As the Hokies headed into the locker room with a grand total of zero points at halftime against Miami, some "boos" started to pour down on the players.
Ordinarily, this lack of fan support might rankle people like wide receiver Willie Byrn. But this time, he says he understands the frustration.
"My reaction is, 'I'm with y'all.' I would boo," Byrn said. "We weren't performing and our fans are spoiled, and that's a great thing that they're spoiled with success. I'm not going to get mad because they want to win. I'm the same exact way. They should boo when they're playing the way we did Thursday."
It's hard to disagree that some booing is warranted given the way the offense has played the last few games. Now, the team is desperately trying to turn things around in time for a date with Boston College's stout defense.
"Nobody in this program is sitting around and saying 'oh my god, we're so bad right now,'" said running backs coach Shane Beamer. "We've got a bunch of fighters and I'm excited to see what we do on Saturday."
The Eagles enter the game as the eighth ranked defense in the country in yards allowed per game, so the Hokies have some work to do. But it's hard to find a starting point given how inept almost every phase of the offense looked against the Hurricanes.
One element of the offense that was painfully absent last week is the downfield, or even mid range, passing game.
Outside of a 23-yard catch and run by Sam Rogers, quarterback Michael Brewer's longest completion of the night was a 13-yard pass to Joel Caleb (which Caleb quickly fumbled away).
"They did a good job of taking some of those things away," Brewer said. "Playing a lot of off man coverage and mixing in some zone back there, making it difficult for us to push it down the field."
In particular, players blame the team's inability to set up long throws downfield with any sort of running game or short passing attack.
"When you do the horizontal things right, which we didn't do, it opens up things downfield. They have to complement each other," Byrn said. "You can't just beg for a down the field game when you don't have a underneath or run game to complement it."
Offensive coordinator Scot Loeffler seems to agree with that assessment.
"You had to establish the run game, you had to get the safeties down in the box and then throw it over their head, and we just didn't get that done," Loeffler said.
When the Hokies did attempt any kind of longer passing play, the line allowed Miami's defensive front to make Brewer uncomfortable.
"When you get into obvious passing situations that we got into in the first half, it's tough when it's an athletic group like that," Brewer said. "They can kind of pin their ears back and rush the passer, so we've got to be better running the football and executing the midrange pass game, that way we can set up that downfield stuff."
The offensive line was certainly part of the problem in allowing those rushes as well. The unit allowed two sacks on the day for a loss of 22 total yards, with both coming on key third downs, and let Brewer get two more times and hurried on three other occasions.
Yet while the o-line's struggles were certainly a factor, that's nothing new this season.
Play calling could be part of the problem, and many were quick to call for Loeffler's head on that account.
"For whatever reason, the play calls weren't going that way," Byrn said. "We're not in a position to question or overrule what they ask."
But given the many times Brewer got pressured or sacked while taking a long drop in the pocket, it would seem that the Hokies were trying longer throws. They just weren't working.
Part of that could be due to the struggles of the team's pair of freshman receivers, Isaiah Ford and Cam Phillips. Both have had excellent seasons thus far, but they were barely factors against Miami.
"With such talent at such a young age overall, we're the kind of team that can beat anybody, but can also lose to anybody," Byrn said.
The two will have to get back on track in a hurry against BC. The Eagles' defense is excellent overall, and does a good job of containing big passing plays.
According to Football Outsiders, Boston College allows the 35th fewest explosive drives, or drives that average at least 10 yards per play, in the country.
They're also strong in the type of obvious passing situations that let Miami hassle the Hokies.
On passing downs, which Football Outsiders considers any second down play with eight or more yards to go and any third or fourth down with five or more yards to go, the Eagles are the 39th most efficient defense in college football.
Yet if the Hokies can cut down on the turnovers that sank their second half hopes against the Hurricanes, they might be able to find some consistency.
The Eagles have only six interceptions on the year (that's tied for 71st in the country, ironically, with the Hokies and several others) and just two forced fumbles (T-120th) so it's not as if creating turnovers is a strong suit for them.
Instead, the Hokies will have to avoid beating themselves with fumbles, as they did with three straight in the second half against the Hurricanes.
"It makes you want to throw up," Beamer said. "We went 13 times without fumbling last year, the running backs, 13 games, and then to do it three times, it just rips your guts out. You can't win games that way."
The running game did seem to find momentum in the second half, putting up the bulk of its 120 total yards on the ground in the last two quarters. Yet those fumbles erased much of the team's progress.
"It's kind of like a dagger in our back because we're working, we're pushing and it kind of brings down your morale, you have to get back up and keep pushing," said guard Wyatt Teller.
While running the ball consistently will be tough against BC, as the Eagles allow the sixth fewest rushing yards per game in the nation, Beamer still sees things to build off going forward.
"We've got to run the football better, and you saw that in the third quarter," Beamer said. "You saw signs and there's a lot to build upon. I know a lot of people made a big deal of our head coach coming in and saying how proud he was, but there was a lot in that third and fourth quarter to be proud of."
If the Hokies want to avoid hearing the boo birds once again at Lane Stadium, that construction process will have to happen for the offense very, very quickly.
Comments
They should run the hurry up/up-tempo offense all game long. I swear, everytime they run that, they get up and down the field. Still baffles me why they always stop doing that after a successful dive while running it.
Because Frank doesn't like it. He is more focused on killing the play clock, like he has always been. Even when we were behind the entire game against Miami, except in that spurt of the 3rd quarter, we were running the play clock below ten seconds before snapping the ball.
Frank needs to open his eyes then - it was fun to watch the tempo game vs. Bill and Mary and anOSU and it seems to get Brewer in a groove quickly. When we went to the up-tempo offense in the 2nd half vs. Miami, we did move the ball (granted we did run the same exact play like 50 straight times that drive).
You're correct on all accounts. The fly in the ointment is that Frank has played the clock killing offense his entire career no matter the name of his OC and he has given zero indication he will stray from it more than momentarily.
We're in the last third of the season, the comments from the coaches relaying essentially - 'It is a learning process, we'll get the hang of it pretty soon' - seem counterintuitive to the situation across the rest of the nation, where teams are capable of adopting offenses far sooner than the very end of the season. Our offense has not progressed the last two games, it has regressed. That's not trending towards 'getting the hang of it'. We're going away from the target, not towards it. Very frustrating...
This quote says it all - if it takes our offense 9 games to "get the hang of it" then obviously we need to change the scheme/gameplan of how we go about our offensive playset.
Great teams do not allow 9 games to go by before "getting the hang of their offense" - Heck, even anOSU got the hang of a new QB the game immediately after they played us.
I think the up-tempo fast offense is also more simplified. Once they huddle up and change packages, penalties and other confusion happens.
I would love to hear Scot's perspective on who has control.
Also, this game will be interesting, as BC also had a big victory early in the year.
Agree - and I also think it gets Brewer out of "overthinking." Our offense can handle the up-tempo, - what do we have to lose going into the last 4-5 games?
I think we can all agree Brewer has looked his best when we did run the up-tempo offense
This assumes three things:
1. That Frank told Loeffler to not run up tempo. There is no proof of this. Maybe Loeffler just forgot about it, he does have 347 different schemes in his play book.
2. That we could actually run a significant amount of up tempo without shooting ourselves in the foot with penalties, missed assignments and turnovers.
3. That controlling the ball is not a valid way to win games.
This is begging the question. You control the ball by keeping it away from your opponent, you keep the ball away from your opponent by maintaining possession and sustaining drives. Running the ball three times, taking 90 seconds off the clock, is not ball control by any stretch of the imagination.
Agree, I think any of us would take a one play scoring drive over that any day of the week
Getting first downs is good, yes.
1) You're right that there's no proof, but there seems to be some evidence. I'm not convinced either way, but this is what makes the criticisms of Loeffler interesting to me. Could folks be blaming him because they don't want to blame Frank?
2) only way to get better is to practice
3) A ball control offense (like Bama, Wisc, etc...) IS a way to win games... if you have the personnel that they have (able to win one-on-ones 90+% of the time, especially on the line)... which we don't.
We don't have the "big nasty's" to run that kind of offense like you mentioned. Right now, I think our offense would be more suited for a spread/up-tempo like I said before. Now if we lineman that can win the one-on-one battles, then I would be all for a run first type of offense
"Run first" and hurry up are not mutually exclusive. See our opening drive of the second half, or Oregon's offense (more passing this year with Mariota, but they still run a lot)
Thank you. Far too many people fear an uptempo offense because they haven't paid enough attention to understand it does not equate to a pass happy offense. They're still operating off outdated mindsets about offensive football strategy.
A spread offense is also not inherently up-tempo, while we're on the subject, nor is it inherently pass-happy. Bud's defensive change over the last couple years was because of spread run teams
Leg for the second time for making a great second point. Spread offenses, like uptempo offenses, do not equate offenses that don't run the football.
Unless you are Mike Leach.
my fault, I should of clarified more... when I said spread and up tempo, I was referring to always having 3 WR's out, but no favor in the running or passing game. When I said "run first", I meant to mean having more than just 5 lineman and running it in between the tackles more often.
In the second half, we came out running at a quick pace. But they were run plays.
There isn't much evidence. Everyone is basing it off one statement from Shane that he told Loeffler to run it during the halftime of the WMU game. First of all, Shane's clearly a blowhard. Second, any RB coach probably says that every game at halftime. Third, that doesn't reflect well on Loeffler that he is so easily swayed from his vision of the offense. I know the stuff I believe in strongly does not go away so easily.
It would also be easier if we knew what Loeffler's vision for the offense actually is. Power team at Temple, "Pro Style" at Auburn, Logan Thomas'centric in his first year at VT, "UP tempo" in his second year. It just seems like "Up tempo" is another dalliance in the confusing world of Scot Loefflers Offense.
It's easy to put this on Frank because he has a history of ham-stringing offenses. But Loeffler doesn't make this any easier with his sporadic play calling and lack of a clear vision.
I think he's trying to go for a modern pro style approach. The best NFL offenses can do multiple things depending on the situation, including spread looks, power formations, throwing, running, hurry up, read option for all but the most lead-footed qb's. That's his "vision", to me. The problem he has at Tech is a bad mix of talent and execution, so nothing is really working well. It's ambitious, and so far hasn't gotten off the ground for a multiple of reasons, not all of his own making. Maybe it never works here, but I hope it does
How is this different from the Frank n Stine offense we complained about prior to SL?
Since halftime of WMU? It's not.
That's what's troubling to some of us...
I think the big difference their is practice time. Pro's have nothing else to do but football, they should be able run complicated multi style offenses. These kids have a ton of shit on their plates. Doing a couple of things really well will always be more successful than doing a bunch of things mediocrely. I've heard several really successful offensive minds say that they only really have a handful of plays that they run from several formations. Sounds like a grand plan to me.
I can't help but feel like the calls for "evidence" are becoming an argumentum ad nausem. This situation looks, quacks, flies, and wears a shirt and hat but no pants like a Duck. If that's not enough for you to identify it as a duck, cool - but a lot of us are comfortable enough to start making conclusions.
I feel like you're creating an unreasonable standard of evidence here. Anything short of a direct quote of Frank saying "I am exerting significant influence on the offense" or SL saying something similar about Frank, will never be "evidence" enough. Well, all reasonable people know that will never happen. It would be career suicide for SL to throw his head whistle under the bus. It would prevent Frank from hiring *any* legitimate OC candidate in a theoretical post-SL situation. It's just not going to happen.
If the absence of such evidence prevents you from coming to that conclusion, that's cool. We'll have to disagree. I just think that you saying "Frank has a history of doing this, but he's probably not this time " is at best equally unsupported and possibly even less supported by evidence than the conflicting opinion.
In the same way that we are to take it for granted in the basis that Frank is hamstringing the offense.
Shane told Scott to have faith in the RB's and to run the ball, which they did and were effective. Then injuries started in them.
The offense has been less effective since then. No argument there.
I think we've had some pretty decent analysis that shows there are many reasons why the offense has been ineffective, nothing that shows Frank's meddling, micromanagement or whatever term is the one of the day.
I don't gather proof in that episode where Frank is meddling. That's all.
We're going to have to disagree here. It happens.
I've listed the reasons why people have come to the conclusions they have about the offense. If you don't come to the same conclusion based on the same evidence than it is what it is.
Ok, that's cool but, I don't even see this, which is part of your evidence.
Can you point me to evidence of this instead of having me accept it as a basic premise?
I was accepting that premise as established by the person to whom I was originally responding. We both agreed on that so I used it to move forward. If the last 20 years haven't convinced you of this, there simply is no standard of evidence high enough to convince you otherwise.
That's fine, I have no quote of Frank Beamer saying he has a significant influence on the offense regardless of the preferences of the OC, I also have no quotes from current or former OCs stating as much. If that's all you will accept as evidence than we will remain forever in disagreement about this. I am fine with that.
Ok, I'll accept that our offenses have not been the best but, I don't see it as it's because Frank meddles in it.
I have no idea what you are seeing in your "eye test." Clearly, at halftime of WMU, we came out and ran it and ran it hard. We haven't done that since. Against UNC, we passed it a lot early and had success. then we ran it a lot to keep their offense off the field and melt the clock. That's a reflection of that game, not a halftime plea from the WMU game. Against Pitt, we were down our top 3 backs and didn't run it much. Against Miami, basically no running until the 2nd half.
I don't see any difference in the distribution (and thus, the goals) of the offense between WMU halftime and now. We don't run it enough for most peoples liking. I think we're also remembering pre-WMU as being better on offense than we were. We stunk then too, even against OSU. 324 yards.
Obviously, our offense is getting worse but it looks to me that Brewer has lost confidence in his protection, there is more tape on Loeffler v4.0 offense and we're more injured at tailback. I see no evidence of the infamous WMU Halftime Coup.
Did you read somewhere that Frank doesn't like it?
You have a link? I can't find a reference to that. Thanks.
If that is true, that would be a damn shame. Score quickly and/or wear out the defense, what's not to like?
1. Can you please cite evidence for the statement that the team doesn't run more no-huddle offense "because Frank doesn't like it."
2. There is not necessarily a contradiction between running a hurry-up offense and allowing the clock to run down. One point of no-huddle is to prevent the defense from substituting. Say they're running a standard 4-3-4 package, and we're concerned that they might sub in a nickel coverage guy before 3rd down. If the offense lines up quickly and stands there for 30 seconds, the defense doesn't get to substitute.
3. Neither hurry-up nor ball-control is right or wrong; they're used in different situations to accomplish different things.
I think we have some success with it but then a penalty gets us off schedule and then they abandon it.
Lets not forget how much we get penalized when we run the hurry up offense.
Im sure that has a lot to do with it as well.
But I agree regardless. Its obvious we can't run the ball or move the ball when we pace ourselves like that.
Do what we were doing in weeks 1 and 2, even against ECU in the second half. Hurry the damn up....I will take a couple of interceptions and a handful of penalties over what we saw the last two weeks.
I'm all for the up tempo. The ball control offense is fine. If you get 3-4 yards every play, you score every drive. The problem is, we have too many stupid penalties or other set backs that kill these drives. If only I had a nickel for every time a penalty, or sack, or negative play set us behind the sticks and ruined a drive, the Lane Stadium's name would be changed to honor me.
The coaches said there would be growing pains. They didnt say the pain would last this long. Lets hope the Hokies can put it all together starting this weekend.
Right...8 weeks in, growing pains in not a valid excuse anymore.....except for Bucky Hodges of course.
As someone said in another thread, I wouldn't mind the pains if this offense was growing.
we're 2/3 of the way through the season. Freshmen are not Freshmen anymore, Sophomores are not Sophomores anymore. Time to grow up and be accountable. The "youth" excuse stops now, especially with the rest of the country successfully playing Freshmen and Sophomores with regularity.
You have to run the ball to have a running game, we ran the ball exactly six times up to the 6 minute mark in the second quarter, we moved the ball the first few running plays, then Conte missed his assignment & Marshawn got blew up in the backfield & for the most part we stopped running the ball, even Jesse Palmer mentioned this during the game, it's baffling.
Came out in the second half down 24-0 and started running the ball ??
I'm still thinking about this, so please don't anyone jump on me about it, but I don't hate that decision. There are two reasons.
1. There's still 30 minutes left, and if our defense can get a turnover or two, anything can happen. But only if the offense can establish something. Yes, everyone would rather see a quick strike for seven points, but our offense had been absolutely comatose up to that point. The running game started to get real traction -- we almost had a touchdown after just 3 minutes. Score there, get the ball back and score again, and you've got a ballgame going into the fourth quarter.
2. The other way of looking at it would be to say the Miami game was over and it was time to think about BC. What could still be salvaged from Thursday night? Two things: get the offense some confidence that they would play well next week, and give the fans something to cheer about. The running game provided both ... until the fumbles.
3. At the time it just felt good.
Yeah, I agree, the first explanation is better.
With all due respect, what exactly did you see during the Pitt game and the 1st half of the Miami game that would make you believe that 30 minutes is more than enough time for this particular VT squad to score more than 24 points?
I didn't say "more than enough," I said "anything can happen." I didn't see anything in either game that gave me any confidence in our offense, but I guess that's sort of the point: if the spread or pro-style stuff is not working, try the thing you haven't tried consistently. And for whatever reasons, it did work, for the first three minutes. Did you see anything in the Pitt game or the first half of the Miami game that would make you believe the offense had a better chance scoring with a deep passing game than with the power running game?
No. Sad isn't it?
Gotta keep hope alive. Or I wouldn't watch the BC game this week.
(Or I just like to punish myself....)
I didn't hate the decision either, in fact at the time it was working and I liked it a lot. We score a TD by pounding it down the field like that instead of fumble it, and the momentum could have really changed right there. Instead the fumble got in everyone's heads and completely deflated morale in the process.
I didn't mind running the ball in the second half. It was working and we moved fairly quickly. I am upset that we seem to abandon any hope of running the ball as soon as one running play gets negative yards. That's going to happen from time to time. We were running the ball good to start with and then Williams get a loss due to line play. That happens. Why stop establishing the run game?? I didn't feel like we ran the ball at all in the first half, and if it was only 6 times as you say then how is that trying to establish a run game??
Doesn't work that way. There's only so much technique that can be taught during a game week because it's pretty much all gameplanning. That's why bowl practices, spring practice, and fall camp are so important. The freshmen are still freshmen and the sophomores are still sophomores.
they may still have the technique of freshmen, but doesn't the game experience count for something? They will still make mistakes from not knowing better, but they shouldn't be making the sort of mistakes a jumpy, excited, overwhelmed 18-year-old makes his first time on a college football field playing real live FBS opponents, right?
Wait, are you saying you can't expect growth from young players during the season because they only have so much practice time?
Absolutely not. Game experience is valuable. Freshmen are not Freshmen anymore. Not an excuse. Have nearly a full year of game experience. The "freshman jitters" are not an excuse at this point. It does work that way.
i hope brewer can come out playing like he did earlier in the season with some confidence and make those throws we all loved from him.
O-line.
You can overcome a running back hitting the wrong hole on occasion. You can overcome an incompletion or even a fumble on occasion.
It's far harder to overcome backs being blown up behind the line of scrimmage, regular pressure on the QB leading to sacks & batted balls and taking away the possibility of any big downfield plays, and the multitudes of penalties on the O-line.
I don't discount the talk of all the other problems -- but does anyone really doubt that if we had an O-line that cut its total mistakes in half that we'd have a couple more wins this season at least?
I hate to beat the dead horse, and I have no answers. As poorly as Brewer has looked, at least he is a single part to fix. The O-line is 5 parts that seems to have no confidence in themselves to execute their job properly, or in their team-mate to do his job. So they continue to make just bone-headed mistakes.
I don't think it will be fixed this year. It's way too much to hope for that somehow, magically, the light just turns on at this point in the season, and what has looked like the same old Ole O-line of years past will suddenly start putting together 10 good plays in a row, much less 4 quarters of them.
I'm not going to blame Searels, although I think he made a big mistake moving McGloughlin to the right side. Not yet anyway. Every coach deserves at least a few seasons to get his guys into the mix and coached up to his system.
But if Searels doesn't improve recruiting on the Line quickly, it won't matter how good his system may be.
Next year I'll gladly trust running behind both Teller and McGlock on that left side. I've heard Gallo is impressing in practice too. He must be backup over Farris for a reason...
Yup. That is the crux of the matter. Lack of good o-line play makes it impossible to create any consistency. It is difficult to build positive momentum and mistakes tend to snow ball.
http://larkinsports.blogspot.com/
No matter what your offense of choice is, you won't be successful unless there is a balance between run and pass....period. it is a misconception to think that Beamer just wants to run it up the gut every play....unless the defense isn't taking it away. The reason we don't run up tempo the whole game is because the players would collapse of exhaustion and fatigue errors follow...not sure if that wasn't the cause of Marshawn's fumble. If we can stretch the defense just a little more, everything else should loosen up a bit and Lefty can get into a rhythm.
Marshawn fumbled because he had a guy ripping the football from him while 2 or three other defenders were draped over him. I hope it wasn't due to being tired because up until that drive they had run him very little, plus they were coming out of halftime so if they are tired from one drive coming out of half-time then strength and conditioning needs to be seriously looked at. However I don't think that's the reason.
I don't think it's conditioning, either. We've seen Juice fumble a few times when making contact and trying to get some extra yards. I think he just needs to continue focusing on ball control while fighting for ground, otherwise just learn to go down and take what he's got. Love the effort, and he just needs to tighten up the technique a bit. He was in a rough spot against Miami, though, because as you said, he was draped with a bunch of guys fighting for the ball. Still needs to hang on, but that's a really hard spot to get stood up.
I suppose in high school Juice could run over most teams, and push over the rest. There were probably very few kids around who were going to rip the ball out of his arms while he was pumping his leagues and moving the pile. I guess it's one of those things a freshman needs to learn when he starts playing D1 football -- those linebackers and safeties are on scholarship, too.
You're probably right. I also don't remember if Marshawn was in on the whole drive or not. However, I seem to remember the pace being VERY quick, like faster than Oregon quick. Regardless of conditioning, if a back keeps hitting it hard at that pace, there will be fatigue. it's the same reason why backs are usually pulled after making a long run. Marshawn also has to work on squeezing that ball in crowds or simply go down.
Look guys and gals, here is what VT needs:
More Cowbells!!!
Finally, someone to back me up on this.
Whit hates noon kickoffs
I think the main thing CFB wants is an offense that scores some points, makes first downs and most importantly, does not turn the ball over! As long as those 2 points are achieved, he doesn't care how the offense goes about it. I know he's tired, and I'm tired of seeing him, of making the "who shit the bed?" face.