Happy Holidays, I decided to gift y'all with a Pry-ssr. If I have the time over the next few weeks maybe I'll do one for the presumed presser we'll have once the hirings and shufflings are complete.
- Started by thanking the coaches that were let go and looked pained by having to make the decision.
- Pry has been planning staffing decisions for weeks, starting with being unhappy with things around halfway through the season. The ultimate decision was made in the last couple days.
- Pry did not talk specifics about the Marve decision, but states we weren't playing good enough defense, particularly in the second half.
- Recruiting, relationships, development all mentioned when discussing OL coach position. "It's not just what you see on the field" in reference to Pry's evaluation of coaches.
- Pry feels strongly that the better conditioned team wins the close games. Didn't feel like the team was well-conditioned enough at the start of the year and at the end of games.
- Adibi coaching ILB for bowl, Davis coaching OL, Ferg doing S&C. Quinn or Pry to be play-caller for the bowl, Quinn doing the operational things a
tropicaltypical DC would. - Every position has internal and external candidates. Pry does not plan to return to play calling next year.
- Further "shuffling" will likely occur within the staff to provide the best development opportunity for the players and program.
- Pry reiterated that some players in the portal can return if they decide to and some cannot, it depends on why they entered the portal to begin with.
- Lots of portal and roster management talk starting around 15:10.
- Players that have declared and have signed with an agent cannot play in the bowl. Waiting to hear from Strong and Tuten.
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this one is particularly interesting to me. What types of reasons are given for entering the portal? Which of those reasons means a player can return? Which reasons mean a player cannot? Are these determinations up to VT and its coaches or is this some over arching regulation on the portal?
These are VT/player decisions. He goes into more detail, but in a vague way at that 15ish min mark. A lot of it seems to boil down to how "team first" the player-in-question is, but some of it has to do with roster management.
Complete speculation but I would imagine...
Can return
Cannot return
No sauces, just intuition based on everything I've heard Pry and media members say over the years:
If you follow the team and twitter and see what happened on the field, you can make reasonable deductions about which players fall into which bucket.
It sounded like there were two sets of players that entered the portal.
One was roster mgmt - players who weren't going to have a significant role and were cut to bring roster down from 120 to 105. These players won't be back.
The second group is the players testing their value. If they discover the grass isn't necessarily greener, they likely can come back.
He didn't say it outright, but reading between the lines, there might be a third group that didn't fit out culture. Obviously, they wouldn't be back.
Thanks for doing this! Hope parenthood is going well.
Everybody is good, just tired. The toddler is a maniac. Appreciate you checking in and for giving me hope a few months back that going from 1 -2 wouldn't be so bad.
You're doing great fellow dad!
One child to two is not bad. Going from 2 to 3 is much harder. They have you outnumbered.
Bingo.
Yep, we went from one to three when we had twins. My wife and I do not really remember much of their first 6 months
We went from zero to two kids so I don't really have a point of reference on twins vs single child. We sure as hell aren't having a third, though!
So I was 6th out of 7 kids in my family (plus Mom had 5 miscarriages so it could easily have been more; the oldest 6 of us were within 9 years(as well as 4 of the miscarriages) so my mom was nursing or pregnant from 1955-1967 ( when asked why they had so many kids, my dad said 'well SOMEONE has to raise the average IQ of the planet...").
Side note, my dad went ahead to Okinawa to find housing so Mom traveled from upstate NY to Okinawa BY HERSELF with a 6 year old, 5 yr old, 4 yr old, and twin 9 month olds. The oldest three on harnesses (which I 'm not keen on but given the circumstances I understand it) and one of the twins on each hip. She said at a layover in KC, the three oldest got loose and took off in three different directions (and didn't look back cause they knew if she caught their eye, they'd have to come back. She said she sat on the floor, smoked a cigarette and a drunk guy came up and said "do you want me to find them and bring them back"? Apparently she paused for ten seconds or so and said "yeah...their dad would probably miss them!" And the guy DID get them all back to her; can't imagine how that would've gone in current times.
Good lord, submit your mom for sainthood. My real problem is that I was 41 when my twins were born. At 47 now, I don't have what it takes to go through that all over again. Potty training two boys at the same time is one of the top 10 most difficult/frustrating things I've ever done.
Yeah she was definitely something special! And was age 36 when she had me (the 6th kid) and 43 when she had my little sister!
Sorta same. Oldest is 19 and twins are now 13
This forces you to switch from man defense to zone defense and you lose.
Prevent defense?
one is way too overwhelming for us, cant imagine more
Our third is nearly 5 months old. Life is pure chaos right now.
We have 2 currently (almost 6 and 3.5) and my wife has been all in on #3....Iooking to the future I see how another sibling would be really great, but in the short term I do not look forward to repeating the hell of the first year or so while also having 2 others this time!
Dont tell me that!!!!! getting two middle school girls has been rough enough, three is going to stress me out so much
Drones and Pop both coming back, big news. Lets get a dedicated qb coach ffs.
All in all, a good piece by Pry - two things that stand out to me:
Do like they do at Hawaii?
Yes, Quinn's idea of a good DC:
I even proof-read through this twice 🙄
Tropical might've been helpful if we were playing in a Florida , Hawaii, or Bahamas bowl instead of Charlotte...
Really appreciate these write-ups!
A couple things stood out in the roster mgmt segment:
Pry lamented about all of the folks getting in players' ears about their valuation and said it isn't good for college football.
He is reaching out to Bruce Arians (two Zoom calls scheduled) to talk about roster mgmt now that money is such a big part of it.
Add in that many/most of these "NIL agents" are mid-20 year olds with little-zero experience and not much more business setup than an Instagram account.
Here's a name for you: Ramon Brown. Word is he made an ultimatum to Locksley, then dropped in the Portal. Where is he now?? Bluefield State--I'm sure he'd like a do-over on that one.
It's clearly in the agents best interest to "maximize value" whether that value is real or not. When you consider that a significant percentage of Portal entrants don't end up back on Rosters at all, one has to really wonder who they are really serving by supporting these ultimatums that are clearly being made.
It's got to be infuriating to coaches to deal with.
Its almost like (nope, never gonna stop beating this drum) allowing players to sign with real, verified agents would have been both more logical and more likely to actually benefit them in the long run.
"...a significant percentage of Portal entrants don't end up back on Rosters..."
That would be interesting data to see.
The athletic did an article last year showing that a little over 80% of FBS transfers in '22 and '23 made it on another team. That's not bad, but that means last year about 700 players either stopped playing or dropped down to a level of play that the recruiting services don't follow. It'll be way more grim this year with the roster limit changes IMO.
What might be more interesting is the number/percentage of FBS transfers that made it on another team at the same or higher level. I have a strong feeling that it's a lot lower than 80%.
Way lower and the article noted that FCS transfers fair way worse, but I don't recall specific numbers.
If VT doesn't think that they need to address a new leadership model aligned closer to the needs of a professional sports league they are missing the boat. The steps taken by Stanford and UNC are models that should be implemented to address this new reality. VT needs an Athletics Department GM (or at least a Football GM). The NCAA Portal and NIL Wild West will modulate to a model that sustains the college athlete and provide thousands of scholarships. We better get ahead of this reality, its coming.
^^^This x1000
I know people are like "we need a good recruiter" when talking about the next DC but that landscape has changed so much that is far less important. We need a GM like mentioned above. Sure, the recruits need to still like the coaches and all that but now the NIL deals are going to be the more important factor in the decision making on which school to pick, and of course if the scheme and coaching will get them to the next level.
Yep. Bingo. Having to win over mom or the barber or whatever to play four years at your school is done. We are rapidly shifting toward an NFL player evaluation and personnel management model. Teams need to know how to play money ball and the valuations for certain players and positions. This needs to be separate from the coaching staff as well just like the NFL. Coaches can have input but the GMs and their staff are there to manage and evaluate the roster and salary cap.
I say hire the absolute best coaches you can and let your GM and personnel staff manage recruiting and retention.
Damn right. This is also a skill set that college coaches generally just don't have.
I didn't catch the full name, Kelly somebody, but sounds like he is working in a pseudo-GM role and negotiates all of the player deals.
He's the Head of Triumph NIL so it seemed more of a tongue in cheek statement that he was in somewhat of a GM roll since he's dealing with NIL
It's the reality of college sports. Players are getting paid, so it requires coordination between the entity paying them and the coaching staff, not unlike a GM. So it's a pretty good way to describe him.
Kelly Woolwine.
Best LB in VT history in my opinion. I approve this choice.
This is a really good point. I was somewhat surprised to see Galt let go, but this makes a lot of sense. There were many reasons for our late game collapses, but conditioning probably didn't get talked about enough. If Keli Lawson is in a bit better shape, maybe he doesn't try to arm tackle Cam Ward around the shoulders at the end of that game
Definitely think it's an issue. But one thing that Pry and no one else brought up is maybe the defense was gassed by the third quarter because of being on the field a lot due to stalled drives/3 and outs by our offense. Bowen's offense is feast or famine. It's not necessarily efficient and can't usually grind down the clock when it needs to, but when it's humming he can put up points and explosive plays. That's my big concern - can this OL and his offense give us a more reliable and consistent run game when we need it to give the defense a breather and run clock?
Probably why they also fired the OL coach.
I thought he laid it out pretty straight:
failure to make adjustments (Marve); gassed late in the game (Galt); more than just what you see on the field, i.e., relationships, development, recruiting (Crook).
And...more "shuffling" coming (new DC will likely have some latitude re: hiring and staff responsibilities) as well as internal candidates for all positions (bowl audition?).
Just watched a little of Bob Shoop's defense at Tennessee. It had some similarities but isn't quite a match. Like Bud at the end, Hamilton, and Pry, he struggled to get good fits at linebacker with the Vols.