Sounds like new tie breaker rules are in the works so that a 5 loss Duke doesn't win the ACC and we can stack the cards in Miami's favor so that they can maybe win their first ACC championship.
Full tiebreaking procedure for the football title game from the ACC. A lot of moving parts with some teams playing eight games, some nine this year. https://t.co/Y10UcXic6x pic.twitter.com/VneoOcyHs5— Andy Bitter (@AndyBitterVT) July 15, 2026
Also wtf are we doing with this jersey combo 2018 top, 2025 Helmet and pants?
Almost ACC Kickoff time. #Hokies jersey pic presented without comment. pic.twitter.com/acAXG5qhxR— Andy Bitter (@AndyBitterVT) July 15, 2026
Forums:
DISCLAIMER: Forum topics may not have been written or edited by The Key Play staff.
Comments
Franklin has a past with 2 drastically different uniform approaches. The gaudy ever-changing Murland ones. And the tried-and-true all-white of PSU. I figure we'll tend to lean towards the basics of AME this season.
Proceeds to bring a random jersey combo to the first ACC media day.
(this is TIC, I don't really care I just think its weird)
A lot of our combos have been random. Until they are worn 3 or 4 or 5 times...
Going to basics across the board isn't that random, at least to me. We've had AME before, but strayed away from it for a bit. And when it's brought back out, there's a freak out over it?
I'm referencing using the old tops. We didn't wear those once last year because we replaced them with the stripe-less design. All for AME but use the newest jersey we have not the one we replaced.
For reference our jersey we rolled out last year that was very much well received:
Yes, please.
Do those ones.
Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm fairly certain Franklin had left Maryland before under armour tried to make them their version of Oregon with much uglier uniforms (I say this as someone who loves the Maryland state flag, most of those uniforms are atrocious).
UA started in football at Murland in 2004. Franklin was there from 08-10.
Yeah, but their jerseys were rather mundane up until he left. The truly atrocious ones started in 2011
One of my top 5 hottest takes is that these uniforms were amazing:
really hoping is the top 1 hottest take. ew.
As much as I love the Maryland flag, these always reminded me of Vince and Larry...
What are you going to say next.... That Game of Thrones did a great job closing out the show?
Or that mayonnaise is not an instrument?
or maybe Miss Piggy wasn't hitting on Kermit?
I also love all the Maryland flag stuff. I think that Marylanders have a weird obsession with their flag, but leaning into it is absolutely the right move
Never lean into Maryland flag stuff. End up looking like crash test dummies.
I like the Virginia flag: "Thus unto tyrants".
And it has boobs
I learned a new word today!
encourageable?
Is it pronounced the same?
No it's pronounced 'Kevin'
WE ARE BACK BABY!!!
Boob out, tyrants down.
Yeah, that's how you do a flag.
Not just copying some rich British guy's crest.
The Virginia state flag is objectively poorly designed.
All valid points but counterpoint: boob
I never said a good design couldn't have a boob in it
"Thus unto tyrants"
Sure, the Virginia flag breaks some of this guys rules. As does Maryland's.
However, I still like it, it's unique, and it's better than the Calvert guy's coat of arms flag that they fly in Maryland, particularly in what it symbolizes. As far as I'm concerned, we can settle this on a football field.
I'll support you, these unis are pretty good.
Ah, yes.
The Clown Suits.
That was the year the Joker was desiging their uniforms, and some flags fell into the machine.
edit: really? Nobody likes the Maryland clown uniform origin story?
I really hope not. Maroon shirt (in the late 90's color, please), white pants, maroon helmet, and dont screw around.
I don't get the uniform issue? Pants and shirt look the same color/shade to me 🤷♂️
the stripes on the shoulders came back - that's the issue. Personally, I don't have a super strong opinion. I think the stripe-less jersey from last year looks better than the older, striped, jersey but I don't think it's really THAT big of a deal
I was hoping the stripes were gone for good. But hey, at least they got the legs on the mannequin right.
We've never worn that combination of jerseys in the history of our school and I don't think we ever will.
Helmet: 2024-5 standard (to be fair the only thing that changed with our helemets was the bumper which didn't say ACC in either case), Jersey: 2018-2023 standard. Pants 2024-5 standard.
How much different do the pants that 'match' that jersey look than these pants?
They don't have the "Hokies" on the hip
Side note:
Anyone got 6 tickets this early to Pitt game they wanna part ways with?
Do we actually bring the uniforms with us to ACC media days or does the ACC dig these up from some closet? I don't see us going back to the shoulder stripe jerseys and find it very plausible that some intern just grabbed whatever the ACC had on hand to throw on the mannequin. It will be interesting to see if the uniform is changed this afternoon or tomorrow morning, furthering the belief that Coach Franklin is completely plugged into hokie internet.
I think that's plausible. Someone switched the helmet bumper after it was set up which is a weird thing to switch.
https://x.com/Hokie20/status/2077401723723800909
Lol the one thing that had to be changed ASAP was being associated with the ACC at ACC
media daysKickoff.We (I) can rest easy now they have fixed the jersey
That mannequin has skipped every single leg day ever.
Rumor has it the mannequin is modeled based on our player stature for the past decade
I didn't want to make that joke but had a very similar thought...
Fuente was there. Maybe Hilgart trained those mannequins.
Concerned that we even possess a uniform sized to fit those legs.
Only on TKP can a post from French discussing DL potential get 4 comments over two days, while a thread on uniform choices racks up 25 comments in 5 hours.
We lack the football acumen to make any meaningful comments on French's posts and just have to read them in awe and hope for good days to come.
You have to look good to play good, so we are just working our comments in order of events
The program is pretty lockdown, too, and given all the transfers, it's not like you can look at a ton of last years film
Justin Fuente made an appearance at ACC media days on behalf of the CFP
He talked with tech sideline. Was a pretty good conversation.
https://virginiatech.sportswar.com/article/2026/07/15/tsl-podcast-episod...
Decent interview. I think Fuente gets a lot of unwarranted hated on here. It was definitely the right decision to move on from him, but I'll always respect him as a Hokie.
IDK how much hate he's getting nowadays. I think most folks on TKP are pretty neutral on him at this point; wanted him fired, but if he got another coaching job, I don't think people would be actively rooting against him. But then again TKP is different from X which is different from the real world.
It's interesting to me that he seems uninterested in taking another coaching job. I understand taking a few years off, but the gig with the CFP seems like he wants to be around the game but not in a coaching capacity.
Honestly I don't blame him for not wanting another coaching job. The job isn't the same job he had when he was coaching. There is so much more to it now that isn't about coaching football that honestly it just doesn't sound fun or enjoyable.
For sure. And you see a lot of coaches doing that because they're not interested in having to re-recruit their roster every year, deal with NIL, whatever it may be. Most of the coaches you see doing this are older and this is sort of the reason they decide to retire. Fuente's just unique in that he was a younger guy.
To be fair, if I had made 25 mil lifetime and had younger kids, I wouldn't work for years, especially not a 7 days a week job like coaching. But usually coaches are wired differently than meatballs like me.
Even without kids, if I made 25 mil at his age when he quit coaching, I would be retired and doing things I want to do with my time that aren't part of the rat race.
Yea but the people who make $25m before 45 typically (obviously, not always) don't think the rat race is a rat race. They eat/sleep/breathe their career and love it. These are the people who do anything to avoid their retirement. Not to mention that their entire social life permanently tangled with their work.
I guess that is why I haven't made 25 mil yet. I hate the rat race and have been trying to figure out a way to retire since I was 15.
The people who hate the rate race would have quite before making 10mil
I can confirm this, as a young coach who's worked my way up from D3 to coaching D1 the landscape has completely shifted incredibly fast, a lot of coaches I respect are getting out and honestly I'd be lying if I said it hasn't crossed my mind. I got into coaching to develop kids and there's less of that than ever before, coaching is hard and stressful enough without all the extra bullshit we have to deal with.
I never hated him, but as someone who was very critical of his tenure, it was primarily based around my opinion that the writing was on the wall in 2018, once he lost the roster Beamer left him, and some of the clues were even present in 2017 with regards to the offense once Evans didn't stay for a second year. For example, the 2017 GT game was basically a start to finish clinic on a coach making the wrong decision at every juncture he was presented an option. If you go back through this game, all the of the going for it, not going for it, going for 2 decisions are what led to us needing a TD (down 5) instead of a field goal at the end of the game. You may recall we made it into fg range at the end of this game... and then threw low% passes downfield on both 3rd and 1 and 4th and 1.
I will always respect him as a Hokie, and someone who took over a situation that was far from ideal (outside of the roster he inherited).
The 2017 gt game was a rough one, and I definitely remember it being the first time i questioned Fuente's overall ability to elevate us. That was the end of the honeymoon period no doubt. It was only like a month earlier that he had us ranked #12 and hosting gameday
2016 GT - what the heck is he doing out there ... well if you haven't faced a Paul Johnson team they are tricky to get used to.
2017 GT - WTF this is no better than last year.
2018 GT - WTF are we doing out there?!
Yeah that one was painful. Pretty sure that felt worse than losing to JMU in 2010.
It really made it feel like we have deep problems and are just no longer good. Granted that probably wasn't the first time i felt like that but the helplessness of our team was hard to watch as GT just ran the same play on us again and again
Not a Fuente hater, but holy hell that last 4th down was definitely the stupidest play call I've ever seen.
I get not going for the safe yard or two. But that particular fade to the sideline literally missed by a whole year.
Ford and Bucky could catch those in their sleep; Cam was our best WR but hadn't caught a single fade yet in 2017.
I couldn't believe he never got better at in-game management. I just wonder if he had gotten used to getting away with everything he called in lower leagues, and never got punished for the wrong calls until he got to VT, where he paid for mistakes.
I really thought he was going to pull out of the nose-dive at some point, but he just ran right into the ground.
Me either. And yet we see every year in college and the NFL that situational awareness is not really taken into account when these hires are being made. Fuente is not the first or last coach with this flaw to make it to a high level of the game.
I don't understand how it's such a widespread thing. You could go to any dorm and find any student that plays NCAA or Madden at a decently competent level and say "Hey bud, you want to sit in a room over at the athletic complex and play NCAA? The catch is the big whistle of the football team is going to sit with you and watch you play and make all of the game management decisions.
Any 18-22 year old kid is going to jump at that opportunity.
What infuriated me the most about Corn-Fu was all of the 3rd or 4th and 1 or less situations where we would line up in the shotgun. Need to get 1 foot. Let's:
(1) have the QB line up several yards behind the line of scrimmage
(2) take the snap and hand it off to a RB that is even further behind the line of scrimmage
(3) run up the middle and get stuffed
(4) do this again, and again, and again, year, after year, after year and never figure it out
I remember typing out on a game thread this point just before a third and short - get stuffed.
Type it out again on fourth and short - get stuffed and turn the ball over on downs
Type out, oh, who couldn't have seen that coming?
And I am about as far away from being a sophisticated expert on football as Earth is from Pluto. But it was obvious to me for, literally, years. Yet was too hard for Cornelson or Fuente to figure out.
I've heard coaches and analysts talk about this. The claim is that a lot (obviously not all) of these QBs that graduated high school post 2015ish have (literally) never taken a snap under center before. Taking a snap under center then handing off to the RB take a bit of timing/practice. It doesn't make sense to have a single play in your playbook where the QB is under center; the defense will always know what's coming. You can expand your playbook, but if you do that, that's more stuff you have to teach your guys, more stuff you have to rep, etc.
I'm also curious if there's any actual data suggesting that taking snaps under center is more effective in short yardage situations than taking snaps from the shotgun?
In your 4 step process, I think the biggest failure in the 'run up the middle' part - especially after Burnmeister(?) mentioned that all of our 'read options' were in fact predetermined with no reading and no optoins.
Quick google search, found this article 'https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5771435/2024/09/17/college-football-sho...' with the following quote:
Also interesting:
So tldr the argument that in short yardage situations teams should take snaps under center because it's less distance to move the ball is unfounded, correct?
The article also references a team that actually dedicated time in practice to run those plays, even though they were traditionally a shotgun team (though it highlights that practice time is a commodity so most teams don't do it).
Ultimately, most teams never practice it, their players never played it before, so for arm chair quarterbacks like us, it seems utterly simple to say "it's 3rd and 1, why don't you run it under center" when in reality its not as simple and coaches go with both their gut and what data shows.
a lot depends on where you are on the field. near the goal line, defenses have less to lose by going all out to get into the backfield. that's where slow developing plays out of the shotgun (which also typically require a hole to open) have a problem...also one reason the tush-push has become so popular.
Good find here, the numbers are interesting in that the percentages are quite equal, but the yardage gained is 100% higher when run from shotgun. I wonder if that's due to shotgun plays spread the defense out, so when the run works, it works to greater success, aka more yardage, than when under center due to under center formations being more compact (aka goal line formations). Thus allowing the defense to also be more compact and limit big runs even if the offense gets the first down.
I'd be curious also if there's a similar study for play action (if it's in this article I'm paywalled). Reason I ask is I remember an interview when Joe Burrow made it to the Super Bowl from a defensive player stating how much harder it is to read play action when the QB is under center, since his back turns to the defense and they can't actually see the ball. But shotgun play action they can react quicker since their line of the sight to the ball is never obstructed.
A couple of things:
If you have a good offensive line and you can hand the ball off to your back as they are gaining momentum towards the line of scrimmage, you should be able to gain a yard even if the defense knows where you're going. The offense sets the snap count and knows the play, forcing the defense to always react. There's a reason a first down is 10 yards and not one - a yard is not too hard to gain.
Even on the goaline, the above holds true. In that case, however, there's virtually no risk of getting burned on a play action pass as the field is 10 yards long and it's all or nothing anyway. Sell out on the run. The offense has a distinct advantage on their own 40 versus the goaline. If they sell out on the run once, burn them the next time.
If you know you're going to be in a situation where you need a yard to gain on third or fourth down, have the play called ahead of time, run to the line of scrimmage, and snap the ball on first sound. Don't let the defense put in their short yardage package and catch them off guard.
Soooo you're saying if you have a strong OL, it's irrelevant where your QB takes the snap?
if you have a strong OL
, it's irrelevant where your QB takes the snap?everything is easier in generalBingo.
But if a QB is under center, the running back is moving towards the line when they receive the handoff and you gain momentum. You also reach the line of scrimmage quicker which gives less time for the defensive to beat a block or fill a gap. I just think under center handoffs do better in a yard to gain situation where you're mostly relying on speed and power instead of reading the defense.
Or more time for the OL to create a hole, no?
Sure.
If you're handing the ball off to the RB who's 6 yards in the backfield anyway, I don't think where the QB gets the ball is very important. I've seen some RB's say they prefer getting it in shotgun because they feel like they can be patient and see the hole develop vs under center you're probably running much more downhill. Pros/cons to both.
The hill i'll die on is more teams should use a quarterback sneak. If you need under 1 yard, even a mediocre OL has the advantage over the DL because all you have to do is not get blown backwards and an average sized QB can lean forward to get it.
Well I know why we don't run the qb sneak much.
"I'm also curious if there's any actual data suggesting that taking snaps under center is more effective in short yardage situations than taking snaps from the shotgun?"
I'm not sure about that either, although looks like it was reported below. But I'm more concerned about the how when Virginia Tech ran it, it felt like we were successful maybe 20% of the time - and that feels, if anything, generous. We failed at it over and over again and there never seemed to be anything done to try and change things up.
Seems like in the recent past it always went differently than it did in our mind. It seemed to go in slow motion in the most awkward of ways.
Jim Phillips coming out in favor of 24 team playoff
Makes sense for the ACC. Easiest way to get 2+ teams in.
No, the easiest way to get 2+ teams in the playoffs is for Virginia Tech, Clemson, Florida State, NC State, Miami, and other teams to play up to their potential.
One of these teams is not like the others....
NC State only has a few 10 win seasons in their history. If they start playing well, the narrative will be that the rest of the ACC sucks.
Miami, Clemson, and FSU are the big names.
VT and UNC are the next big ones. We can move to the upper tier after some good seasons with Franklin though
FTFY - 2002 they won 11 games. That's the only double digit win season in program history.
Thank you! I thought it was only one season, but didn't know off the top of my head
People forget that the ACC has gotten two teams into the playoffs in 2024 and 2020 (if you count ND, meh).
There's no reason the ACC can't finish the season with two top 10 teams.
That would be the ideal way, but I still think the easiest would be letting more teams in, so a middling ACC team can make it. To be clear, I don't want an expanded playoffs. I think we jumped the shark by going right past 8 teams, but I am not surprised Jim Phillips is in favor of one based on how the league has looked since before he took over.
But of course he does.....
IDK how I feel about the big noon ACC Championship. I assume this is for eyeballs on TV, but I really think a power conference championship game should be a late game.
I agree, should be later. 9AM on the west coast.
Good thing the Atlantic Coast Conference is on the East coast then! There definitely isn't a reason to cater to west coast time slot for an all Atlantic Coast Conference Championship..... wait a second......
There are Hokies everywhere.
Including Europe.
I think Franklin takes the stage at 10 AM on ACCN.
I haven't ever heard of any of the "media outlets" asking questions.
Loved the emphasis on TE's by Franklin. Basically went about saying a TE that can't block is just a big wide receiver, and isn't a threat to create mismatches. The focus on on blocking TE's so that we can get the defense to scheme up LB's covering our guys so we can win those a majority of the time.
Franklin, Copeland, Flowers, Hawkins:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tm6T8YYxmHY
Franklin:
- won the offseason but that doesn't mean anything if it doesn't translate
- FSU guy immediately brings up his record against top 10 opponents. Franklin says he embraces opportunities to play top opponents
- The best schools recently have been bold and aggressive while schools falling behind tend to be holding onto tradition
- Tyler Warren would never leave VA now. TEs in HS and most colleges are just big receivers need to be true tight ends to actually stress a defense
Copeland:
- Focus has been on details since Franklin arrived
- Pry coming back is a huge reason he came back
- Up around 300-305lbs whew
Flowers
- Reddish is special in athletic ability and size
- Talks about his time at Rice some and how Blacksburg is the same and different
Hawkins
- Microwaves a mean ramen noodle (big laugh from everyone)
- Excited to play for someone like Franklin's history and success. Franklin is keep the team excited for the "new Virginia Tech"
Franklin talking with ACCN -
not going to put notes on this one- worth a listenhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogTTYZpBYzM
- does note as Aycen Stevens as the breakout player this year. Has embraced his role as a bull speed rusher and not trying to be a finesse guy.
- Cunningham gets called out at OL
- Hawk mentioned for RB
- wasn't just 3 things to change when he got to VT said everything needed to change and VT leadership had become aware
- said the pace of things since he got in haven't been bad he prefers being busy, doesn't sleep.
- wants Virginia Tech to bring toughness to every game. Says it's easy to end up soft with all the new rules and "sports science"
- we have to be more than just an entrance
- said a lot of the transfers coming from PSU was about reducing risk for both parties
- Grunk's strength is his distribution ability
Thanks for doing this!
We've played 10 top 10 teams in the last decade. Three of those teams were in 2020 when half the country wasnt playing.
What school wouldn't take an average of 11 wins a year.
Guessing Alabama and maybe Texas would both be mad at "only" 11 wins a year.
Random note. Tyson Flowers is very interesting through the entire media deal. He really thinks through his answers before talking...leading to multiple seconds of dead air when he answers. Hilariously they put him on a segment that was rapid fire questions where they ended up just keep listing off questions when he didn't immediately answer. Super well spoken for a college age kid but I don't think he'll be the favorite for media to talk to cause his process burns a bunch of time.
Sounds like the perfect player to send out after a loss. Only 2-3 questions will get answered in the entire session haha
What loss???
Ain't gonna be any....
24-0 Babyyyyyy!!!!