As a TKP reader, and therefore Virginia Tech Hokies fanatic, EVERY play of every game has you captivated and your emotional state hangs on every pass, every tackle, every penalty, every little detail of every game. But of course not all plays are as big as others and as your memory of the mundane fades you're left with last memories of the truly game-changing plays of every season. Here we use analytics to count down the biggest, most game-changing plays in the past 10 years of Virginia Tech football...
In each installment of this series I'll bring you two plays: one play devastating to the Hokies' chance to win, and one dominating play in Virginia Tech's favor. They will count down in order of how much each play affected the odds of Tech's victory.
For details on the method, see Virginia Tech's Top 10 Plays of the Last Ten Years: No. 10.
The Countdown
Most Devastating:
10. Boise State 9/6/2010 - Kellen Moore pass complete to Austin Pettis for 13 yards for a TOUCHDOWN
9. Miami 11/4/2006 - Tyrone Moss rush for 50 yards for a TOUCHDOWN
8. Boston College 11/2/2013 - Logan Thomas pass intercepted by Kevin Pierre-Louis at the VTech 33, returned for 33 yards for a TOUCHDOWN
Most Dominating:
10. Boston College 12/1/2007 - Sean Glennon pass complete to Eddie Royal for 24 yards for a TOUCHDOWN
9. North Carolina 10/29/2009 - T.J. Yates pass intercepted by Rashad Carmichael at the North Carolina 10, returned for 5 yards to the North Carolina 5
8. Georgia Tech 9/3/2012 - Logan Thomas pass complete to Demitri Knowles for 42 yards for a TOUCHDOWN
The 7th-most Devastating Play: Miami 10/8/2011 - Lamar Miller rush over right guard for 30 yards for a TOUCHDOWN
Virginia Tech led the entire game in a contest that was unusually high-scoring for the Hokies. Early in the fourth quarter, Miami had cut that lead to 3 points and immediate backed up the Tech offense on a three-and-out. Miami would take over the ball on the Hokie 42-yard-line with a six minutes to go in the game.
A first down, 23-yard Lamar Miller run helped put the 'Canes in striking distance, but late drive penalties would ultimately leave Miami with a second-and-goal situation from the 30-yard-line. Tech's defense smelled blood in the water, but on the called run, Lamar Miller found a hole in the middle of the line, and ran through nearly untouched and with no secondary in place to stop him. He gave the Hurricanes a 4-point lead with under three minutes on the clock, setting up an opportunity for Logan Thomas to become a legend.
Logan Thomas capitalized, and Virginia Tech would ultimately win the game 38-35. But more on that another time...
The 7th-most Dominating Play: Rutgers 12/29/2012 - Logan Thomas pass complete to Corey Fuller for 21 yards for a TOUCHDOWN
The Russell Athletic Bowl matchup between Virginia Tech and Rutgers was an ugly game best known for setting the bowl record of 20 combined punts (and what might be the worst-looking Virginia Tech helmets of all time—matte maroon with shiny orange Fighting Gobbler). Both teams had difficulty putting themselves in a position to win, and a low-scoring, balanced game sets up for a big play to tip the scales. Said play came early in the fourth quarter for the Hokies following a big Antone Exum interception returned to the Rutgers' 21. The Virginia Tech offense appeared to still have its wheels stuck in the mud and quickly found themselves looking at 3rd-and-10 and down 3-10.
On the second-down play, Thomas threw a poorly thrown ball that should have scored the tying touchdown. But the second time around he put the perfect touch on a fade to Corey Fuller in the front corner of the end zone, and Fuller kept himself in position to catch it in-bounds and away from the defender. The score and extra point tied the game at 10 and ultimately sent the game to overtime.
Virginia Tech would win on an overtime field goal, 13-10 in a less-than-memorable bowl game that at least delivered this gem from Logan and Corey.
Comments
Umm, excuse you?
beat me to it. Joel you and I need to have a...conversation...yeah thats it...
RIP Joel
I thought those were the best helmets we've ever had. Fighting Gobbler logo.....matte finish.....nice looking "speedy" stripes down the middle....I thought it was a good design.
Exactly. There are many of us who love and miss the Fighting Gobbler.
...and there are many of us who love and miss the fighting gobbler and still thought those helmets looked like crap
Thank you. For the record I'm not against the matte helmet or the fighting gobbler. What I find so ugly is that the helmet is matte and the gobbler is gloss. Make that gobbler matte too and I'd make fun of a different helmet like the one with tracks or worse, the one with the flexing Hokie bird on it.
A big blob of shiny roadkill orange puke, is what it looked like on TV. I was embarrassed just watching it.
yep. Even the goofy hokie stone helmets at least just looked like gray helmets from far away. Interesting up close, neutral from far away. Not my favorite helmet, but not offensive.
Seriously. I was too distracted by that statement to even finish the rest of the article.
Here's my view of the play. Had a feeling something big was about to happen so I started recording.
Obligatory Fuck Matt Ryan comment inserted here...
IMO the worst looking helmets were the white ones with the Hokie Bird on it. Want to say it was during the 2012 season...I love the Hokie Bird but there's no reason for that to be on a game helmet. It's stupid and cartoonish.
Hokie tracks was worse
That's a negative ghost rider
Not to be picky, but, it's not really cartoonish, it is in fact an actual cartoon...just sayin
I was in Panama for the LT TD pass watching in a sportsbook. It's so much fun being the only person in the room rooting for VT and going crazy when we scored that TD. I know I heard a few "bendejos" after that, but that just made it more fun.
Ok. I need a little more info to this comment. Why were the Panamanians rooting for Rutgers? And I believe it's "pendejos". Not to nitpick.
I think Rutgers was the gamblers pick for that game, I don't remember the line but everyone in that sportsbook was pouring money on them just before kickoff.
Not according to the internet (Twitter polls are generally pretty silly, but the Fighting Gobbler helmet is far from the worst helmet that VT has worn):
If there was only a way to have that actually be a poll on the website. That would be interesting to know what the TKP fans actually like the best.
a poll where you could assign point values to each would be nice. I have a favorite (white old school T inside V) and maybe a second favorite (black pro-combat), but after that there's a muddled mess of "sure", "no", and then a few "hell no". A weighted poll would let me have ties and then the results would just be a sum of point values...
I never voted on these...wish I had. The "Champion" isn't even in my top 5
Im missing 16 mini helmets for my collection.
I need to step my game up.
well, you have 8 more than me so you're not in terrible shape..
Meh, it had an easy bracket
but it still proved itself worthy against all its opponent in the clutch
What is the difference between 15 and 21 and 7 and 22? If it is so negligible that one can barely tell then the only reason I can see to include them is some sort of control case. If the voting for the two is statistically different then it would indicate to me that people just picked out a favorite and pencil whipped the rest.
The stripe down the middle of the helmet. That image is hard to tell, but one has stripes down the top, the other doesn't. Not sure how Hokie20 decided upon the seeding, but he included every helmet we've worn and the variations on them I believe.
EDIT: Actually, 12 and 22 are the same other than the stripe down the top of the helmet. 7 is the White Pro Combat helmet. 11 and 20 differ based upon the stripe down the top as do 15 and 21.
Actually, both have stripes, but they are reversed.
2011 Orange Bowl (2010 Season):
2011 Season:
They inverted the stripes to match the shoulder stripes on the Orange Jersey
I never figured out the difference between #1 and #19
White chin strap vs. maroon?
Bolder VT logo. I think #1 has a white VT with a maroon stroke and orange outline outside of that.. #19 has only the orange outline.. as far as i can see...
Looking at them on the UniBuilder that Clark created, I find 2 differences. The first is one is the ACC helmet, the other is the Big East. The other is that 19 is a little more red, less maroon.
Here's #1:
And here's #19:
Actually, upon inspection of the close ups, #1 has more of a sparkled paint where as 19 is just plain maroon.
It really is the offseason...
We all knew the Logan Thomas run was going to make it
Wait, I'm the only one who thinks a matte helmet with a shiny gobbler logo is ugly? Please someone else back me up here!
I'd say the orange camo helmet is the only "ugly" one, but the gobbler helmet is nowhere near the top of my list.
Oh no, it's horrible design (at a distance it just looks like a pukisplash of Orange) and ugly to boot.
If you had not seen the fighting gobbler before and saw that, could you even identify it as a fighting gobbler? It looks more like a carton of a roadkill chicken.
It reminds me of this Ted Talk.
Ted Talk Horrible flag design
Irony upon irony: Stating that the fighting gobbler looks like a cartoon of a roadkill chicken to the guy who has the fighting gobbler as his avatar but hates the fighting gobbler helmet.
Yeah but, he asked for the opinion.
I tend not to shy away from those questions.
In Orange it just is horrible and bleeds all over the place.
Oh I understand, I just found the amount of irony hilarious though.
Well, there is that.
Skewered. Zing.
I found this comical as well.
I don't hate the gobbler obviously. I hate the gloss gobbler on a matte helmet.
It's all good. I assumed you didn't hate the gobbler given your avatar. Again, just a certain level of irony to the situation that made it very comical at the time.
Based on this:
I actually like the MD flag and the designs UMD incorporates into their uniforms
*ducks*
oh so you're the one
Well, the Virginia flag is horrible.
The DC flag is well designed. That does not necessarily include attractive or pleasing, just well designed.
It's really easy to make Virginia's Flag Better:
My left arm disagrees.
Your left shoulder would be less contrary with a better designed flag hanging on it.
I actually don't have the exact same design as the flag. I like the one the 14th VA Rifles used better. Hmm that may well prove your point haha.
Plus it's right on my bicep. My left shoulder has an old crest of Puerto Rico.
I bet that's a really cool tattoo. Pretty good idea.
But as a flag, the design sucks.
A flag needs to be seen and identified from far away. A few large items with meaning and easily identifiable. Stripes, colors, a border, circles and stars.
The perfect flag, according to basic flag design criteria. Elegant in it's simplicity, easily identifies it's meaning and what it represents, powerful iconography.
I also think it's beautiful.
Also why South Carolina's flag is the best state flag. Sorrynotsorry, Virginia.
Using the criteria from the TED Talk, I would say that Texas has a stronger argument than SC, especially in the child could easily draw it department.
I guess you missed this when it was floating around a while ago...
Didn't miss it. Skipped it. Thought y'all were Turkish.
Sic Semper Tyrannis,
son!daughter!Minivans across the land agree with you
Virginia easily has one of the best state flags. It's basically the state flag equivalent of an awesome action movie. I mean, what other state flag has nudity and violence?
Also, I'd like to take this moment to apologize to everyone. None of us wanted to ever talk about the Rutgers game again, and we definitely weren't thinking of it in any context related to "greatest". But that play was pretty valuable.
So sorry everyone. I promise the 2014 Wake Forest game will not make an appearance in the series.
Surprised by that. Thought everything was so awful in that game that the odds had to hover at 50% until that last play, when it jumped from 50 to 100 in Wake's favor.
I'm pretty sure when he started the series he said nothing in OT would be considered since the odds are too crazy already and the swings are far too drastic.
I also recall him saying something about game winning field goals being factored out because they were boring.
Excellent observation...when a game's near 50% it's much easier to "move the needle". But the teams were so bad that no one did anything remarkable enough to move the needle much even given easy circumstances to do so.
I've also been working on a "Top 10 Games" and the first couple of methods I used put the Wake game in in...on paper it's exciting right? You don't know who will win until the very end and it seems like a constant battle. but the reality of the game was way different and I've since moved to other models to reflect that.
I'm curious if that would be a trend... The closer a game hovers around 50% over the course of the match, with no noteworthy swings in either direction, the worse the game is overall. By that metric, I'm wondering what the statistical worst game we've played has been (and I mean worst game by both sides, where its just misery watching). I'm curious if anything has out-awful'd that Wake game, over the time you're able to measure.
I would love to see the "Top 10 Games" because I think you could look at it as either the closest games played, with it sitting around 50% nearly all game, the most dramatic finish with back and forth scoring at the end, or the most dramatic where you have the most movement overall regardless of when it happened in a game. I'm thinking kinda like the NC State game, coming back from down 20 or against Duke down 21.
It is planned...the Duke one is a weird one. It did come up in some models but not others, mostly because for most of the game it appears completely uninteresting. Duke is almost certainly going to win and then in a short period of time, VT is almost certainly going to win.
I feel like that metric needs to take scoring frequency into account (and not just win probability). That might help rule out agonizing pillow fights like the WF game. Also maybe track things like FG blocks, sacks, etc - big plays that might not show up in the box score, but make the game interesting. Adding bonus points for rivalry and that type thing might not be a bad idea either.
I'd still say one of my favorite VT games ever was the Miami one (4th and Logan).
That play on the Rutgers game was probably very important to Corey Fuller and helped him move into the NFL.
You are correct, it belongs in this list. It helped us very significantly to win a bowl game ( though I won't be re watching it) and important for 2 of our outstanding Hokies, Thomas and Co. Fuller
You super-swear? Don't play with me man...I'd probably projectile-vomit all over my monitor.
Promise. I won't give away anything else but I couldn't live with myself if anything from that game made it.
You are mistaken. We did not play Wake Forest in 2014.
Those helmets were awesome and everyone who posted something to that effect on this thread is also awesome due to basking in the reflected awesomeness of those awesome helmets.
So this is basically you to everyone who likes the helmets?
Kinda.
Best. Gif. Ever.
great gif, this is the version I had seen
WOW
Nice pull, fernley! Had I seen this one, my choice would have been easy. +1
There are no comments on the top half of the feature - did everyone else just skip re-living that part once reading which play is was like I did?
It was gut-wrenching to watch from the East Stands, for sure. But I think Logan's heroics on the ensuing drive made it much more bearable. That's the only reason I could replay it this time. Had we lost that game, I'm not sure I would have been able to stomach it.
That was back when we had an offense that you had faith could actually get a few first downs when needed.
You mean like back on the first Saturday in September this past season?
waaaay back when
edit: I suppose my point was when Miller ran that TD in it didn't feel like that was ballgame because the O was clicking like nobody's business that day.
That play doesn't bother me now, nor did it bother me then.
That game was one of those rare jewels for me... I just knew that the Hokies were going to win.
this one was weird. I mean that miami game is an instant classic, the likes of which should be shown on ESPN Classic everyday. So even though it was the "most devastating play" I was amped for it. Then got to the most dominating play and was all.....
and then the helmet comment just lost me.....I mean those helmets were awesome. We need more fighting gobbler and Whit should bring it out of retirement.
I KNOW YOU'RE READING THIS WHIT!!
I had the exact same response
The best was when I was editing Joel's article this morning and read the helmet line my initial impulse was to cut it. I 100% knew this thread would devolve into a helmet argument, but then decided to eff it because we haven't had a good helmet discussion in several days.
You know how we like to focus on what matters OH LOOK SOMETHING SHINY.
Every time I see this I just want to post my other favorite Dug quote.
This should be the only helmet the Hokies ever wear. End discussion.
You don't like the older version with the stripes?
That one's OK as well. I just think the only lid should be maroon with "VT".
I'm all for uniform changes, but the helmet needs to remain constant.
I like all the different helmets. I wish they hadn't made the change away from alternate helmets in the NFL.
I don't mind having a set of mix-and-match helmets as long as the VT brand is consistent.
EDIT: To clarify, meant the university/athletic dept. brand, not the manufacturer of the helmet haha
Won't someone please think of the brand?!?!
PREACH. I thought I was the only one around here who still thought that
Am I the only person on here who genuinely does not give a fuck what we wear? The amount of time and emotion invested in uniform/helmet conversations here kind of blows my mind.
but..but..but..you can't win if you don't look good...right?
It's just easy pickings. Low hanging fruit if you will. Everyone can discuss uniforms. Very few can discuss the details and Xs and Os like French, as well as other things, like inside information. We're all just message board schmoes. We're all experts on uniforms and color hues and the like.
When that girl falls in the pool, the lack of reaction from the guy in the background disturbs me.
^obviously not a marketing major, lol
I think what Joe means to say is he didn't edit it because he knows gloss emblems on a matte helmet are ugly.
Fuck Matt Ryan
ironically, the rutgers win percentage graph probably looked the same "20% chance VT wins it. 20% chance Rutgers wins it. 60% chance the drunk in row three scores before either of them..."
MRW I read the part about the matte fighting gobbler helmet
when we have worn helmets that look like this:
from far away it just looked like a maroon blob with orange and white in the middle
Really... its like he blocked this one out as well:
or the fact that the orange camo helmets turned to shit before kickoff, but that's what you get when you use thin stickers to apply a logo
Not to mention those military helmets already looked like vomit before the stickers even started peeling off. I'm all for honoring our veterans and everything, but that orange camo is putrid. These were easily my least favorite uniforms we ever wore, from head to toe.
I liked that camo thank you very much
Hey, at least it's shiny.
Dang, Exum looks yoked in this clip. That brother has some arms
Looks yoked cause he is yoked. Dude was scary jacked for a corner/human being.
Sweet that we won both of these games. I was worried when Boise St's game winning TD was #10 that I wouldnt be able to bear the rest of this series.
You know what I just realized? Logan Thomas wore all of the ugliest helmets VT has ever had. This is undeniable proof that he should have been a TE.