New Starting RT Wade Hansen Ready to be a "Beast" for the Hokies

To Dadi Nicolas, one offensive lineman he goes up against in practice each week is "like a pitbull."

"He likes to fight," Nicolas says.

Marshawn Williams agrees with that assessment, saying that he knows the same lineman is a "beast" when he's blocking for the running back up front.

Corey Marshall thinks he's got a certain "swagger" about him.

Coming into the year, who on Earth would've ever thought they'd be lavishing these superlatives on new starting right tackle Wade Hansen, a D-III transfer that was a defensive tackle just three months ago?

"If he loses, then he wants to know how to get better," Nicolas adds. "He's always fighting to win."

After a left ankle injury put starting RT Jonathan McLaughlin out for the remainder of the season, the Hokies have to hope that Hansen is every bit the tough guy his teammates think he is if the team is to have any shot at heading to a bowl game.

"The offensive line is in the trenches and you've got to play physical football," Hansen said. "If you've got to put someone on their back, you put them on their back."

For the redshirt junior, it's a bit incredible that he's now a starting lineman at an FBS program considering what he went through just to get to Virginia Tech.

Coming out of Troy, N.Y.'s tiny Tamarac High School, Hansen wasn't exactly overwhelmed by recruiters banging down his door. His graduating class had just 18 members, so it's not shocking he didn't get the attention of many big-time coaches.

"I didn't even have any D-II or FCS offers, there was just WPI (Worcester Polytechnic Institute) in Massachusetts, St. John Fisher College, and RPI, so I decided to go with my hometown school."

He's talking, of course, about Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute of his hometown of Troy, where he starred for two years before thinking about what could come next.

"I had two successful years, and I thought I could take football to the next level," Hansen said. "It was mainly a pride thing."

In 2012, with the encouragement of his dad, Hansen started sending out emails to a handful of major programs across the country. He reached out to Georgia Southern, UConn, East Carolina, Maryland, Boston College and Rutgers in addition to the Hokies, but he didn't get much of a response.

Rutgers offered to let him walk-on on the first day of classes, while Georgia Southern offered him a preferred walk-on spot. But the Hokies really piqued his interest.

"They said 'do you think you can make some highlights and put them on YouTube?', so I put it out there for anyone to see and they liked what they saw, and they sent me an email saying they'd like me to come out for the spring game," Hansen said. "It's just one of those programs that you look at as a kid and say 'I want to go to Virginia Tech.'"

But then Hansen was struck with a series of illnesses that nearly scuttled his FBS dreams before he could even make it to Blacksburg. In the spring, he somehow managed to contract mono, strep throat and Lyme disease in quick succession.

"It was pretty devastating to my health, I lost about 30 pounds," Hansen said. "I was exhausted, I couldn't go to class, so my grades plummeted. It was just so hard to recover back both academically and physically."

Yet Hansen was able to push through his confounding health issues and still manage to make it to Tech, if only just barely. He took classes at two different community colleges to get his grades up and while hitting the weight room with a passion as soon as he was healthy.

"They saw my transcript and told me I was accepted about 13 days before move-in day in August," Hansen said.

He then spent all of 2013 redshirting after his transfer, preparing to add depth at the defensive tackle spot when the new season rolled around.

But as DL coach Charley Wiles started to look at his options in the summer, Hansen seemed to come in a distant fifth behind guys like Woody Baron and Ricky Walker, making him an unlikely option to see the field much.

However, offensive line coach Stacy Searels didn't have the same luxury of depth at his tackle spots. Beyond McLaughlin, pickings were slim, and so in August, the switch was made.

"When I first got here in the offseason program, I noticed the way he worked in the weight room and the way he moved around," Searels said. "He looked like he could be a good offensive lineman and it's turned out that way."

For Searels, helping a defensive lineman make the transition is nothing new. After all, he's already coaching a pair of DL converts in Wyatt Teller and Alston Smith.

"You know, some people go on the road recruiting. I just go over to the defensive line room," Searels joked.

Because of the size of his high school, Hansen played all over the field, including on the offensive line, so the move wasn't completely unthinkable.

"I played about every single position senior year, all along the line," Hansen said. "We had an issue at left tackle, so they put me there and that's where I stuck for the rest of the year."

Even still, the switch left him a little nervous after playing on the other side of the ball for the last few years.

"At first I was a little apprehensive, but I realized it was the best move for me," Hansen said.

Hansen says he really started to realize the virtues of the position once it became clear that the Hokies desperately needed someone to step in.

"After about four days, I was already second on the depth chart, just by giving everything I had in practice," Hansen said. "I felt like I was more of an impact player in this program, I felt like I could actually do something instead of just being on the scout team."

While he did learn to accept the change, there were still plenty of growing pains as he re-adjusted his mindset.

"Especially in the pass game, it's more about patience," Hansen said. "On the defensive line, you're just going at it, but in the pass game, you want to be patient, you don't want to lunge, you want to wait for the guy to come to you and make a play. I felt like that was my biggest problem, lunging, but I've been working on that."

Hansen was also focused on working on his size. Searels is all about bulk, and his work in Wiles' slimmed down system meant that he had to start packing on the pounds.

"I'm about 290 right now, I came in at about 270, got up to around 280-ish and I just continued to eat because that's what the coaches wanted me to do," Hansen said. "They wanted me around 290-ish because I was going to be a backup, and if they needed me to step up, they didn't want me to be underweight."

Even as he prepared for the day when he would have to step into the game, Hansen was still surprised he got the call so quickly.

He played a few snaps in mop-up duty against Western Michigan, but that was nothing compared to the 61 snaps the coaches called on him for after McLaughlin went down in the second quarter against BC.

"To be honest, I was working at left tackle, I wasn't technically the right tackle back there, but I heard my number called, and I just had to seize the opportunity," Hansen said.

Searels noted that he graded out well, and Hansen particularly took pride in not giving up any sacks.

"As soon as I went in there, I felt like I melded in well," Hansen said.

Yet the prospect of him starting for the first time in his career has to still make the staff a bit apprehensive. Frank Beamer praised his "toughness" and "athletic ability" during his weekly press conference, but it was clear the head Hokie still had his doubts about his new starting right tackle.

For all his talk of being ready, Hansen empathizes with that trepidation.

"I understand where he's coming from," Hansen said. "From a coach's standpoint, putting someone in who's never started a game before, I understand there's probably a little concern."

Searels had kinder words for Hansen, but there's no doubt he too is taking a wait and see approach. Even after all his work, is Hansen really big enough for Searels' liking?

"He is this Saturday," Searels quipped. "We were talking about it in the offseason, being 300 pounds and still moving fast, but you've got to go with what you got this Saturday."

But what happens if disaster strikes, and Hansen isn't up to snuff, or gets injured himself? Searels would have to reach down the depth chart a bit, even shuffling around guard Augie Conte as a backup plan in practice.

"Augie is working some at tackle, him and Parker (Osterloh) would probably be your next tackle if you needed another guy to play," Searels said.

For now, Hansen is focusing on the positives that come with finding himself heading from obscurity in upstate New York to a starting role in an ACC contest on Saturday. For instance, the call when he told his dad that he'd be named the starter seems to already have proved worth the effort.

"I heard a little silence on the phone and a 'congratulations,' but I could tell he was holding back some emotions, trying to be the big man, trying not to show anything, but he was very happy, excited, almost as excited as I was," Hansen said.

Beyond the support of his family, it'd seem his fellow linemen are ready to help with the transition wherever they can.

"My locker is right in between Caleb Farris and David Wang," Hansen said. "When I went in there, they just brought me in with open arms and said I could use them for help any time I needed it. If I needed help with the playbook, with film, anything, they were willing to help me."

And it's clear his running back expects him to be beastly on Saturday as well.

"I think Wade was always ready," Williams said. "He's a different player there, but he's ready."