A Bright Look at OL Recruiting

As of the writing of this post, Virginia Tech has 14 scholarship OL and 2 PWO OL for the 2025 season. Nine of the scholarship and both PWO OL project at IOL while five scholarship OL project at OT. Of the 14 scholarship OL, only one, Tomas Rimac is guaranteed to exhaust his eligibility this season, while Brody Meadows and Johnny Garrett are the only other upperclassmen.

There's a lot of youth in the OL room, but potential exists.

Looking more in-depth, across all four major recruiting services, it appears the Hokies have a capable OL if they mesh well.

Looking at each individual player's best ranking, coming out of high school, there's some hope.

r-Fr Kyle Altuner was rated as highly as #4 by ESPN at IOL
r-So Layth Ghannam was rated as highly as #13 by On3 at OT
r-Sr Tomas Rimac was rated as highly as #14 by 247 at IOL
r-Fr Gavin Crawford was rated as highly as #30 by ESPN at IOL
r-Jr Johnny Garrett was rated as highly as #33 by On3 at IOL
r-Jr Brody Meadows was rated as highly as #33 by On3 at IOL
r-Fr Lucas Austin was rated as highly as #40 by 247 at OT
r-Fr Nathaniel Wright and r-So Hannes Hammer were both rated as highly as #53 by 247 and On3 respectively
r-Fr Tommy Ricard was rated as highly as #58 by ESPN at IOL

That's 3 players ranked in the Top 25, 7 in the Top 50, and 9 in the Top 60 of their respective positions. In fact, only r-So Montavious Cunningham was rated outside the Top 100 of his position. Note: r-So Jaden Muskrat was originally recruited as a DL.

If we were to go solely off of ratings, the Hokies could put together a starting OL where the average best position ranking was 20.2 and the median was 14 (Ghannam, Rimac, Altuner, Crawford, Austin), with backups being 47.8 with a median of 53. (Hammer, Garrett, Meadows, Wright, Lynch). Top 10 would see an average rating of 34th and a median of 36

2026 would actually see a slight improvement to 19.8 (but a median of 24) along the highest rated 5 on the line, with the additions of Wilder (#24 OT) and Hamilton (#28 IOL), while the highest ranked 5 "backups" also moves up to 43.6 (median of 40); giving an average along the 2-deep at 31.7 and a median ranking of 31.5.

For reference, the 2024 OL starting 5 consisted of
Xavier Chaplin (#43)
Ghannam (#13)
Kaden Moore (#134)
Braelin Moore (#22)
Parker Clements (#111)
Average Rank: 64.6
Median Rank: 43

TLDR: Looking at the HS recruiting rankings of our OL, we've improved from an average rank of 64.6/median rank of 43rd per player at their position, to 20.2 with a median of 14. That's 44.4 ranks better on average and a median rank improvement of 29 places. Last year's starting OL had a worse average HS position rank than this years second highest five by 16.8 places.

If this OL performs on the field as their paper rankings would suggest, I think we'd've averaged quite a few more yards, scored quite a few more points, and probably would not have lost those one score games, and maybe, just maybe, have not lost the Clemson game, either. For those keeping track at home, that would be all of the losses from last regular season.