Despite offensive woes this year, multiple offensive single-season records are under threat.
Much has been said about Ford and the Freshman TD record and Hodges and the TE record, but with 6 touchdowns each, they are within striking distance of the Single Season TD record, currently shared by Antonio Freeman and Andre Davis with 9.
Michael Brewer sits in 5th place right now with 218 completions, just 16 behind Logan Thomas' 2011 record of 234.
As a team, this year's 225 combined completions are 18 short of the record 243 held by the 2011 and 2013 squads.
Brewer (356) and the team (367) are both 74 attempts short of the individual and team records for passing attempts of 429 (Thomas 2012) and 440 (1972) respectively.
For the optimists out there, Brewer trails Don Strock's 1972 single season yardage record by 1006 yards with a potential 3 games remaining (335.3 ypg) and the team, as a whole, trails 1972's record by 1024 (341.3 ypg).
In any event, these provide more story lines besides the bowl streak and the Decade of Dominance.
Comments
Where does A.J. Hughes rank on the single-season passing yardage by a punter list?
Probably not too high. I seem to remember lots of fakes earlier in Beamer's career.
Don't crush our dreams like that bro
He has a 2014 pass efficiency rating of 184.0.
Good enough for 2nd in the country behind Marcus Mariotta at 184.6 and what has to be a VT single season record.
And, yet, no Heisman love. Must be all the Noon/12:30 kickoffs.
Imagine if he had seen Ronny Van Dyke open in the right flat....
If he had, it would have been a pick 6 or an incomplete pass. No left handed QB will make a throw 20 yards across the field to the right with their momentum carrying them to the left. Sorry, not happening. He may have been open, but that would be the dumbest play that not even the greatest of QBs would make.
You need to look at the replay. Van Dyke was open by 20 yds (from any DB/LB type that might have had a shot at getting to him) and only 30 yds from the ball, so unless a player on the field is as fast as a thrown pass, there's no way it would have been picked. In fact, it would have been like a throw back to the qb on a trick play. In complete, maybe, but picked? Nope. And far from "the dumbest play that not even the greatest of QBs would make."
Unfortunately replays don't show the right angle to see RVD that I can find, but from watching it in the game, that would have been the dumbest thing to do. It would have had no power so it wouldn't have been hard for a player to close on him to make the play. When you're falling away from the direction you're throwing, you won't get anything behind the ball. You're more likely to lob it and let it float up there. So I'll stand by my decision that it would have been the dumbest thing for him to do.
I agree that his momentum going the other way virtually guarantees an incompletion, esp for a punter, but to say that no QB could do it isn't completely accurate (MV7 would have easily made the play).
I doubt it. It's not a natural throw by any means unless you can plant your foot and step into it. This isn't like baseball where you can throw with your momentum going the other way and rely on pure arm strength to get the ball from shortstop or 3rd to 1st base on a one hop or even a higher lob. As soon as he starts to throw it, the defense will jump up and will make a play on it while it is in the air. No matter who you put back there, that's at best an incompletion without RVD having to change his momentum from going forward to coming back to make a play on the ball.
Hate to burst your bubble but as I said in another thread I saw MV7 make almost that exact same throw to Andre Davis. It was a VERY ugly throw that seemed to hang in the air forever, and Davis had to sit and wait on it, but he was so open (the defense had left him alone as they thought that nobody could make that throw) and because of his speed after the catch, it turned into a big gain.
That being said, I agree with you, it would have been very dumb for AJ to even think of attempting that throw. He is no Michael Vick and RVD is no Andre Davis. Your analysis of the play is likely correct.
Our punter may be #punterswag but he cannot make a running fadeaway 50 yd pass across his body.
100% incompletion.
A.J. made a very good if not excellent play and got what he could.
Good grief...do you realize that you're actually taking this seriously?
And BTW, the correct answer is he COULD have fairly easily completed that pass!
Only problem with these "all-time statistics" is that we play many more games now then we used. Per game stats would be a better explanation of progress and records imho...
What year did we go to a 12 game schedule?
IIRC, most of the stats we are talking about are well within that time frame.
I believe it was 2002. Plus, bowl stats didn't count for many years.
The fact that, even with the longer seasons, it has taken this long to break some of these total records is a little stunning. Our offense just has not been much to write home about. With all these records being in site it make me wonder how this season has been so bad, but then I remembered our run game is a shell of most years.
Also 9 TD rec seems like a low number for it to be a record. Combine this with our number of 1,000 yard receivers and it seems like we have been lacking in the passing game for way too long.
I think it seems so low because it's the Freshman single season TD record. And the lack of run game props Brewer up for coming close to the passing records.
I implied this to mean single season receiving TD record regardless of age/exp.
Pretty sure Freeman's and Davis' record TD performances were both during 11-game regular seasons. Bowls weren't counted in those stats at that point either. (bowl stats began counting toward season totals in 2002).
On the othe hand our TE records set by Jeff King were during a 12-game season, and Hodges is blowing by those #'s
You beat me to that reply.
Seems that there were a number of 14 game, ACC Champ seasons, in between the days of 12 or fewer games and this year. While those teams won't make anyone forget about Briles' Baylor O or Malzahn's Auburn O, surpassing those numbers is nothing to sneeze at.
Also, offensive numbers are way up in general. I'll bet a lot of offensive records for most teams are less than 10 years old.
passing/receiving at least... maybe not so much for rushing
You may be right, but the NCAA single game rushing record was set this past weekend. And VT's single season rushing record has been broken twice in the last 5 years.
I'm just sayin'....
any optimism is offensive. /s
... forgot the sarcastica ....