Big win today, guys. Winning solves a lot problems in our minds, takes a little bit of the pressure off Beamer. Also, doesn't it also take some of the pressure off Whit? Who wants to be the man who fires a legend? Hokies lost today would have many more fans calling for Beamer's job and any more losses this season would have meant a losing record this season. No Hokie fan wants that, especially Frank and Whit. Is the pressure off?
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There is always pressure to win. And the Frankinator has answered that pressure pretty well over the years, which is why I haven't lost faith in him or this team.
For over 25 years the pressure on Frank Beamer to win has been self imposed. Just because the team does not win 10 games does not make the season a failure.
We're not bowl eligible, yet and we still haven't played UVa... Let's revisit this after the season
Does Frank missing a bowl game for the first time since the Clinton presidency put pressure on him?
I actually don't think losing to Wake and UVA does anything for his job security. Sure, the fans would be pissed. But the administration wouldn't blink.
Clinton hadn't been inaugurated yet. It was still Bush #41
I agree with Alum, a loss to UVA would put more pressure on than we've seen this whole season.
Also, VT has never missed a bowl game in my lifetime (born in 1992), just to make some of y'all feel old.
Mission accomplished...now I feel really old!!!
Ahhh you are just a baby then. Truman was president when i was born. My first Hokie football game was Miami at home in 1967. While i just turned 64 years young, i feel as if i am 30, most days, and still excited about VT sports.
No.
I just don't care. We won and I don't care about end of season decisions til the end of the season
Yes. We beat 2 good ranked teams this year, and lost to some pretty good teams (ECU-was ranked, GT-ranked, and BC-beat USC#9 at the time). This was one of those close games where the ball bounced our way. I'll take it and I'm a happy and proud VT fan. Go Hokies!
People really down voted this? Whoever downvoted, you are clownshoes.
We have still lost 5 games . Happy to win , but would not call this as steller or error free coaching effort. Some of the play calling was curious & mix up on 4 & 18 was baffling, this late in season. Still too many penalties& started game flat after a bi - week. However , a win is much sweeter than a loss , but as stated above still more games to play. No.
I haven't seen any post game chatter but the way Frank was talking to Dinardo after that fake punt made me feel like Dinardo pulled the trigger on that without Frank.
Miscommunication in language between Beamer and Dinardo according to both.
Also a ridiculous down vote. Read the community guidelines folks before the dreaded ban-hammer comes out.
That happened.
I gotta laugh every time I see that.
has anyone ever wondered wtf is going on in this gif... other than the metaphorical "BAN HAMMER"...
Is this how one gets fully dipped, instead of smoke, rainbow colors come shooting out and you end up on a unicorn?
What I do know, is that I hope that hammer came down to empty ground.
The other thing I do know is that the last words probably spoken just before this video was taken was,
"Here, hold my beer, watch this."
The last few seasons, I feel like we always come out flat after a bye. The coaches and players are always glad to have the bye and we always need to get some guys healed up, but we never look good the first two quarters coming off a bye. IMO anyway
Whit said he would judge the season when it is over, and I think all of us need to do the same. The win is nice, but it was an ugly one. We came up big in spots, but screwed up big in others. Breaking the losing streak is great, but let's see what the record is after playing UVA and any bowl game that we might get to.
Came up big due to some very nice ball bouncing our way and friendly refs...also what cause Duke to change the game plan, there were 3 different teams that played for Duke it seemed
Great insight , 1 win does not make a season , 1 loss does not ruin a season.
Bet osu would argue that, ha ha. Although I guess the season isn't over yet so who knows...but still.
Think most rational OSU fans would consider a 11 win season and a trip to a major bowl a successful season.
You have not met many anOSU fans have you?
To the contrary, know many OSU fans . Some are family members & have lived in OHIO. Many consider a win over Meechigan a successful season.
I just left there after 7 years, most of the anOSU fans I worked with, lived next to and went to games at the Shoe with expect to win the B1G and make a BCS/playoff game every year.
Agree, that a lot of OSU fans "Expect " to win Big and go to BCS / NCS game every year . However having expectations of a NC & being unsatisfied with a 11 win season & major bowl bid are not the same thing , which is where this discussion started . Ask your friends after the bowl (if they win ) , if it was a successful season . There will be more than one , 1 loss team. In the playoffs, a single loss does not destroy a season, even at tOSU.
This definitely doesn't change anything long-term. We have as many conference wins as UVA now, who will most likely be firing their coach at the end of the season. Today's win was great, but you can't reasonably say this saves anyone's job. Our special teams are still a real problem, which is headed by none other than CFB himself.
#saveMikeLondon
I think winning out would do a lot to take pressure off of him.
What pressure?
Sinus pressure!
Regardless of result, the product on the field was lacking. If Whit feels that the program is underperforming, he'd be wise to make a change. If he feels like Beamer is in the midst of a promising rebuilding phase, he'll stand by Beams.
Either way, the win (which could have/should have been a loss) has little bearing on the fundamental question of if a new hire could do better.
The recruiting finish might matter more than the season finish.
I am not sure there was any pressure to start with. The only heat might have come had we ended the season on a 7 game losing streak. We should win out and be 7-5 which is scary enough is pretty close to the estimate we had before the Ohio State game for the season.
Eh 7-5 was a very pessimistic projection in the preseason, very few people on TKP thought 7-5 would be acceptable... In large part due to the easy schedule
I figured somewhere in between 7-5 and 9-3 for my estimate.
Hugh amount of injuries affected the record this year I believe,
Injuries are a cop out in my opinion, just like blaming the refs. Does it suck that players get hurt? Of course, but every single team has injuries. I understand that losing your top 3 running backs is difficult. I remember when the Steelers lost 3 running backs in 2 games and Mewelde Moore became a household name. Next man up. No excuses.
Top 3 RB's, staring CB, LB, DT, RT, TE NOT TO MENTION 2 early season potential O lineman being injured out of football completely. Don't give me that "every single team has injuries line" find me another college squad with EIGHT starters out who is just humming along. Should Tech be playing better, yes, but to just imagine away the impact EIGHT injuries to key players is disingenuous.
Yeah, I have to call BS that this year's injuries did not reflect on season record.
Unfortunately VT can't get a RB in free agency like they can in the NFL... and actually Moore had played 4 seasons before he came to Pittsburgh (and averaged 5.5 ypc or better 3 of those years) it's completely different when you are forced to play underclassmen in college when multiple injuries force your hand
Moore was a 4th string running back that year. Injuries are still a cop out. It's an uncontrollable thing that happens in football, it's a contact sport and people get hurt.
Then those injuries effect the teams, some teams more than others.
?
It's not a cop out, it's a reason... there is a difference
It's apples and oranges when comparing a 4 year NFL vet, that had a track record of being a successful running back and sophomores in college
The year you say he became a household name was actually his worst in terms of ypc.. and sure he was 3rd or 4th string, that is the NFL and you can go out and get 3rd and 4th string guys from free agency, and while the NCAA is pretty lax on it's rules sometimes, I'm not sure VT has that option
Every player should be ready to play and at a high level. Running back was our deepest position, JC Coleman should be ready to play (and yesterday he was). There needs to be contingency plans as a coach in case something like a big injury happens (and yesterday there was, running to the outside on sweeps and using Motley as the Wildcat). When Braxton Miller went down OSU didn't cry in the corner, next man up. Barrett looks the part of a big time college quarterback.
The Miller/Barrett comparison is a bad one. If VT had 4* backing up 5* guys, then you're right, this wouldn't be an issue. But we simply don't have elite players throughout the entirety of the two-deep. The injuries to Shuman and Benedict were bad news, because O-line recruiting in years past was abysmal, and that took away two experienced guys out of the mix immediately.
If urban Meyers team fell apart after the loss of one player, he'd justifiably take heat for not having the depth or scheme to withstand the loss of a single player.
Similarly, I don't see "well the offensive line just isn't good enough to win" as a good justification for this season. Beamer was the head coach during years of abysmal oline coaching and recruiting. The poor offensive line play isn't an accident, and Beamer deserves criticism for the results
I don't understand the first point. We're not just talking one player here. I'm saying we have a talent baseline below that of OSU or the "traditional powers," so the comparison about injuries not being an excuse in light of better teams surviving them is not a valid one, in my mind. We've lost starters all over the field and we're playing guys that have swapped positions and had never taken meaningful snaps before being pushed into duty.
The O-line was atrocious for years, yet we had enough stellar skill position players to make up for it. The O-line was terrible for most of Tyrod's years, but he was Tyrod. We have young talent, but we don't have a transcendent player on offense to compensate for it. Certainly not Brewer; he's a decent game manager but he's not going to make the insane highlight-reel plays when everything is going to hell around him.
Oh you're correct, I didn't mean my comment to be an argument against yours... Your comment just sparked something in my brain and so I posted it directly under yours. The hazard of TKP'ing while at work
Ha, all good. I read it and was like...
If these kids had unlimited practice time then you might have a point, but they don't and neither do you... every rep you give a 3rd sting or 4th string guy is a rep that a 1st string or 2nd string guy doesn't get... And there were several positions troubled by injuries, including OL and DL which were thin to begin with.. you have 2 OL guys go down right before the year you're stuck with what you have left on the roster, unlike the NFL
Actually I saw plenty of OSU fans saying that was the ONLY reason we won, and at the start of that game their starting QB had more practice reps than ours did
Again, you ignore the two most critical injuries.
1) Luther Maddy- there was nobody on the roster that could replace the space and attention he occupied. It doesn't help that Nigel Williams has had long stretches where he has taken a step backwards. Kudos to Ricky Walker for giving some valuable reps to help stem the tide yesterday. But in the world of big boy college football, nobody replaces a Luther Maddy without some drop off (except for LSU.) Even our offensive line pushed around Alabama after they lost their big nose tackle to the draft last cycle.
2) Facyson at corner. Yes, Bud opened the season playing a bunch of man against tOSU. But without Facyson anchoring one side (who is the best zone corner on the team and had great chemistry with Bonner and Kendall Fuller against spread teams in field side triangle leverage zones last year) they have struggled to run all the coverage they'd like. Yesterday, we finally saw zone coverage mixed in has some great impact, and that coupled with mixing in blitzes forced some really bad throws to open guys. By the way, didn't I tell you the Boone kid was good but didn't have a great arm to the outside and deep on anything but fade routes?
I'm not arguing that some of the players who went down weren't good players, I just really hate using excuses. To me injuries are just as uncontrollable as bad calls. A referee will make bad calls, it's human error and it's a part of the game. Some will affect the game more than others, but you still have your chance to win.
But like I said, it's my opinion on it. I don't expect everyone to have the same opinion as me, and clearly there are plenty of people who disagree, just wanted to state my opinion on something I've been hearing a lot of.
I haven't heard anybody inside the program use those injuries as excuses. When a team starts to roll over an not compete because it enters the psyche of a team that they can't win as result of those injuries, that is inexcusable. It hasn't happened here.
But, when we, as fans... not the guys who have to call plays or execute them, discuss the impact of injuries, it isn't excusing anything. Evaluating the impact of injuries creates the appropriate context for evaluating the team's performance. Ultimately, there are two players facing off in each battle. If both give maximum effort and play their technique properly, but are not of equal size, strength, speed, and talent, the better player is going to win. We may not want to recognize that as fans, but it is the truth. Sometimes no amount of X's and O's or cliche's about giving 100 percent can overcome biology and physics. So, when evaluating the team, understand that defensive makeup, without a big space eater inside and a rangy zone corner, will have problems matching up with some teams.
I guess your point is don't wine about injuries, and I agree. However, expecting an equal level of production after losing this many first teamers is unrealistic. Yes, coaches adapt and adjust, but it will never again be the preferred style or gameplan that gives the team the best chance to win.
I agree. 4th string players in the NFL are still good players. It's totally different in college. Injuries and Freshmen are the main reasons we are consistent this year
I will buy that AN injury might be a cop out. But no reasonable person could expect zero drop off with the number of season enders this year.
I definitely get sick of the injury excuse too, but when your starting LT is now a former D-III defensive tackle walk-on, you know your injuries have hit an all-time high. Or low, should I say
Agreed. It's like we have been playing half the second string. Just look at Georgia without Gurley. Is that an excuse? Next man up has been good, but everyone in the nation is putting an asterisk next to all of Georgia's losses without Gurley.
Now take than effect and multiply it by two or three for all of the injuries on both sides of the ball. The only silver lining is lots of extra reps for next years starters and depth. Thats it. There is a reason they were/are backups. They were not ready physically or mentally to supplant the better player at their position. To overlook the injuries would be naive.
Georgia only lost once without Gurley (during his suspension), but that was entirely on the defense.
Which turned out to not be very easy. Duke is a very good football team. GT is much improved over last year. Miami just had the defending national champs on the ropes. BC and Pitt were matchup nightmares where they are good at the type of offense that VT, with the undersized defensive unit and no Maddy, were ill equipped to stop. And yet, despite the bad offense, the defensive injuries and lack of size, and the suspect OL play, every game was winnable except for Miami.
The reality is, every team in the ACC Coastal is better, and even in the good years, the margin for error was often razor thin.
I am glad for the win, and while there is tremendous disgust (we had 911 on speed dial for me on the fake punt botch) with some of the coaching and the critically bad penalties and pass protection, despite all of it and a flat start the players effort was spectacular yesterday. They beat a damn good football team, no matter what you think of the tradition and uniform they wear. And that effort, and the promise of the young guys who made those plays (Reavis forcing the fumble, Ford, Bucky) and the pride shown by guys like Coleman and Motley when they could have pouted and gone home, that is a building block for righting the ship.
Oh, and Coleman may have run hard, but the OL was winning a bunch more battles than they lost in the run game.
Again, I will defer to Whit on Beamer's status, and he needs to get some big recruiting wins in the coming weeks to convince the unwashed masses that there is reason for hope. But, to show any sign of negativity when the PLAYERS just overcame the K2 of adversity just seems ridiculous.
Totally agree French. Look at the ranked teams in the ACC. The conference is better than we want to admit. I smile not saying it is dominant but look at the other conferences. Stanford is 5-5. Look at LSU. Best by Ar in their first conference win. The sky is not falling in Blacksburg. We can do better but we are working at it not folding our tent. I smile proud of the adversity that was overcome yesterday.
Arkansas is a better team than their record has indicated so far. They were long over due the win.
What? This is a thread about Frank Beamer... A coach. It has nothing to do with the players.
As an adult, I am fully capable of having multiple trains of thought going on at once. I can both be excited for and proud of our players, while being disappointed with the job that the coaches have done in preparing them for opponents on a weekly basis. It's not an either/or proposition, both emotions are completely logical. You've made it ABUNDANTLY clear that you hate the ongoing discussion about Frank's future with the program, if you think the conversation is ridiculous maybe you should avoid such threads.
This argument cuts both ways. Two of Tech's five wins were every bit as lose-able as our loses have been winnable. If Barrett doesn't throw to a wide open Riely to seal the game and Duke's kicker doesn't miss the field goal, we're looking at a 3-7 season.
I don't know about anyone else, but this schedule is (with the exception of ECU) exactly how difficult I thought it would be. I said before the season started that Georgia Tech would compete for the Coastal, that Duke would be a good team, and that Pittsburgh and BC would challenge Tech's undersized line. My opinion of this season's outcomes has ZERO to do with the opponents, but with the product that Frank Beamer puts on the field. And that product has been average at best.
When I state that this season is going about as well as the most pessimistic of fans thought it would before the season started, I'm not being negative. I'm stating a fact. Very few people thought the team would have results as poor as this.
Preseason Predictions
This season has been disappointing, particularly the lack of cohesion in the offense. I'm not saying Frank should be fired for it, but to shout people down who are merely bringing up the team's disappointing record while discussing Frank's future is pretty silly.
Injuries killed the team the team this year. Period. End of Story. Coaches might not make the excuse, and some fans may refuse to accept it, but the bottom line is that if Maddy, 2013 Facyson, Shai/Marshawn/Trey, and Chase Williams all played in the first 10 games, This team is 8-2 at worst, probably 9-1, and possibly 10-0.
Which didn't turn out to be all that easy.
We were not banking on GT being good enough to grab a good ranking, ECU was excellent this year.
Nobody expected that.
And nobody expected to so many of our 1s and 2s out for so much of the season either.
This team has battled and I see good things for next year.
A win is a win, but if Duke had made either of those field goals we would be pretty pissed right now. Don't get me wrong, Duke has come full circle (crap team to respectable) and it was great to get out of there with a win.
Hopefully this ends well for Coach Beamer, the team, and the program.
It shouldn't. Look, OSU and Duke are two nice road wins against ranked teams, and it's good we were able to pull them off. But they mean nothing when you fail as miserably as we have in nearly every other game this season.
There is no pressure.
WB is not going to come in and pressure CFB who is a legend.
The hokies have been doing things the right way for far too long for a slight 3-4 year swoon to force change again.
Granted CFB does not get an extension, but gets to finish out his contract with the tools he wants.
Changing now just ensures another 4-5 years of rebuilding, with a coach that will be an up and comer. Sure maybe we get lucky, but most times, its a bust. Then back to rebuilding.
I have been expecting to lose this game for weeks, so no.
Not making a bowl this year and losing to LOLUVA are two things that I do not expect to do, so winning our last two games would take a little pressure off I think. At least I won't be too upset.
Well I certainly think it helps. And the post game locker room shows that FB hasn't lost the team. Win the next 2 and go to a bowl would be a good ending to a challenging year.
For a while I was thinking that we had to literally hit rock bottom (lose the bowl streak and to Virginia) to really get this ship turned around. Nothing better than a solid gut shot to the pride department to serve as a proper motivational tool...but I just can't accept any scenario where we lose to UVA, no matter what the circumstances are. Hopefully this team can continue both streaks and use the extra practice time for the younger guys that will play a bigger role next year. I think that's what our achilles heel is every year. Every program has to deal with injuries. Unfortunately, it seems like when we get an injury the next guy up has never played a meaningful snap at all.
So isn't that...a coaching issue. Not getting guys in. Maybe because you run out the clock to fast and not enough plays were played
In college football the goal is to win, so of course it takes some pressure off. This isn't a tough concept- a win helps, a loss hurts. How much? Well, that's up to Whit. But to think that winning doesn't help because it wasn't a rofl-stomp is just silly.
It's not about one win or one loss it's about the team.
If Miami had won last night would that have saved al golden.
Earlier this season Miami fans fly 'Fire Al Golden' banner over Sun Life Stadium
If Florida had beat USCe would that have saved Muschamp's job
Most of the Miami fans I've interacted with were pretty hellbent on a Coastal Title or Bust for the season. I can't think of anyone of them who wants him spared now.
Why is this one of the first things that appears after a game now? One game does not a season make, and it has never been more obvious than this year. There's no "hot seat" in the sense that anyone is going to get fired mid season, so why is it necessary to discuss every single week whether it's time to get rid of Frank or keep Frank or change the rest of the staff or don't change the rest of the staff.
We won a game. Just enjoy it for a few days. Regardless of what happens the rest of this season, there will not be changes until the offseason, so please, let these discussions be brought up then.
VT should look into Kelly Starrett. His method of physical threapy has resulted in reduced number of injuries with the teams and individuals he works with. I know VT has a great athletic training program but this guy is the real deal.
I am extremely suspicious of cross fit. Lots of poor form encouraged and very little training required to be a trainer. I would much rather have the PhD folks who have spent more than a weekend studying be the ones that lead our PT.
I had a cross fit guy encourage me to try a new set while I was doing reps in the gym. He was like "This works your legs, your core, and your arms" and he the proceded to do one of the most hurky jerky twisting motions I have ever seen in my life. I thanked him for the advice and went to continue on my routine. He then said "Okay now you try." I think my next words may have been a little less tactful.
You can find good cross fit. My son goes to a cross fit gym where the owner has his degree in exercise physiology (or something similar) and they practice Olympic lifting at the start of every work out. He corrects people that do things incorrectly. After this they do the work out of the day which is very challenging. It has been great for him.
That being said ....Cross fit done incorrectly is a very scary thing.
nope, very sloppy game. Slow start coupled with many questionable play calls. Duke kicker came into that game perfect and missed two field goals. Easily could of lost that game.
Please, elaborate. I was actually very happy with the gameplan and even most of the non-pass-protection execution. I'm curious to hear what you thought was so questionable (outside of the phantom punt fake, 'cause that was, y'know, strange).
Three of the top of my head:
Pulling Motley in the redzone.
JCC 4th and 1
Phillips end around to short side of the field when you can't go out of bounds
We had 293 yards of offense, that's 107 less what Duke usually gives up and 80 less than what we average. Only 16 FDs, 80% of our average.
You can like the gameplan all you want, the production was poor.
Duke gave up 594 to Pitt, 465 to UVA, 391 to Tulane, 396 to Troy and 328 to Elon. Our output was comparable to the 297 given up to Kansas.
Since cds7c beat me to those points already, I'll also add the couple long passes on 3rd and short. I can't stand why they do that. You want to take a shot down field, fine, do it on 1st or second down, but on 3rd and short? No, get the first down first.
And there were many plays that were working but then they stopped doing it for some reason. I think SL's philosophy is "if it isn't broken, fix it"
I agree with this. Now I'm not calling for his head or anything like that, but it really does aggravate the crap out of me when he finds a play that has proven to work and then never runs it again..
That's a Virginia Tech problem, not a Scott Loeffler problem.
We've been dealing with that same crap for a while. Hell, look at the Kansas Orange Bowl as a prime example. We were torching them on the ground the entire first half, climbing back into the game, and then we go absolute pass happy in the second half, literally throwing the game away.
Well there's an aspect of diminishing returns involved here. If you just keep on a'runnin' it, sooner or later (sooner), the defense is gonna burn you. SL knows he's not going to win the majority of the one-on-one matchups up front, so his best bet is to continue to mix things up and come back to successful packages/plays later. A good example is the belly/sweep stuff we saw with JC running up the middle and Phillips peeling back to run the sweep to the outside. That worked great a few plays in the row, and SL shelved it to bring it back on our 2nd-to-last drive. If Phillips is a little more decisive in getting upfield, that's a first down and the game is over. Everything is so fluid over the course of the game (injuries, adjustments, personnel groupings on both sides, etc.), it's really hard to say, "if he would stick with ___ we'd put up 500 yards per game!" Exaggeration, but you get the point, I hope. The goal is to stay one step ahead of the defense's adjustments and avoid having to execute when the defense has got you beat schematically.
As far as I'm concerned, force the issue. Keep at it til the defense is forced to sell out to stop it, and once they do, an adjustment to counter should keep them on their heels. What gets me is when the offense finds something that works, and then, just as we get rolling with it, you see them change it up, almost as trying to beat them to the adjustment, and all we end up doing is stifling ourselves.
Agreed, make them stop you, not stop yourself
100% agree with this, but there are a lot of times that we don't go back to those successful plays. I understand diminishing returns, but it seems that in trying to stay one step ahead of the other team, we trip on our own 2 feet. Again, I'm not calling for Lefty's head or anything of the sort. Just wish he'd stick with what works just a little longer.
The game plan was perfectly fine, IMO. The execution was what was lacking, not the play calling. When your fourth string running back gets the bulk of the carries, you're going to have a rough day. JC did a fine job at hitting the holes that the Oline gave him but I gotta believe that a healthy Shai, Trey, or Juice would have gotten more production (long runs) from those holes.
Whether you blame the injuries, youth, or poor coaching for the lack of execution is your call. I believe it's a mix of all three.
Individual play calls are the red herring of football analysis. One play out of context doesn't illustrate much. But the game as a whole does provide some context, especially when compared to other comps against this defense.
I didn't think the gameplan was all that bad....for Scot Loeffler. But Melvin Gordon out gained us by 115.
Melvin Gordon had more rushing yards that game than Wake Forest has had all season.
I didn't hear many people complaining about Motely being pulled after Brewer threw that dime for the TD to Bucky, and the Philips run out of bounds didn't hurt us at all (might have cost 1 or 2 seconds) because either 1) the play ends well outside of 2 minutes or 2) the play goes long enough to get past 2 minutes, but we get a first down anyways. We'll usually end up with a numerical advantage to the boundary (and after watching it a couple of times today, I believe that was the case), and at any rate the same play worked beautifully earlier, so I thought that was a great call. I think Phillips just has to be a little more decisive with his cut.
I can't say I was excited about the 4th and 1 call to JCC, but as has been mentioned before, when you're on your 4th string RB and have a patchwork OL, methinks few calls are really gonna look good there. Get JC going north-south fairly quickly and see what happens. Oh well.
So I'll give you 1/3 there. If you see stats through a baseball lens, your point is a pretty darn good one.
As for the total yardage, I think we all know just how rough this thing is gonna be. We were a young, thin offense to begin with, and now we're having a hard time just getting enough guys in uniform. As has been the case all year, individual busts - especially up front - have spelled disaster for several otherwise very promising drives. However, there have been enough bright spots to convince me this team can pull out a couple wins when it needs to. Shoot, we reeled off a 98-yard drive to put ourselves right back in the game. That's not something a completely inept offense is gonna be able to do.
The 98 yard drive took 5:05. So in 54:55, we gained 195 yards. That is something a completely inept offense is gonna do. And its not like I'm cherry picking the one good drive to make us look bad: this game was bad with that drive!
We can go back and forth all day with the "woe is us" injury/youth and the stats of how bad we are. But we're 89th in total offense right now (an accrual stat that I largely think is bogus, but the FEI/S&P stats aren't up yet). That means 88 offenses have figured it out better than us, with their injuries and youth. (Actually #88 is an interesting comparison: Florida. The team that just fired their HC and staff for having a moribund offense.)
I'd be surprised if anyone else's injury list rivals our own. 3 OL, 3 RBs, our leading TE from last year... and that's after we start 2 true freshmen at WR and have a first-year QB under center, all in only the second year of a new offensive scheme and the second year post-Newsome. A lot of teams will have one or two of those things going against them (new scheme, youth, injuries, a bad previous OL coach, etc), but very few have all of them going at the same time. This staff and team have actually done a pretty darn good job keeping us in games with so many things counting against them.
^^^^^^^^^^^^
Poor Scot Loeffler. The world is just conspiring against him.
I don't see anyone claiming that.
Unless I missed your "/sarc"
I'm not saying he's been perfect (and he's said he's made mistakes plenty of times in interviews. Shoot, even Bud and Malzahn make coaching mistakes). Still, he walked into an absolutely terrible situation here at VT and has done a good job of fielding at least a competitive team. They're not dominating anybody, but they're making plays when they have to - for the most part - and he's generally done a good job setting his players up for success.
With as much as you like Scot Loeffler, just think how happy you will be once Lincoln Riley is here!
(I just saw another stat since we started this discussion: VT is 114th in YPP. Out of 128 teams. Bonus: #128 is Wake Forest! By a full yard over #127!)
You mean we played the entire game on offense and Dadi Nicolas never got a chance to lay waste to Anthony Boone or Derek Di Nardo never got a chance to run an INT back to Duke's 9 or there was no #beamerball fumble forced that led to a quick strike from Brewer to Hodges?
"the Philips run out of bounds didn't hurt us at all (might have cost 1 or 2 seconds) because either 1) the play ends well outside of 2 minutes or 2) the play goes long enough to get past 2 minutes, but we get a first down anyways."
I am a bit confused by this statement. If Phillips doesn't go out of bounds, a lot more than 1 or 2 seconds come off the clock, leaving much less time for Duke to drive down for the field goal attempt. Even if he gets the first down, the clock stops, but is restarted once the ball is set.
I think they think the clock stops at the 2 minute warning like the NFL.
I thought that might be what he was (incorrectly) suggesting, but I wanted clarification in case he was making a completely different point. I remember the commentators even saying something about wanting to not go out of bounds there to keep the clock running. Either way, it is no big deal since we won and that one little moment didn't come back to bite us in the end, for once.
They followed up that comment by pointing out that the clock started, because there were more than 2 min left in the game (caught both by surprise, until they realized the > 2 min issue).
A lot more than 1-2 sec did come off the clock. He went OB with over 2 min left, so the clock restarted with the play clock restarted. There was a lost 1-2 sec while the ball was brought back into the field of play and spotted (may be more than 1-2, but you get the point).
dbl post
For the record: Phillips was ruled down in bounds. Duke used their last timeout.
I guess the ref's said Phillips knees hit in bounds before he fell out of bounds. It was close, too close. Our OC shouldn't have put our freshman WR in that position by calling the play to the short side.
it didn't matter - in college the clock only stops on an OOB within 2 min, right?
As a fan who's old enough to actually remember VT football BFB (before Frank Beamer), anything short of breaking the law & FB has earned the right to decide when he wants to step down. He made VT football relevant. He's also the reason that Bud Foster isn't winning NC's as UGA's DC.
Am I thrilled with how this season has gone? Nope, but I believe that things will definitely go better, next year.
I'd say it eases the pressure just a bit, but a loss would have upped said pressure a whole heck of a lot. Now, the challenge is to get to a bowl game, beat UVA, and finish with a perfectly respectable (given the circumstances) 8-5 record. That's something Frank & co. can build on. Limp along to a 5-7 or 6-7 record? Not so much. Like the OSU victory, a lot of the meaning from this win will come from what we do after it.