It is an unfortunate truth about Philip Montgomery that he is already doing things that Brent Pry never achieved at Virginia Tech in his first games as interim head coach. While it is easy to point out that it took two games for Montgomery to achieve a one-score victory (something Pry only achieved against a Liberty team whose coach had one foot out the door in 2022), last night's victory at Carter-Finley Stadium represented something we haven't seen since the previous interim head coaching run. Virginia Tech won a road conference game as an underdog, last achieved by J.C. Price against Virginia (who CBS Sports had listed as -7 favorites) in 2021.
I don't think there were many who expected much out of Virginia Tech last night. NC State had previously shown a potent offense that could beat you rushing the ball behind Hollywood Smothers, and racking up passing yards to an offense that already has 7 receivers with over 10 catches. While the NC State defense had left a lot to desire in their nail biting (non-conference) win against Virginia and their (actual conference) loss to Duke, Virginia Tech has struggled to find an identity early this season.
So how did Virginia Tech pull off the double-digit underdog victory? By mixing a couple of energized freshmen defenders in Noah Chambers and Sheldon Robinson, seeing career best performances from Kaleb Spencer and Christian Ellis, and pass rush that combined with a good coverage effort to get five sacks. At the same time, while the offense wasn't always prolific, it eliminated the turnovers (Virginia Tech didn't fumble the ball, and Drones limited the number of turnover worthy passing plays) and reduced the number of backbreaking negative plays.
Success Rate Still Low, But VT Limits the Negatives
While Virginia Tech is ultimately going to end up on the negative end of Parker Fleming's "Did We Really Get Beat That Bad" chart, I do think that this can be a little misleading. NC State's success mostly came on the back of C.J. Bailey's arm: 26/34 passing (76.5%) for 240 passing yards, 1 touchdown and no interceptions. But a lot of that success came on short passes on first down. And while the Hokies allowed four explosive passing plays (receptions over 20 yards), Virginia Tech escaped allowing plays of 30- or 50-plus yards that have plagued them in the Pry era. Virginia Tech's longest allowed play only went for 27 yards.
On offense, Virginia Tech was able to do enough throughout. While I don't think that having Drones throw the ball 11 times in the first quarter is a winning recipe moving forward, the Hokies found success running behind Terion Stewart and Marcellous Hawkins. Stewart, who flashed against ODU but has struggled with injuries is the obvious revelation but both running backs averaged over 11 yards a carry. Steward with 174 yards on 15 carries (11.6 YPC) and Hawkins with 47 on 4 carries (11.8 yards).
The passing attack did show some success on some choice routes in the slot as well as the RPO game. Virginia Tech was even able to use the "Rutgers tight end play" for their own success on a huge third down conversion late in the game. There is still plenty of room for improvement, especially in protection (both offensive line quality and Drones ability to make adjustments at the line) as well as some major drops.
Virginia Tech Wins the EPA Battle on the Road
As a result, you can see that while Virginia Tech came out slow, they did ultimately win the EPA per play battle. Even in the 4th quarter, which netted out as a mild NC State win on net EPA per play, Virginia Tech was able to protect a lead and pull off the win by finding a way to not three-and-out after getting the ball back with about four minutes remaining.
Final Thoughts
I am still struggling to make out what this team can do with a tough remaining conference schedule. There are still some major flaws on this team that can easily be exploited, and limited depth that is being tested by injuries and opt-outs. Wins will be tough to come by, and no one recognizes that as much as Coach Montgomery who said as much in his post game remarks. However, if this roster, as healthy as it can be, can continue to play like they did last night (dare I say hard, smart, and tough?) then I think there can be some developmental wins, which are desperately needed. While I doubt this is a bowl team, I do think there is path to make sure this season isn't the entire loss we expected after the ODU loss.
Comments
Author's Note:
All stats and data comes from the College Football Database which webscrapes play results from ESPN. I did have to do some manual editing of play data (it had the late fumble recovered by NC State as a gain of 11, not a loss of 11), and removed the final kneel down from Drones.
I missed the ODU game as I was at a wedding, and skipped the Wofford game as FCS has limited value. I will continue with Wake Forest but it will probably be late as I have another wedding that weekend. Please let me know if there is anything else you are interested in and I will try to find a way to add it.
These are fantastic and thank you for posting them. I really enjoy reading "what my lying eyes don't see" and usually go back and read after French's posts.
For the future, would it be hard to do a running yearly summary? I'd be interested to see how the numbers compared vs USCe and going forward tracking our (hooeful) progress/treading.
That is definitely a part of the plan. Will probably try to do that some time this week if / when I have the time to pull it together. I wanted to wait until we had played four FBS games, so now would be the week to do it.
Unfortunately, like the last few years, it seems like the team will make a dramatic shift after September which will make for some interesting comparisons.
This is why we love you.
Robinson showed up, I had to lookup who was wearing 14 because kept standing out on defense
Fun PFF note. Stewart forced 11 missed tackles for 153 yards after contact. The most forced missed tackles this decade...beating some noteabky good running backs
Darn Tuten!
Stewart was handing out headaches and putting the defense on their ass. He is a violent runner, and nc state had a few guys helped off after Stewart bulldozed them.
I would run him til his tongue hung out.
Rotate Stewart and Hawkins to some extent. Less than 20 carries per game for each if possible. Keep 'em both fresh and healthy. Both have speed, can plant then cut, and pound the defense.
Both averaged 11 ypc so I dont really care how you divide the carries.
19 for Stewart
19 for Hawkins
That's 38 carries for 445 yards
Assume Drones has a few scrambles and a few designed runs, we top 500 a game from here on out.
I would not. I want him strong in the last regular season game.
I actually see a path to six wins for this team. That would be a remarkable accomplishment if they do.
I had said this in another thread, but it does appear that the old adage of "you show the most improvement between week 1 and week 2" potentially applied to Monty's interim first two games ( I will let a much smarter person like French tell me if that is true).
My fear is the schedule will prove too difficult with games against ranked Georgia Tech (who looked beatable against Wake), Florida State (who lost to UVA), and Miami; plus potentially tough games against Louisville and Virginia (as much as that pains me to say).
VT has 5 games - GT, Louisville, Miami, FSU, UVA - are looking pretty challenging right now. 6 wins means that we have to beat 2 of these teams (plus Cal and Wake - both of whom will put up a fight). It's possible that some of those teams are not as good as we think they are based on the available data, but that seems tough.
Honestly, if Monty can lead this team to beat GT, Miami, and UVA, AND he's willing to work a GM, and in the frame of this 'new era' athletic department, then I'm super open to dropping the interim tag
We'll see... lots of football left to be played.
Still drunk from last night?
Joking aside, I can see 5, but getting to 6 means either a lot of improvement and no significant injuries for us or someone on the back half of our schedule is a pretender.
The latter seems more likely #goACC
It's a long season. Who knows what team might mail it in if they pick up a big loss or lose a star player to injury.
To be clear, it's unfortunate that Pry couldn't pull off a one-score win.
But it's fortunate that Montgomery isn't afraid to try for a win against the odds.
Pry got one....in thirteen tries.
Can you explain the first chart? I think the bars are mislabeled?
Sorry, I kinda rushed it this morning. It is overall success rate by quarter. That should be each quarter and game total. Will update in datawrapper in a minute.
Pretty crazy that NC State's success rate and EPA was so high despite scoring so little. Any thoughts on how that happened? 40% success rate is pretty decent, no?
Virginia Tech forced two turnover on downs, and when they forced punts they generally did it quickly. Of NC State's five punts, three of them failed to generate a first down. (One of them picked up a first on the first play, then proceeded to three and out.)
Their scoring drives were all 75 yards plus and took 12 plays, 12 plays, and 10 plays respectively.
VT was able to sustain drives longer (only one drive failed to pick up a first down) and were able to convert field goals when getting over midfield.
It doesn't show in the advanced numbers, but getting the 4th down stop on 4th and 1 at the VT 38 in the first drive of the second quarter was probably the most pivotal sequence, and where this easily could have been the collapse moment. If we don't get that stop then we're likely to go down two scores after barely five minutes of possession. Instead, we the ball and grind out a nearly 5 minute 62 yard scoring drive to take the lead.
Bailey had incredible passing stats when he was not under pressure. NCSt just could not get the running game going, and made a number of baffling decisions on 3rd and 4th down. Despite having their running QB Wilson who is automatic in short yardage, they repeatedly lined up Bailey in shotgun. Vat also made a few crucial stops that killed drives. But NCSt had a TOP advantage and racked up good yardage when they weren't taking negative plays.
8 TFLs for the defense on 65 plays for NC State. Got them in critical moments too.
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1B6TMzE8MD/?mibextid=wwXIfr
Hope u all can see this.
Maybe I need to rethink my new Avatar
Shades of Beams.
Could you include scoring opportunities next time?
I will try to automate this more for next time but both teams had 10 drives (counting VT's end of half but not counting the kneel down).
VT had 5 scoring opportunities (crossing the opponents 40 yard line) and scored on all 5, with three field goals and two touchdowns. In the red zone they were 3/3 with a field goal and two touchdowns.
NC State had four scoring opportunities, and converted three into points (all touchdowns). All three touchdowns were red zone scores as well.
VT: 50% scoring drives (100% scoring success), 10% failure to convert a drive rate. Averaged 2.3 points per drive and 4.6 per scoring drive.
NC State: 40% scoring drives (75% success), 30% drive conversion failure rate. Averaged 2.1 points per drive and 5.25 per scoring drive.
The way the rushing success rates flipped in the 4Q has me a little concerned that the conditioning (maybe the players missing) is still not there. Couple this with opt outs and the fact that we are only 5 games in, and I have the feeling no lead will be safe down the stretch.
no lead was safe before this game - just the fact we won is an improvement
Didn't want to start a new thread for this since I didn't fully finish the analysis, but I have results of advanced stats for all FBS teams against FBS competition and it is not pretty for VT.
Link to pretty shitty imgur chart since I can't get the embed to work.
Virginia Tech has an offensive success rate of 41.64%, and an allowed rate of 48.32% on defense. They are getting explosive plays on 8.18% on offense and allowing 13.45% on defense.
Offensive success ranks 76th overall, while defense success ranks 112th. The net success of -6.68% ranks 101st out of 136 FBS teams.
The explosive rate on offense ranks 72nd overall, while the allowed defensive rank is 128th. The overall net explosive rate of -5.27% ranks 126th overall.
Obviously there are 6 quarters of the worst football that VT has probably played since the 80s or 90s that are really weighing down the results. I will try to separate out the last week against the first three, but these past few weeks have been a lot personally (I don't sleep well, and its hard to get motivated for this after work when you go straight to bed).
To look ahead at Wake Forest, they have a defense that has done well on a drive-to-drive basis against FBS opponents (they've only played Kennesaw State, NC State, and Georgia Tech - so take that for what its worth). However, their offense has struggled and ranks lower than VT in success rate (99th overall) and is one rank lower on explosive plays. Take into account lingering injuries at QB and RB, and hopefully VT can build on their performances under Coach Montgomery.