point.. lack of effective QB coaching... neither Bowen nor Crist ever coached QB's before the last couple years at VT (unless you count Crist coaching QB's at Blacksburg High School 20 years ago)
Yeah so perhaps not as clear as I should've been.
Basically, my point is that I think QB is such a critically important position that you need to have a legitimate QB coach. Think Kevin Rogers back in the early 2000s.
Replacing Glenn with the hybrid of Bowen/Christ as Co-QB coaches clearly was not the move. I thought it was ridiculous and the poor reads, not seeing the field, inaccuracy, late check downs, etc. all tend to support this conclusion. Kyron clearly needs coaching and he's either not getting it, or the "coaching" he is getting is insufficient.
Yeah I thought Bowen in particular was phenomenal. It's bad because I see the coordinators maturing more than the head coach.
I do agree Bowen called a very good game. But I am mad at how Drones is so limited still in the pass game with a bevy of weapons at WR. It's poor QB coaching. He's just not accurate enough and can't take advantage of the full playbook. Did Jennings even get one target last night? And only a handful for Felton. He just cannot push the ball downfield this season for whatever reason with any consistency or accuracy. Poor QB coaching and not having a real QB coach I feel is holding our offense back significantly.
Jennings is hurt and not playing.
This right here. This. Tyler Bowen called a great game- only issue I had was our second to last drive- You MUST run it on first down (with the best back in the ACC) MUST and bleed some clock. Not only did we go 3 and out- because the OL couldn't fucking block- we ran like a minute off the clock. Bonehead drive there- We also did that exact same thing against Vandy. It's cool to throw and all- IF YOU GET the fucking first down- but we never do. Marve- other than never stopping Miami when he absolutely had to- another theme- was fine too- he got pressure on Ward all night. Can't complain too much. But when we absolutely need a defensive stop, we never get one. Maddening. But make no mistake - Brent Pry was awful last night- awful. Couldn't be worse really. 1. He panicked and called timeout 20 seconds too early right before half when we had all the momentum. If Pry simply waits to call timeout, Miami doesn't even fucking get the ball before half. We got the ball to start the second half- coaching 101- try to get a "2 for 1" before half- you score, your get the ball twice before they touch it. But nope, Pry panicked because he doesn't know what he is doing largely and it costs us a critical 3 points- totally unecessary and 100% on Pry. 2. He HAS to know- HAS to - that foward progress in bounds- the clock still runs. Duh- call time out immediately there, and we get a minimum 2 more tries at the endzone, and don't need such a hail mary play. Both of those are critical, critical mistakes that stole a top 10 road victory from these kids. I won't mention the numerous false starts still, etc. sloppy, sloppy play. A clean game gives you a career defining win to this point. And you fucking botched it with Andy Reid esque bonehead clock management. Inexcusable in year 3. And being 1-10 in one score games- your margin of error is zero coach Pry. zero. So lets continue to do things that do nothing to help win games- like issue duplicate fucking numbers that should have bit us in the ass AGAIN last night. 1-10 in close games, and lets feed bullshit ego's with non football things that don't help you fucking win. Do things that HELP you win, you assholes. Seriously. Fans spend millions on your team- move forward with WINNING things. And if you "must" (you dont need them) HAVE duplicate numbers - DONT GIVE THEM TO SPECIAL TEAMS players- you fucking morons. Fuck. That's how you lose most of your games as a head coach. Non football winning horseshit.
Except Andy Reid has three Super Bowl rings and all Pry has is a slightly damp Military Bowl trophy.
Mahomes got him those rings. He was a leopard that refused to change his spots for nearly 20 years before that, including (but not limited to) terrible clock management.
Yes and Jeffrey Lurie met with him when he was coach of the eagles and told him fix the timeout bullshit or you are fired.
Feel bad for the players. Feel like they've caught a ton of flak showed up this week and got pooped on by the coaches then ultra mega pooped on by the ACC.
This 100%
I fully support these players. Hats off to them for not giving up and fighting until the end. I do not support this coaching staff at all, and it starts at the top. I'm officially out on Pry. He's just not cut out to be the head coach, with hiring a bad staff around him, horrible game management, and still enormous holes on this roster (starting with OL). And we have failed Drones completely with not hiring a real QB coach to develop him. He's out there just balling, but imagine how much he could elevate his game with proper QB coaching.
Officially done on the Pry era. This was the last straw for me. 1-10 in single score games, a tell tale sign of horrendous coaching.
Drones isn't that good, dude
He also has two QB coaches with a grand total of 1 year qb coaching experience (and it was in Blacksburg High School no less).
Like a combined 40 years of experience between the two of Bowen and Crist and hardly any P4/QB experience prior to VT.
Yeah and that's where Pry is being a complete dumb fuck with this coaching staff.
If you're a new head coach, hire experience to mask your inexperience. Having guys at coordinator and position coach who have literally never done it before was always going to fail. Always.
Same fucking mistakes that Fuente made. And it's inexcusable that Whit allowed him to do it. Like, how fucking stupid do you have to be to allow 2 separate guys to make the same fucking mistakes.
I dont think Fuente made the same mistake as he had Bud and the plan was for Galen Scott to eventually take over. He had a plan to develop coaches in the program using very expirenced coaches to help guide them. Now offense was a different story. But I felt like Fuente made a handful of bad in game decisions in 6 seasons, he didn't prep for games welll.
Fuente - totally oblivious to the fact that Liberty's kicker couldn't make one over 35 yards without a jet pack- called a fucking timeout when Liberty didn't have any instead of letting the kid 100% miss a 54 yarder- zero.zero % chance he was making a rush FG from 50 plus. Game over, VT wins. 100% controllable by Fuente himself. Instead, asshole calls a timeout and JHAM- who had no business being a DC- calls a soft coverage off the time out and liberty gets 25 yards closer. He gave JHAM a chance to fail. And we did of course. Bud Foster would have sent 10 guys to the liberty QBS face and ended the game with a sack. Fuente also lost control of the team - the ultimate sin- at ODU- should have been fired then. He also pulled the impressive double of allowing Pitt WR and Running back to break all of the schools records in one afternoon. Impressive stuff there.
Oh Fuente made mistakes, but his first staff at Tech had Foster and Wiles, two veterans to help a new coach ease in. Vance had been an Oline coach for 16 years. Shibest had been an ST coordinator for 15 years and 12 in the SEC. Where he was weak was WR which Holmon Wiggins is one of the top coaches in the game today and OC, which was Fuente's strength.
Pry hired three TE coaches.
Shibest is Frank Beamer in his prime on special teams compared to the clown we have coaching them now.
The only knock against Shibest is that he couldn't find some one that could field a kick AND run.
I want the coaches to go around to each player (not you, Parker), look them in the eye, and tell them they're sorry for taking their incredible effort and wiping their asses with it.
Yep...the worst thing is that the final play will deflect from the utter coaching ineptitude.
Pry sucks as a HC. He's 1-10 and 0-fer vs P5 for a reason. He's not good. Truth hurts.
The players deserve tons of credit.
I'm done with Pry. Move on or continue to ride a sinking ship like we did with Fuente.
Yep. Coaches will hide behind that call now, there's literally no more sports media anymore covering the team since they all got laid off, so who is going to ask the hardballs? Andy Bitter will push some but he can't go but so far since he works for TSL now. Going to get glossed over completely.
Exactly what I just told my buddy.
The cherry on top of this loss is that the whole "was it a catch" drama spectacle will distract from the fact that our staff should be getting absolutely fucking torched right now, by everyone in the college football world.
Letting 40+ crucial seconds roll off the clock before calling timeout, with 2 timeouts left. We literally ran out of time, and HAD to Hail Mary the ball at the end, because the end of this game was so mismanaged - otherwise that whole debacle at the end may not have needed to happen.
And it's not just this week, it's EVERY FUCKING WEEK. Brent Pry is now 1-10 in one score games. We cannot. Win. Close. Games.
I've defended him up until now, and put a lot of it on his coordinators, who - while we're here - are also diarrhea dogshit MAC level hacks. But god in heaven, is Pry in over his head.
We are talented enough to have won that game, and we should have. For fuck's sake, we gifted them a field goal before halftime by trying that stupid FG fake instead of just taking the points, after our kicker had JUST hit two 45+yd kicks.
The commentators were starting to really rip into the staff at the end there too, as they should have. Before that idiotic endzone drama, the narrative coming away from this game would have been - holy fuck, VT just squandered a win against a top 10 team due almost entirely to coaching ineptitude. Now, the narrative will be that we lost because of a contested call.
We're no longer stuck in football purgatory, we are burning in football Hell.
Also, fuck the ACC
This motherfucking conference has gone out of its way to completely dick us over any chance it's had since we joined. I'm still bitter that the Wake Forest AD actively screwed us out of a NCAA Tournament bid in 2010 and we all damn well know we weren't getting calls like tonight when we were top of the class after expansion.
Fuck this conference. Tonight was absolute bullshit and showed us exactly where they think we should reside. Fuck them, bunch of ungrateful shits that still have never shown appreciation for propping up this shithole for the better part of 10 years after we joined.
ACC had this primed and ready to go the moment the call was overturned.
Holy shit that dude needs to be fired.
Little too on the nose for my liking.
No wonder Clemson and FSU want out. A professional conference would have briefed the refs ahead of time so they knew who won.
Best game they've played all year. This one is on the coaches and some remarkably lucky plays by Miami. The forth down catch by the receiver on his back, luck!
Sorry, luck has nothing to do with it at this point.
1-10 in one-score games isn't just bad luck.
Pry doesn't know what he is doing and has surrounded himself with equally clueless assistants--see the double #17 post.
Lucky breaks are part of football. If you don't give up 6 points with dumbshit calls, neither one of those plays matter.
I agree with you, but to catch a ball on your back in a critical down, if not luck, is remarkable.
We're also talking about assistant coaches who had 4 players 5 yards or fewer deep in the end zone and let a 6'5 tight end waltz behind them for an easy TD catch. Christ, I could have made that throw.... Not to mention the Play Action TD to go up 14-7.... The linemen stood up, showing pass block. But EVERYONE bit on the run🤦♂️
I don't know. Yes, there was some questionable clock management and hindsight would love a do over on the fake fg, but the fact that we were even in the game speaks positives about the coaching staff.
Even with all that, we win the game with a fair call on replay. Felton had the ball when his ass went down in the end zone. Ball was pulled out after. Clear as day in my mind, but I wear O&M glasses.
A better block on the fake field goal and we are all singing a different tune. I still would have preferred three points rather than the fake, but that is hindsight.
I never thought he had firm control, but I also don't think they had enough to overturn the call.
Disagree that was a block away from working. That they even considered faking it speaks volumes about the lack of in-game intelligence this coaching staff has. We have an extremely good kicker and arguably one of the best in the nation - you take the points in that situation. You don't fake it unless there is clearly something there, and even if you do then you don't call that play that feeds right into the mouth of the oncoming FG block. Stupid decision to go for it compounded by an even more stupid play call.
Yep, Clements whiffed on the block but even had he not, #1 was there...maybe St. Germain trucks him and gets 3 yds, maybe not.
Suggesting it was almost a great playcall is giving way too much credit here.
I don't mind being aggressive there but both Drones and Tuten were averaging over 5 yards a carry. Miami hadn't shown an inkling of stopping the toss/sweep play. Drones can battering ram his way for 3-5 yards. There are other creative options that don't involve the punter and the backup tight end.
If you want to go on 4th and 3, go for it. Be aggressive. Just don't get too cute with it.
This. I still prioritize the points, but if we have to go for it then you do it with you best players, not the special teams.
Expecting Parker Clements to actually do his job and block is a failure on the coaching staff.
He sucks, and shouldn't be on the field.
I don't know if Felton held on to the catch until down or not. What I do know is, unless the refs had video footage that wasn't shown on TV, there wasn't enough decisive video proof to reverse the fair catch call.
This exactly.
1. Coaches lost us this game. Great effort by the players.
2. Refs took away a TD from us on a phantom holding call.
3. Refs didn't take away a 58 yard FG from us that should not have counted (two 17's on the field...our coaches are terrible, second time this year.
4. If I'm a beat writer for the AP Poll, I am absolutely ranking VT #1 in order to garner attention to this...........
Disclaimer: If that last play were in reverse and Miami had caught the ball, I would want it called incomplete. BUT I would be really worried it would not be (rightfully) overturned because of the call on the field.
........and I am saying something like this:
"Listen, I do not actually think VT is #1, but that ending was wrong and the fix was in, you could see it in the refs face and delivery at the end.
A crazy game that VT should have put away earlier despite bad coaching and a bad holding call by the refs, but what a game.
Congrats to Miami and hats off to a VT team that in all rights may have actually been the victor...how can you overturn that call there?
Additionally, why even give me, other pundits, and fans nationwide a reason to think that something is off here?
Play the audio of the replay refs for everyone to hear!"
If that play happened with Miami passing it's upheld as a TD
That was the ACC making sure the ranked team won. No matter what, they were going to make sure that happened.
I agree with you.
That's why my last line (idea came from a buddy in full disclosure, I had never thought of it) about playing what the refs are saying is something I will never get out of my head now.
You could still choose and fix a game if you wanted, but at least eliminate an avenue and make sure everyone hears the "logic"
They had a couple questionable holding calls, for and against.
Yeah you can complain about holding calls all day in both directions...why #1 was the coaches lost this game for us. However, that was a terrible call and cost us a very long TD run that changes the entire dynamic of the game....then the ending....calls add up within a game....... 🤷♂️
We scored a TD on that drive any way, right?
Actually, yes, you're right. Good call, was thinking that was a field goal drive.
I will still argue it changes the makeup of the game - at the very least giving us more time in the end ...though our coaches would've seen to botching that anyway....
One thing I loved about XFL was the transparency in the replay, would loved to have heard the conversation tonight!
Completely agree. Loved reviews on XFL because you heard everything. No hiding behind the curtain.
I did not know this was a thing, but this is the way.
https://youtu.be/VHa92qWUP9g?si=zeyKjm32lDN6ja09
I am neither a conspiracy theorist, nor a ref hater. Or an excuse maker when my team loses. But that, ladies and gentlemen, was a business decision by the ACC officials on that last call.
Brent Pry and his staff looked out of their depth, and made some stupid decisions (the fake FG and failure to call a timeout on the final drive were both boneheaded). But Pry didn't lose this game, because Virginia Tech didn't lose this game. What Pry and the staff did, however, was ensure the game was close enough that the officials could steal the game for the ACC's only hope for 2024 relevance.
Business decision? Really? Sounds like a conspiracy theory to me. It's all on Pry.
I am full on the Brent Pry is not the guy train. He has all the right traits to be a leader at the school, but he can't coach. The head coach makes so few decisions during the game and every single one he screwed up. The time out at the end of the half, the fake fg, the 4th quarter clock management, that's why you have a head coach and they were all the wrong decision. If either of the first two didnt happen we could have kicked a FG to win it. Pry put us in a losing position. Not Marve who honestly had a great game plan to slow down Miami, not Bowen who really had one terrible series (in the 4th). This loss is on Pry's inability to coach a game.
That one drive in the fourth should've been three straight handoffs.
BINGO.
It's year three, if he hasn't figured the basics of strategy and time management by now, it's not gonna happen.
Here's a thought...they have a State 100m Champ returning kicks, how bout we not kick the ball to him---ever.
Unfortunately, I'll have to be joining you on this train...
With this roster, Fuente & Co. would be sitting at 5-0. Hate to say it.
but could they build this roster?
Not a chance
We can't have nice things
This
With Fuente & Co., the replay refs STILL overturn that TD.
To be very clear I still think Pry can be a great head coach for us.
But he has to fire his coordinators and bring in people who know how to competently call a game. Tonight was the best we've looked all year and yet we are still making mistakes all over the place and we are still running some really dumb plays from scrimmage.
But most of the major mistakes were Pry's or Holt's--or the combination of the two of them. Bowen was ok-ish..like normal went away from what was working in key situations i.e. Tuten.
Shit, Marve..who I have been no fan.of whatsoever I thought was legitimately impressive with varied looks and a reasonably sound plan.
Pry is a nice guy who says lots of good stuff but he can't coach. Full Stop.
I'm in this boat as well. Tonight was his best game by MILES. They made some mistakes and had a few questionable play calls, but overall the defense came to fuckin play. I hate Miami but son of a bitch do they have talented weapons. And the defense certainly played well enough to win. I was 100% expecting to get boatraced in this game based on what we've seen so far this year and came away with renewed hope (for the defense at least)
The two things that stood out is Cam plays so slow, which is way more impressive that anything else he did, and he got bailed out a ton by those skill players. Our recievers, who i like, don't make half those catches (well maybe other than gosnell).
Pry has lost me at this point. He has no feel for the flow of the game and his in-game coaching is bad. He's VT's Mike London.
I get what you're saying but I still think he can be our Dabo. His assistants are complete ass and it's making every (bad) decision he makes that much worse because they can't coach their way out of a paper bag. They can't develop players and they have no feel for a game, especially in the first quarter. And with a lead, Bowen and Marve have absolute idea how to coach to protect it.
Pry absolutely has his faults, but as a first time head coach you expect that. His mistake is hiring 2 coordinators who are also learning on the job. Force him to bring in seasoned guys who know what the fuck they are doing so that he can completely focus on being a head coach and I do think things can improve.
And if they don't, fire his ass and promote one of the seasoned coordinators to his role.
Dabo had his recruiting machine heat up at the similar point in his tenure. I can't think of one positive thing going for the Hokies right now in Year 3. Or perhaps put differently, I don't know where the optimism lies in Year 4. Recruiting was moving in the right (a great) direction in 2023, but has stagnated. He's 2-3 in Year 3. He's probably going to get a Year 4, but at this point I don't know if he's worth bankrolling to get new coordinators and assistants (and who good wants to come with a coach on the hot seat). My best case scenario is big money donors buy him and Whit out, clean house of the entire remnants of the Beamer era admin, and starts fresh. The sooner, the better.
Would VT actually do this? Sorry, I'm skeptical.
No, but they should.
If changes are made and those changes force Pry out, then both Whit and Ballein have to go as well. If we are saying the program is still that broken, the rot goes deeper than we thought when we fired Fuente and you need to clean it all the way out.
The more I think on it the more I think this should be the CoA as well. As long as we are clinging to an era that ended 10-15 years ago we are not going to progress. We need to move on
It just infuriates me more and more looking back. Thankfully we dodged an expensive bullet in Napier, but there were other good coaching candidates that had serious interest in us (BoB, Mullen, Malzahn, Dave Clawson, Matt Campbell) but we went with the unproven choice who fit with the Blacksburg crowd. The rah rah and VT nostalgia feeling has been nice, but it can't mask the horrible coaching and game management any longer. I feel like we just hired a really good salesman unfortunately rather than the best coach we could. There's too much of a small circle in Blacksburg that's still in power. That is the problem.
On the whole he hasn't been bad, its just that olympic sports don't pay the bills and we are overall uninterested in basketball; I know I am, I never went to any games, have watched literally less than 10 games (men and women combined), and not from start to finish.
There needs to at least be a loud and public conversation about him fully giving up the reins of the football program
People like what they like, but not ever watching VT basketball is your loss. I grew up in the country and we didn't have any place to play basketball, so we never did. Baseball and football were all we cared about. VT basketball has been a fun experience for me and we've had some good teams and good players over the years, men and women. Yes, I watched first just because it was VT and I'm a VT sports fan, but the college game drew me in and made for another fun season to bridge the time between football and baseball/softball.
Personally, I couldn't care less for the game of soccer, but if VT's on TV, I'm watching. Just me, though.
Pry stood on the opposite sideline from Mario Cristobal and made him look like a vastly more competent Game Manager. He may be the first human ever to be able to say that.
This is where I'm at.
2.5ish seasons in, I give Pry an A+ for politicking/stakeholder management, B in recruiting/portal, C in player development (that might be generous), and D in in-game stuff.
You can make hires to improve player development. You can throw money at recruiting (not that VT has it, but that's a different conversation) - have you ever seen a head coach learn attention to detail and clock management the job?
Despite all that, I still recognize that (1) Pry already has already drastically improved the foundation of this program, and (2) financially, it would be unwise to fire him now.
You know how Brent Venables had a "get back" coach when he was at Clemson? I think Pry could use an assistant whose sole job is time management.
I'm not sure how wise or unwise it would be to part ways with Pry but I absolutely think it would be fantastic for him to hire some coordinators who know wtf they are doing. Pry might be better at the details if he has coaches who can take care of everything else. Right now he might be over extended trying to manage everything with green coaches throughout his staff.
At the very least I'd love to see him replace his inexperienced, overwhelmed coordinators with solid, experienced coaches and see what happens.
I think you're right. Simplify the mental load on pry. Hope he can focus on head coach things more.
This would be a wise move. On the FG when there were two #17 on the field, an assistant was yelling about something in Pry's ear and pointing. I wondered what it was about. Must have been that she spotted the duplicate numbers. Maybe it was too late? But why on earth would he not call timeout there to fix it? That's such a dumb blunder. The kicker wears 17, it's not like we had another brain fart with backups (bad enough). You should never have another 17 on the field at any depth level on a FG attempt.
No timeouts left at that point
Yeah, we already used our final timeout to make sure Miami had a chance to kick a field goal of their own to end the half.
I swear on the broadcast I heard someone yelling "seventeen!!" Before the snap. But I may be crazy
Damn
you all are full of the most amount of shit i have ever seen. the only way i will be pissed, outside of wanting to bitchslap the homer refs, is if cbp doesnt get fined for calling this shit out.
Yikes
I know who didn't get a lot of calls right this game... You can't leave 9 points on the field against a top 10 team on the road and expect to win. Pry really lost my support this game. I don't know what the answer is, but it's clear what the answer isn't.
Rings pretty hollow. Never should have been in the ref's hands
Lol...I.think it may be time to recycle a term from the past.
Tone-deaf.
I told my wife during the review that it felt like Michigan all over again. I have a hard time not feeling like VT is conspired against when it's happened TWICE!!
Meh. Doesn't mean shit if he isn't throwing anything and cursing.
I still don't understand how they spotted the holding on delane on the last drive. It went from 3rd and 1 to 3rd and 3.
agreed.. no way that hold was 8 yards past the LOS
I wondered the exact same thing!
Or how there wasn't a flag for illegal hands to the face on the big play the preceded that. Or a public flogging for not tackling Ward, twice, when our defenders had him dead to rights.
I'm proud of the team. This is the first game this season where I thought we actually looked like a good football team.
This loss is on the coaches. I don't mind the fake fg, that was one block away from being a great call.
The squib kick was moronic and the clock management at the end was awful. It's a miracle we got away with the two #17s on the field, otherwise that would've been a third thing.
Coaching decides close games. Coach Pry is now 1-10 in close games. I love pry and want him to be successful but something obviously needs to change for that to happen.
Pry gave them 6 points and I will never forgive him for that. We also almost won a game where everyone expected us to get blown tf out, so there's some copper lining I guess.
This was the same head ref that was suspended for the controversial 8 lateral Miami "win" over Duke.
You can't tell me he doesn't have money on MIami
There's even a 3 year old Change.org petition to get him fired.
I have been and continue to be a big fan of Pry. I think he says a lot of the right things and could still be a successful head coach at VT. That said, the time out management and critical in game decisions have been a problem, which definitely was the case again in this game, and for that reason I would be okay with a different head coach.
The biggest problem I see with firing Pry is that I have no confidence a different coach would be an improvement, and think it would be lower risk to make other changes on the staff. However, if Pry isn't willing to make those changes after this season, that's another huge problem and I definitely think he has to go at that point. The relative inexperience of the entire coaching staff was always high risk, and if he's going to be successful Pry has to be able to recognize and resolve that problem.
Also fuck it Felton caught that ball so I'm going to post it anyways.
Edit: I also wanted to say: what an incredibly entertaining and dramatic football game. Despite the deserved criticism, that was so much better than the first 4 games. Hopefully the team feels like they were robbed of a win against a top 10 team and responds by using that as motivation and confidence building for the rest of the season.
The problem with letting Pry go is two-fold: his buyout is big and you HAVE to let Whit go too. Not even Jesus himself would get a third chance to hire the head honcho of your money maker.
I don't think having to let Whit go is a problem at this point. I think he's proven he doesn't have it.
Whit by himself, no. But if you let Pry go first, you HAVE to let Whit go. If Whit goes first, I would think that it's likely Pry gets a chance to change coord's before they let him go. Could be wrong.
Love the Gosnells. Wish we had 30 of them
Well we have two of them and he's one of 9 brothers (13 total siblings).
I declare CONSEQUENCES!
The loss stings even more knowing there's not much left to play for this season. Even if we somehow miraculously win out and go to the ACC Championship for a Miami rematch, it's not like we'll make the CFP with 3 losses - 2 of them to the bottom tier teams in the P2. We would get thoroughly FSU'd, even if we somehow still won the conference.
9-3 is the best record we can hope for now, and we all know damn well that ain't happening with this staff. Be honest with yourself. This year is a wash. Realistically we're looking at probably 8-5 or 7-6 and that's being optimistic - it might be even worse.
8-5? 7-6? Barely better than last year, even though we rEtuRnEd sO mAnY StArtErs? 7-6, 8-5... these are not acceptable records. This program has been STUCK with records like that for over a decade now. Only mediocre teams look at records like that and consider them "winning seasons" because there were more wins than losses. What will it take to get an absolutely clean house? And I mean - clean. Ballein gone. Whit gone. Any remnants of prior staff gone. Do we have to lose 8-9 games? Or will we just continue to be happy we're not UVA and accept mediocrity?
That's the most depressing part of it all. I've said it already in this thread - we've moved beyond being stuck in football purgatory, and are now burning in football Hell. I'm all out of optimism, fellas. The future looks bleak as shit for this program.
The five highest ranked Conference Champions get an auto-bid to CFP. That said could see us being 9-3 and ranked lower than 5 other Conference champs because it would be the most Hokies thing to happen.
The fake kick was the most egregious part of it. The play call was to toss the ball to a dude who was absolutely in the path of players doing a normal rush on a field goal. They could have fooled everyone on the field and still had a player sitting in the runner's lap, because that was where he would have been fucking going anyway. Which, at least at first glance, is what happened. That wasn't a brilliant diagnosis, the dude was rushing and made an easy tackle. It's a bad play design.
Go for it. Absolutely. Maybe just line up and give it to the dude who was at seven per carry or whatever at that point.
sorry, im not having this shit tonight. we can nitpick over this but the one thing (THE ONE FUCKING THING) we wanted was for him to have these boys ready to play from start to finish and by god he did it. he didnt lose this game. the goddamn zebras did, literally.
i told joe, beamer isnt walking into merriman. so get that shit out of your minds.
we leveled up tonight. we play like this then we win out, even klempson.
i hope he went into that locker room and congratulated the boys on the win and i hope he runs his goddamn mouth all week about this bullshit. ill contribute $25 to the fucking fine.
I'm with you. There must be dozens of us.
Pry has successfully gotten this team to play aggressive, focused Football in 1/5 games this season. If you want to praise a guy for a 20% hit rate, go ahead, but color me unimpressed.
Given the above, the worst possible thing a HC can do is actively sabotage his team from winning when they were playing their asses off. Pry didn't do that once, but repeatedly throughout the game.
The Refs were shit and Miami got multiple favorable calls throughout, but that should not have mattered --with competent coaching that would not have mattered because at worst, we would have lined up for a winning FG.
Chew on this...Pry called an ill-advised T/O in order to repeat a massive blunder that ultimately lost us a game in week one. Inexcusable ineptitude--spare me with the refs lost the game for us.
I agree with you but why didn't he get this supposedly very talented team fired up for the other 4 games?
Why didnt Beamer (just to thrown out a name, mind you) have the 95 AND 2010 guys ready the first 2 weeks?
Who knows what happens but we keep playing like this we win out and it's the most fucking Hokie shit ever.
I blame Beamer for many of the times the team failed to show up as well, especially bowl games. Fucking infuriating. Just like Pry's team.
Last year was the time for moral victories. It's put up or shut up time this season, and so far Brent Pry and his staff have given away 3 games. The team played their asses off but I'm tired of pretending like we're on the right track when our coaching staff has blown 3 games in September.
This isn't a moral victory though. It's an actual victory and cbp needs to be saying this shit early and often , publicly and especially in the locker room.
If I don't see a Mark Mangino-esque blasting in this week's presser then I will be pissed.
Every single last motherfucker on this site was ready to get blown out by a million. but we won
We can say that all we want but Miami got a game closer to Charlotte last night and we did the opposite. Pry blew it. I don't see how it helps for him to throw a fit and claim we actually won a game he gave away.
This is true. The players came ready to play and demonstrated to themselves we can compete. Want I want to see now is if they keep that same intensity for the remaining opponents knowing that not a single one of them is as good as Miami, and should be buried into the ground. Questionable coaching aside from last night, i need to see last nights intensity matched every game the rest of the season. These kids should know now that they can play at a high level and they need to make sure the record the remainder of the season reflects that. If that doesn't happen then Pry's time at the helm may need to end way sooner than anyone wanted.
I didn't see the game, but from the headlines we were competitive in it until the very end when a ref botched a call.
Not sure what to make of that yet, but I'm glad we were at least IN the game until the very end.
Now, go beat Stanford.
No, I don't know how to vent.
14 points stolen from the board. I keep stressing this: we actually did win and by god this is what I want everyone from merriman from the trainers, to the players, coaches, even whit to be vocal about. Call this the fucking asterisk game or wharever. This is an actual rivalry, not a yearly Thanksgiving beatdown; be petty as fuck, carry it into the rest of the season and next year's game.
Slept on it...and I'm still furious. I'm furious I allow myself to get sucked back in every week. Furious that despite being 2-3, I know I'll be back for more next week. Furious that, despite inept coaching, we still had a chance.
Furious that, we couldn't get one final stop. Furious that, we couldn't hold a ten point lead. Furious that, we don't know when to call a timeout at the end of the game. Furious that, we were moving the ball well and inexplicably for one drive in the fourth, didn't run the damn ball. Furious that, a catch, is not a catch. Furious that, I actually care.
Furious that, I want this team and program to be relevant again. Furious that, despite what Pry inherited, he actually is closer to doing that than we may think.
Furious that, I know nothing is going to change. Furious that, for a second straight week we have let program defining wins evaporate into what ifs. Furious that, we can play with this intensity for Miami, but not the first four games.
Yeah Pry lost me in this game. Gifting Miami points to end the half? It's not like he's faced with some incredibly complex, nuanced situations and makes the wrong call. This is basic clock management that comes up in every single football game and he continues to blow it. The reason we suck in close games is because the coaching staff is clueless. I've seen enough.
Well, at least for the most part, the players stepped up and looked fairly competent. Even Clements played relatively decent except for when it mattered most (which is a minute improvement).
This game was just the biography of VT athletics. From the poor coaching, to the missed calls (and calls that weren't there) to the flukey ass plays that Miami lucked into all the way to the last ditch miracle hail mary touchdown that wasn't.
It's just not meant to be. Not for ol' VPI. It's just not in the cards or stars.
It sure fucking feels that way, don't it?
Last year we got absolutely manhandled by real teams (fsu, Louisville). This year we are just a play away in all our losses, including a last second heartbreaker on the road to a top 10 team. It's not the improvement we wanted or expected to see but we're not actually getting worse, IMO.
When I take a step back and try to look objectively at what we've got it's not worse than last year. In fact, 5 games in, I think you could make a pretty solid argument that we are better than our record - better than we were last year - It's just not as good as I hoped. If the team plays the way they did against Miami for the rest of the season I think 8 or 9 wins is at least in reach. I didn't think that a week ago.
At the end of the day, though, Pry's record needs to start improving. 1-10 in close games isn't unlucky. Winless against top 50 programs isn't good. But at least he's gone from losing big to losing small. The next step is turning those close losses into wins. We'll see.
We TKPr's are very good at peeling back the onion and providing detailed and often times scrutinized comments, viewpoints, responses to comments, etc.
I'm not going to do that for this game or the first 5 games of this season in any post game post. The large factor problems come from numerous areas. There more than 2 silver bullets to fix this and goes beyond hiring two experienced coordinators alone. There is one off field issue that will keep all of factors from ever happening to any material magnitude. Guess which one.
Thus, I am goin go piggyback on the above comment as my explained position because it's true.
Yes, we fucked ourselves last night. Yes, the refs fucked us hard last night. Yes, MIA got lucky as shit a few times last night......
But at the end of it all, I do know one thing our team got last night.....is a lot of respect as players out there on the field on national TV.
We got respect. I'm good with that.
When will we see? We should have seen this year. Last year was the year for hopeful epithets. This was the year to make it happen. This was our window, and that window has officially slipped away.
Call me impatient, but we can't afford to let a first time HC bungle his way through tiny victories to improve only marginally year over year until maybe we have a competent team and staff in a few years.
This year was our window, our chance to set a precedent for this program and change the narrative around us falling into obscurity, and that window has now completely passed us by. Most of the talent on our roster is gone next year, and I don't see us attracting big time talent from the portal to fill those gaps with yet another middling 5-7, 6-6, or 7-5 record. I don't see us getting better next year, in basically any measurable way.
Whit miscalculated. I hate to say it because I want Pry to be the guy, but it's clear to me now that Whit miscalculated badly on this hire - at the very least by letting Pry surround himself with inexperience. It was a costly mistake that, in my opinion after these first 5 games, will ensure that we wander in the wilderness for years to come.
I have oft lamented the fact that Pry, inexperienced himself, hired a staff of very inexperienced coaches. I thought it was a big mistake. My wife brought up an interesting point last night, though, when I was rehashing the Dave Braine story from Let Me Be Frank - the one where he had a sit down with Beamer and told him his inexperienced buddy coaches weren't cutting it and needed to go - her point was this: maybe Pry wanted to hire coordinators with no experience because having more experienced coaches than himself in the room might create a strange power dynamic where the head coach may have difficulty asserting authority but the longer term plan is once he is established as a head coach he will replace those inexperienced coaches with guys who have done it for a while. By then, he won't be a first time HC anymore (with a couple years under his belt) and will be more comfortable managing more experienced coordinators. I'm not sure if that is a viable strategy but I thought it was an interesting (perhaps hopeful) point.
In any case, we agreed that we both really like Pry and want him to succeed. I do think he can be successful but he needs to surround himself with better coaches and staff. And for the love of all that is holy, hire someone to have the sole task of time management!
Need to start calling this a therapy thread.
All of these things are true:
I just don't know where we go next. it would be dumb to fire Pry today/this season. But I'm not convinced that replacing Bowen and marve solves the issue either.
Stanford
Technically correct however I think they have to go back to Blacksburg first.
It would just feel good to try something different.
But it does seem to be VT football is improving, in all but actual freaking wins.
Welp. That was both better than I thought it would be, and so much worse.
I hate Pry for making Fuente look like he knew how to win.
I hate the ACC for their part.
I hate that this is yet another "big game" that slipped away.
I'm with bar. I don't know where we go from here either.
I don't think Pry is quite out of rope. But he has got to start winning some of these close games. Especially when you have a top 10 team on the ropes in their own house, how often is that gonna happen? This was a chance at a signature win, and it was pissed away just like 9 others. The James Franklin School of Unclutchitude needs to be shut down.
I know we're all disappointed, but I thought a lot of good things happened. I was humbled by the effort and pride on display — the team looked like the "old" VT, flying to the ball, breaking tackles, etc.
I also think it was a coaching achievement getting the team so pumped, to play so aggressive, against a top team in an away game. There was no let off until the clock ran out.
I both completely agree with you and think this highlights the lack of preparation for the first 4 games. In many ways it's easier to get players to focus like this for the bigger stage, and that has to happen every game.
That's been VTs calling card for YEAAAAAAAARS. We've always played up or down to the talent level of the teams we played. Same thing happened when we were on our 7 year streak.
Pry really fumbled this game away. Absolutely shafted by the refs at the end there but they had the "number 7" team in the country on the ropes.
Did anyway else think their was a horse collar on Drones the play immediately before 15 seconds ticked away?
Yup.
Yelled horse collar at the time but I believe the rule requires the tackler to get his hand under the shoulder pads and in this case he just had a handful of jersey. At least that is how I am rationalizing it.
Yes but is the rule that the player has to be taken down with the horse collar? Or is it like the face mask rule where it's called if it's grabbed at all? I don't know for sure
I have read all, at least the majority, of these comments. This loss is hard to stomach and the frustration is obvious and very understandable from a sold out Hokie crowd such as this community.
I am not (at his point) in favor of parting ways with Pry. He has (as already documented by others in this thread) improved several needed areas in the program. Changes though do appear warranted. Pry needs some of the load removed from his shoulders so that he can focus more heavily on game and clock management.
I am in favor of the oft suggested coordinator upgrades. I also understand we have financial limitations in making such improvements. Assuming financial limitations, I would be in favor of staying the course defensively due to Pry's background and putting our eggs in the proven offensive coordinator basket.
The problem with new coordinators is who is going to come if they think the ship is sinking? We can get people, sure. But will they be an upgrade?
I guess the key here is "IF" you think the ship is sinking. I am not there yet. But in fairness I was late to the game in giving up on Fuente as well.
I believe the rebuilding job Pry signed on for is even harder than we suspected (and we all knew it would be difficult).
The coaching staff lost me on this one. The players played a great game and gave an outstanding effort. How do they continue to get up for games when the highly compensated head whistle is not competent at the basics of clock management and managing the on-field product? I have to think that poisons the on field effort at some point. Pry is not the guy. He's 1-10 in close games for a reason. You can't build a winning culture this way.
I had 4% battery and threw on the YTTV app to watch the last play and review sequence. Only play in the second half I got eyes on... it was truly a VT trademark ending. Never for a second did I think that was going to stand, not because of my perfect understanding of the catch rule (because nobody has that), but we have simply seen this movie before.
My take home message is I should be really glad that I did not watch a second of this game isn't it?
Honestly, it was a pretty fun game to watch.
Not at all. It was a great game and our guys played their nuts off.
Nope this was the best game we've played on primetime in years. One hell of a game
He definitely made some mistakes but if we're going to criticize his bad calls, he should also get credit for making enough right ones to actually beat the #7 team in the country on the road.
Agreed, the bad calls are magnified because we were so close to pulling it off, but we should also keep in mind that most of us expected to get blown out. Pry, Bowen, and Marve put together a game plan good enough to take down a legit top 10 team on the road. They just couldn't get it over the finish line. They bear the blame for the loss, but should also get credit for putting us in a position to win.
Some positive - players not coaches out played the #7 ranked team; OL & DL looked better despite in game injuries; play calling better with Tuten involved; 58 yard FG!; play with the same intensity and 7-5 is possible. Can't blame the players
Wow...
I intentionally went downtown (Wilmington) to celebrate a family member's birthday party. Happened to walk by a bar and see the first interception along with the score. I thought, "ehh. I know how this goes."
We arrive to our next destination, Bourbon Street, where our favorite 80's cover band is rocking out. And what do I see on every TV? The Hokies!
We listened to this band kick ass. We watched the Hokies fight like hell (best game Marve has called to date). Watched all of these head scratching decisions by Pry, but as these things happened I began to realize we weeent the only Hokies in the bar. There were many!
As a side... ALWAYS take the points on the road against a top 10 team when you're in control. With that being said, the play was set up perfectly, with one exception... effing Parker Clements. If he doesn't get bulldozed that play is a huge success. I can't believe there is literally no one on this roster, or on campus for that matter, who isn't better than him. It's an embarrassment.
Ok, back to story time. The game is coming to an end while the band is crushing some "Don't Stop Believing." And we can all feel it! The defense was obviously tired, but we had one more chance... Pry did everything humanly possible to lose that in the end and we all thought it was over...
We watched the last throw... there was a collective sigh in the bar (you couldn't hear it, but you could feel it). Then, in a moment of disappointment we all saw the official put his hands in the air to signal a TD!
There was a collective cheer. And I simple couldn't help myself. I yelled, as loud as I could, "LEEETSSS GOOOOO!!!" And a collective return of, "Hokies!!!" Rand through the bar and out onto Front Street. Full of excitement, wdid that for a few minutes.
Then, after what seemed like 10 years of ACC officials doing what they do, the disappointment sat in.
But, you know what. I'm kind of over it at this point. We aren't a good team. We aren't a hood program. It was a helluva game. But this is who we are. I think I've finally embraced that and live with zero expectations. We all went back to drinking and singing.
I had to type this on my phone as there is no internet service in the greater Wilmington area, so if typos and grammatical errors abound, I'm sorry.
But why scheme a play reliant on your teams greatness weakness to execute a key block when he has failed to do so in EVERY GAME.
Agree 100%. It's on the coaches to know the strengths and weaknesses of their team and play to the teams strengths. It's not a good call if you have watched how poorly our line has played for several weeks (which I hope our coaches have been watching).
I gotta say, I'm not a fan of the Parker Clements hate I see here, as well as all over social media. Coaches need to recruit better players, or coach him up. He's not going out there and throwing games...
He doesn't appear to be throwing games but he has failed to do his part in an untold number of plays this season that have directly impacted the final result of EVERY game.
Then the coaches should bench him. The fact that they haven't shows that the coaches are either inept or he's our best option (or both I suppose).
Either way, He's trying his best to compete. Pry/Bowen/Crooke need to either develop him or replace him. Something they haven't done in 3 years.
The OL is also about communication, 5 guys playing together etc. I'm guessing its more than raw physical talent that keeps Clements out there. Also all of our opponents have scouts- they know he is a weak link so they attack him.
Agree in general.
I try to avoid calling out individual players.
But I will say this, the NIL world has really caused a frameshift here. I think the criticism of college players will get both louder and more normalized now that they are getting compensated.
I'm not advocating for it, but human nature is what it is. I have no idea if Clements is getting much (or any) NIL but I think many people aren't going to take the time to sort thru that--they are going to put all players in one basket.
When people have "skin in the game," giving to NIL collectives, ect. there are going to feel entitled to fire their critcism cannons whenever they feel.
By the same token, when players can demand certain amounts of compensation to remain on the roster or else bounce to another school (or just quit entirely Sluka-style), its hard to accept them hiding behind the "amateurism shield." You can't have it both ways.
This.
If you're getting paid, I get to boo. I don't make the rules
My dude, you think we're spending big money on Parker Clements? We're not.
I think he's saying now that any player is eligible for NIL that also makes them eligible for open criticism.
Perzactly.
And somehow, it's still too much.
Yeah- Parker Clements just isn't good- IIWII. Lawson played awful against Miami too. Awful leverage the entire night. Brumfield is not very good either- IIWII. I've said for years we need better players and more of them.
I stopped watching the game at the 8 minute mark in the 4th because I felt that this would another game where we played good enough to win, but lost. How many of those have we had over the years? Too darn many. No more "moral" victories.
I feel really bad for the players because they played their butts off.
Slept on it and it feels like this is the inflection point. Hokies offense basically put up as many points as Miami's opponents did in the first 4 weeks. The defense survived injuries to force 3 turnovers and had decent pressure all game. They did 95% of what they needed to do. Can't fault the players here.
But when we went three and out with 7 minutes nursing a 3 point lead, I knew the game was lost. I don't have faith this coaching staff has the ability to coach up that missing 5% when it matters. This coaching staff has to figure that out and earn the players trust, or there will be changes. I think we've reestablish what worked last season and we have the gameplan to be competitive every week of the season. Now let's see if we can dig deep and fucking do it.
Props to Bowen and Marve for calling a great game. Not sure how anyone could have watched that game and come away feeling bad about them.
If anyone not named APR knew how to tackle the QB when they got to him over and over, then I'd say our defense played the perfect game.
Offensively we crushed it almost the whole night. And even on the late-game three-and-out we had, I've seen people giving Bowen some grief, but Drones has to make that 5-yard pass on 1st down though and not throw it behind the receiver (a pretty common theme last night).
I called this series out as the only bad thing Bowen did and it was because before we took the first snap I could have told you all 3 plays. It's the odd thing about Bowen, he keeps wanting to run a certain offense that he doesn't have the players to execute and he goes back to it. When he stays away from that he looks great. The calls just felt out of place with the rest of the game plan. Every coach has tendencies and Bowen needs more work to break his. It reminded me of the Sean Glennon days when you knew what 3 plays Stinespring would call with the lead I the 4th, they didn't work because everyone knows what's coming.
Pry should consider OC Christian Taylor at W&M. Wish we had Cignetti as HC...he's off to a great start at IU
Great effort by the players. They nearly made chicken salad out of the chickenshit coaching.
Pry should not be making elementary game management mistakes in his 3rd year as head coach.
He isn't it. The only thing that has improved under Pry is fan, player alumni relationships and recruiting / relationships with VA high schools.
The only positive thing is that we don't have to worry about him getting poached because he simply is not a good head coach.
Kyron Drones is a player evaluation/ QB coaching failure. We lost this game because he could not complete a 6 yard pass to a wide open Jaylen Lane. Even his TD to VT26 was a bad play. He ran himself into pressure and threw it across his body. It's a great athletic feat. But extremely poor QB play.
Our WRs were cooking Miami's DBs. Drones inability to hit lay ups hurts the offense and play call sequences. Any traditional pocket pass with Drones is a wasted down.
The two 17s on special teams is an absolute joke. It should not happen once, yet it happened 3 times. Of all the game management issues this is the worst one of all.
It can be fixed literally at anytime, the solution isn't complex. You just fucking say: NO DUPLICATE NUMBERS.
I don't see a solution as Pry is likely to get another year. We need a serious no nonsense head coach (Jerry Kill) or Jerry Kill equivalent. We need to stop reaching back to the Beamer tree and just hire an above average P5 coach.
Fucking Illinois is ranked 19th. JMU scores 70 against UNC. Toledo beat Mississippi State on the road. And we can't get fucking jersey numbers right.
I would not minimize this... pretty big deal imo
I don't know what 'no nonsense' means?
We went after the hottest coach, who had an offensive background and built a G5 program from nothing into something. That didn't work. So we decided we wanted a proven P5, Blueblood recruiter, someone defensive minded who could rally the alumni, fans, and recruits. That isn't working (yet).
Do you want to go out and hire bronco and give up on recruiting? Do you want to hire Jamey Chadwell even if he doesn't play nicely with boosters and the BoR? You want to hire Jerry Kill knowing his health history, and general disdain towards administrators?
Coaching hires are a gamble. Every school is a slightly different situation. Everyone thought Scott Frost, Justin Fuente, etc were home run hires. Hell, a lot of us thought Lincoln Riley was a home run hire, and that's not exactly going wonderfully either.
One thing I do believe about Pry is that whether hes at VT for 4 years or 14, he will have left the program in a better place than he found it.
No-nonsense means not losing games because of duplicate jersey numbers.
Players without the requisite talent level should be encouraged to transfer or be benched (Parker Clements).
Game management decisions should not give the opposing teams points.
The offensive scheme should make sense as a whole, as opposed to being a set of plays that have no relationship to each other.
I don't know WHO it is, but there is a coach out there that could beat Vandy with VT's resources. There is a coach out there that can beat Rutgers, Cuse, ODU, Wake, etc etc and be competitive in the ACC. There is a coach out there that knows how to manage timeouts. It's not my job to find him- that's Whits job.
Look, I agree, but to make that work, there have to be tradeoffs. In any basic project management decision, you can pick 2 of Cheap, Fast, and good quality - can't have all three.
Same applies to coaching hires - you can't have cheap, experienced, and a culture fit. You have to be willing to give on something.
The powers that be (Whit, BoV, Sands, Boosters, etc) decided that they wanted to target a (relatively) affordable culture fit with P5 recruiting experience, even if that meant limited HC experience.
Not absolving Whit of blame - he should've been more involved with coordinator hires. Feels like thats the thing that will ultimately be his downfall - but also recognize that he works within the framework his superiors and stakeholders give him.
Quite frankly, if you asked me what I think the primary role of a head coach should be, it's this. Face of the program that establishes and maintains relationships with your key stakeholders. That's the CEO mentality everyone is going to right now, and that's where Pry clearly wants to be.
The problem is, of you're going to be there, everyone else has to be on their game. And for us, everyone else is learning on the job and completely in over their head. It was a setup destined to struggle.
But
If you fix this and bring in coordinators with a proven track record of having been coordinators before (ideally, someone who ran a great offense or defense as a coordinator but recently failed somewhere else as a head coach and is looking to reestablish his brand) this can work extremely well. I do think this can and will work, and it can be Pry that leads it. Just not with the coordinators he currently has.
So, you're saying Justin Fuente for OC? /s
Quite frankly, if it's actually him calling plays and scheming, I'd be intrigued. He was very good at that in his previous roles, and I was really hoping he would have done that here, but he made the same mistake that Pry did and gave that to someone who didn't know how to do it.
After the botched fake field goal I just keep looking at the score and thinking we should be up 6 more. Calling timeout with 25 seconds on the clock and 4th down?!?! WTF! Miami had 1 TO, make them use it to get time. Then we squib it like we thought the clock would run off 25 seconds? On the road against a top 10 team and we get the INT and basically a free 3 pts and we don't take it? after the ensuing kick off Miami would have been in about the same spot on the field, but down 3 more points. I just keep looking at the score and thinking they should have 3 less and we should have 3 more. we should have won 37-35. The penalty that have Vandy 3 and thus blunder by Pry have cost us two games.
Hey, wasn't let year supposed to be the "Lose Small" year?
When we really look at the overall body of work this far, without any question in my mind, we should be 4-1. No question.
We had 3 fumbles vs RUT. In most cases, three TO's loses games, so I will leave that one a loss.
However, VT has shown that when a team has 3 TO's they can still win a game. So, 5-0 is not an outside the realm possibility.
You could argue that ice cold starts that get you behind in the score early causes the offense to play more desperately, which then snowballs into more TOs. Start off strong, we can manage the game more, including letting more dogs loose on defense. So if we had come out against Rutgers anywhere in the ballpark of how we did against Miami, them maybe that TO count is only one and we could have saved a W there, too.
Yeah I think when this offense can run and stay on schedule we're good but any hiccup in that and it's a drastic drop off.
I get people are disappointed, but to suggest that losing a game on a botched referee call in a game the Hokies were expected to lose by 3 scores, and the conclusion is Pry is a bad coach is myopic.
VT isn't the team you thought they were at the beginning of the season. It wasn't smart for us to buy into the hype that in year 3, Pry would take a 3-win team to 9-win team. But, this team is head-and-ahoulders better than last year. And if you can't see that, go rewatch the FSU game last year.
But yes, much like Cristobal, Pry needs to learn from his in-game mistakes and get better. You know what, he will. His head isn't in the sand. He evaluates himself and his coaching, gets in contact with other HCs for advice, and makes improvements.
VT is developing their young players, hitting at a high rate in the portal, and steadily improving in all phases (although not completely linear). Be critical, but also don't miss the forest for the trees.
I think we can hold these two ideas simultaneously:
It is true that Pry has lost some tough games. Both NCST games, Vandy, Rutgers, and now Miami at the top of the list. To me, the Miami loss is the least disappointing but also the most frustrating due to context. I also think Pry will evolve and improve in that aspect, especially as his coordinators and players improve late game.
One major improvement was Kyron was good on that last drive (but was 3-and-out the prior drive). As Kyron (and Bowen) gets better at the end game, so will Pry.
Another improvement was Ayden Green. He is the best WR at getting open downfield and when a play breaks down.
Bowen and Marve could still improve a bit late game. Too many 3-and-outs late game, too many broken defenses late game. Bowen was better that last drive, but I still feel like he needed to find ways to get more 10+-yard completions on that last drive to stop the clock more. Marve has not yet been a positive factor in the late-game (except Liberty, if I remember correctly), and his playcall against Rutgers gave them that win. I will say Marve did put VT in position to win late, but Miami made some unbelievable plays. (Certainly some late game blame does go to the players for nor tackling Ward too.)
Ayden Greene, Mose Phillips, Jalen Jones, Quinten Reddish have all been improving. Curious to hear French's review of the freshman lineman who subbed in.
Def some bright spots
I agree with you and appreciate the perspective and support for Pry. But I don't think most of the frustration expressed in this thread toward Pry is based solely on this game.
An alternative way to view the Miami game is that VT did look like the team we thought they could be at the beginning of the season and the performance in the first 4 games was an indication of poor coaching in those games.
I agree with this take, that there has been an overall, but frustratingly non-linear, trend of improvement in most aspects of the program under Pry.
Yea, Pry, his coordinators, and players still need to improve in late-game play. If Marve doesn't call that wrong blitz, does Rutgers get that late FG? If Bowen doesn't go 3-and-out on the 2nd to last possession and controls the ball for a late score, does Ward even get a chance to make that incredibly lucky (and talented) final drive? There are a lot of late-game improvements VT needs to make. Not just Pry. But yes, he has to make them too.
Is it? Compared to the end of last year? Y'all think so?
I was thinking of at this point last year. No I don't think there has been the expected improvement compared to the end of last year.
Do you think the team that play UL late last year keeps this game against Miami and Cam Ward close? I think they get beat by 2 scores.
I also think the end of 2023 team wasn't that much better than the team that got whipped by FSU. So, I definitely think so.
My personal take is that the team is better but the coaching staff and players are still learning on how to become consistent. And if they can they get there, they will go 6-1 the rest of the way. If not, then more pain.
I missed the UL game last year so honestly can't say - but your point is well taken.
Hope we go 6-1 or better lol
Here's my issue...it's year 3 and we are seeing the same mistakes....literally. We can't figure out how to put 11 players on the field with 11 unique numbers.
That is an absolute inexcusable attention to basic detail.
In year one, I had minimal expectations (and we certainly didn't exceed them) and "hey, we were supposed to lose but we did way better than we thought," was a reasonable sign of progress.
In year three, moral victories are hollow. And let's face it, we are treating this Miami team like they are vintage 2002 Miami when its much more likely that they end up just like all the other "Bak" team for literally the past 20 years...9-3 and playing in a meh Bowl.
I don't have unrealistic expectations...I thought this was probably an 8-4 team before the year. But I do have a basic expectation that the HC isn't actively preventing his team from winning. Sorry in year 3, that's not good enough and its not close.
Hard disagree.
We lost a game because of duplicate jersey numbers. Its not a tactical or game management error. Its not a talent differential issue. It is literally the simplest problem that could be solved, and it has not been.
The other issues have not gotten better, and there is no reason to think that it will.
I've had some time to process. I'm still bummed, but I've cooled off considerably. I don't feel like I did, but sorry if I said anything offensive in the game thread.
If we can play like that for the rest of the season, we're in good shape. I hope this loss hasn't broken the team spirit.
This is where we really find out if Pry and his staff have what it takes or not. Can they get the team to keep playing like they did against Miami when we're playing lesser teams?
Also, can they self-evaluate and clean up the Mickey Mouse coaching mistakes and ffs, help Drones get his head and his ass wired together and hit an open receiver.
I was one of many Hokies that last power for the weekend, I finally got power back and was able to watch a replay.
Thoughts.
1) I can't blame the fake FG decision. It was aggressive and being up ten a FG still leaves us at a 2 score game. However that was the worst designed and executed fake I have seen in a long time. If you are going to run a fake, have a much better one. It was easy to call it a bad decision in hindsight.
2) My understanding is the referee that overturned the call actually lives in Miami. How is that allowed to happen? He was also the ref that overruled the 8 lateral play to allow Miami to beat Duke years ago. How is the ACC still employing him?
3) Anything that take you over 5 minutes to overturn cannot be considered incontrovertible.
4) All Corners should now be taught to run with one foot out of bounds and just touch the ball as the WR is making a catch and then cite our game that the ball was therefore incomplete. They opened the door, let it crush them.
5) Pry had two bad coaching errors in back to back plays. Calling a TO before the FG to end the first half and then the squib kick after. Should have kicked it deep, or just not called that TO until 3 seconds was left in the first half.
6) and this should probably have been first. They played a complete game against a damn good team and should have won. We were a 3 score underdog and should have won the game. Would have with good refs. Go Hokies.
Pry has a ton of issues that have been beat to death in this thread. I still think he could be a successful coach at VT if he's willing to do some things like cut losses with coaches, get a game management assistant/specialist, etc.
However, if he is a serious football coach then the team will come out on Saturday and look ready to play. They'll focus that energy and play angry against Stanford. If he does his angry press conference blaming the refs, the whole team goes off on twitter, and then you come out flat next game - then you're just a PR pro, not a football coach.
What gives me hope is that there are so many on TKP that still have so much passion for the program. If this thread was nearly dead then I would really be worried.