Virginia Tech Spring Football: A Second Look at the Hokies First Scrimmage

The first football scrimmage of spring has a bit of Christmas morning feel to it. For three months the Virginia Tech fans have speculated over position battles. We have salivated over the potential of players we have never seen play, and we have fretted over potential weaknesses in next season's roster. The first scrimmage rarely satisfies those curiosities. Instead, it reminds each of us that every team and every season is a work in progress. This season is no different, and a sense of perspective is needed to understand that the positives and negatives in April will mean little by the time the Hokies host Lane Stadium against the Buckeyes on Labor Day.

The day started with a fascinating revelation: the Hokie athletic department would broadcast the scrimmage via Periscope, a new streaming video service. The broadcast gave an on the field view of the scrimmage. There were some technical issues, including the feed going down at one point, but for the most part the broadcast provided a fantastic perspective on the one of the primary worry areas coming into the spring–offensive line play.

Travon McMillian was the story of the first scrimmage. He displayed terrific balance, vision, and cutting ability on two long runs. His cut off a great block by Isaiah Ford on Mook Reynolds (where Ford stayed with Reynolds as he crashed inside the hash mark) took a short run and turned it into a substantial gain. On the second run, McMillian was a beneficiary of a play by Eric Gallo that represents a key area of needed improvement for the Hokie running game to be successful–scooping the back side.

Let's examine the play closely. Bud Foster's defense is aligned in a 46 look, with backer Jamieon Moss up on the line of scrimmage outside of tight end Ryan Malleck. Assignment wise, the defensive line crashes to its left. Moss as the backer is the edge player and plays a force technique, containing wide to leave rover C.J. Reavis in the alley to make the play on McMillian.

The Hokies execute a pin and pull to the play side. Jonathan McLaughlin drives the crashing defensive end to the inside. Wyatt Teller gets jammed up a bit by McLaughlin, yet he recovers and finds Reavis crashing to fill the hole. Teller dumps him to the outside.
The key block here is by Eric Gallo. Gallo has to reach Vinny Mihota, who is a quick gap crashing tackle. Mihota is aligned as a three technique on Teller's inside shoulder. Gallo takes a very sharp first step, gets his head on Mihota's outside hip, and seals him inside so he can't intercept McMillian in the hole. If Gallo doesn't execute his block, Mihota has a tackle for a loss.

Defensively, you can see how much of a step behind the No. 2 defensive is behind the No. 1 offense right now. Moss doesn't give up outside leverage, but is so wide that he leaves Reavis with too much space to cover. Nijman's inability to fit the tackle-guard gap effectively widens that hole. Back side pursuit gets a bit lost. The only player who scrapes over to chase McMillian is Adonis Alexander. I can't identify his alignment (whip or free safety) on the play. If he is the free safety, he takes a very poor angle on McMillian. If he is at the whip position, he hustles his tail off, but where in the heck is the free safety. I would imagine Coach Foster and Coach Gray were not pleased with their second unit after this slow start.

With the sweet must come with the sour, and one trend I did not like to see is the lack of an aggressive sell of the run in the play-action game. This has been a major complaint of mine over the last two seasons, and I didn't see improvement in this scrimmage.

So, what does selling the run mean? As a lineman, I was taught that on play-action passes, you explode off the line just like a running play without going past the line of scrimmage. This has two purposes. First, the linebackers and defensive line reading their keys read run and don't actively look to penetrate. Second, the aggressive explosion off the line of scrimmage gets their hands down on short throws.

Last season, the Hokies offense did not sell the run on play-action. That is damning because play-action could be such a viable deep passing option with a weapon like Bucky Hodges and a running game that improved by leaps and bounds at the end of the season. Instead, the offensive line set up in a passive, pass protection posture, while the running backs rarely crashed the line and instead set up to pass block. The fake hand off by the quarterback may have occasionally frozen defensive backs, but it wasn't enough to slow down flying defensive ends. Play-action, especially on deep balls, takes a long time to develop and even good offensive tackles have trouble holding their blocks for a long time when a good defensive end smells pass.

Fast forwarding to the scrimmage, I found more of the same from Scot Loeffler's offense. Let's watch the play after the touchdown. Coach Loeffler calls a deep play-action pass. Let's watch the offensive line and running back DJ Reid.

Instead of exploding off the football, the offensive line appears to run a traditional slide right pass protection. Gallo, Conte, and Hansen are dropping into the backfield just like typical pass protection, while Ryan Malleck is upright and blocking palms up in a pass protection posture on the back side. Brenden Motley gives a decent play fake, but Reid never attacks the line of scrimmage. Instead, he flattens out in front of Motley and lets Ronny Vandyke come to him. This doesn't sell the run, leaves a body in Motley's lap so he can't step into the throw and see down field, and allows Vandyke to close the space and further disrupt the throwing lane. I am willing to bet when Scot Loeffler talked about sacks being an 11-man issue, I would bet that this play was one fresh on his mind. When nothing broke open down field Motley should have thrown the ball away, but the lack of space from Reid made throwing it away tough.

The practice session and scrimmage produced some interesting developments. Here are some of my observations:

In an individual (position) drill, Terrell Edmunds exploded on an in-cutting route to break up a pass. That kind of closing speed reminded me of Brandon Facyson during his first camp. Edmunds has an opportunity to gain ground with Greg Stroman nursing a hamstring injury.

The first team offensive line looked aggressive and played with good pad level. During individual work, Wade Hansen had a nice recovery after Dadi Nicolas got an edge with a double handed slap pass rush move. Hansen drove him past the quarterback. There is a serious drop off with the second group, which appears to have Colt Pettit as the No. 2 left guard. I did not see Alston Smith take a snap.

The Hokie offense ran a very limited playbook. Some of the quarterback counter plays with Ryan Malleck and a guard pulling opened up very nicely against the first and second team defenses. If Loeffler can also make the base tailback handoff and play-action effective off that action, it is going to be very difficult for defenses to defend with Motley in the game. For those of you clamoring for Brewer not to be the quarterback, remember though that nobody runs the quarterback counter-trey better than Ohio State. If any defense would be ready to defend it, it would be the Buckeyes defense.

First team offensive line gave up two sacks. The second was a bust inside where Jamieon Moss came free right up the middle. Deon Clarke got a sack on a similar blitz against the second OL. Unfortunately I could not see who busted on the interior.

That being said, Motley looked sharp running and throwing the football. You would like to see him get rid of the ball faster on some of those pressures. Without knowing if the wide receivers were executing their assignments down field, it is difficult to do a fair assessment with this video determining how much of that was Motley's fault. One unique perspective the Periscope tape provides, is that it really shows Motley taking charge at the line of scrimmage. He was directing his offensive line and the backs like he was already the starter. The offensive staff has to like that assertiveness. At the very least, it is a safe to say that Motley is making it very tough to stick with Brewer, especially if Brewer can't return this spring and Motley stays healthy.

Bucky Hodges appeared to be working exclusively with the wide receivers and made a nice catch on a deep ball from Motley. When you watch the play again, you notice that Adonis Alexander was the defender on the play. Alexander, who is in his first week of full contact ACC football, was in perfect position on the coverage. He flashed his hands at the ball when Hodges reached up to make the catch, and just missed. For a kid that many (including I) were worried about his ability to cover, that was a pretty impressive effort for the freshman.

The first team Hokies offense scored the only touchdown of the scrimmage, but don't let that fool you. The first team offense didn't get a chance to finish several other drives. This was a scripted scrimmage where the offense got a limited number of plays to score before Coach Beamer called for a personnel change. The second team defense only had one legitimate stop of the first team offense. Defensively, the second team offense was stifled by the first team defense. Very rarely did the top offense go against the top defense. On the final play of one versus one, Motley drew a defensive pass interference near the west corner of the south end zone. Besides the two safety spots and quarterback, both the first team offense and defense seem to be pretty set. The drop off to the twos is significant. Expect players stepping up in that second group to be a key focus the rest of the spring.

While Nigel Williams, Ricky Walker, and Woody Baron are probably going to be the backup DT rotation, you can tell that Coach Wiles is grooming Vinny Mihota to play a similar style as Corey Marshall. Mihota successfully shot through the center-guard gap from his nose tackle position to make some loss plays during drills. The top offense ran the ball effectively against the two's, however those runs were coming from the outside. The Hokies are very good at defensive tackle.

There will be be some good film to learn from for the backups at the backer position. As noted above, Jamieon Moss didn't always effectively fit the edge when playing a force technique. Raymon Minor attempted to dodge Augie Conte on a QB counter that went for a touchdown until Jonathan McLaughlin was called for holding down field. Both Minor and Moss have to squeeze the blocker inside while keeping outside leverage. This makes the hole that the alley player has to defend smaller, improving his chances to make the tackle. Minor did make a very nice play during drills squeezing down the cutback lane on an inside zone.

It isn't fair to review the other quarterbacks with the Periscope view of the film because I can't see the receivers breaking down field. It won't be easy for Ford or Durkin to win the job because that second offensive line group is spending most of their snaps working against the starting defense and they are not up to speed yet. It did look like Ford may have tweaked his right knee of the final throw of the first D vs second O series on a throw down the left seam. Ford hunched over after the throw and gingerly ran off the field.

There were a couple of really sloppy motion penalties by the top offensive group, culminating in a brutal early jump by Jerome Wright immediately following Wright making a nice catch down the sideline. When experienced players make those kinds of brain-fart mistakes, it drives a coaching staff absolutely nuts, especially when Wright had just made a nice play and was getting work as a single set back.

Tyrell Smith got most of his early work at center. After a poor snap to Chris Durkin, Eric Gallo came in and Smith moved to guard (I assume because Colt Pettit had an equipment issue) and then Pettit came back in at center with Smith staying at guard. I have not read anything reported, but I didn't see Alston Smith practice.