Locker Room Wrap: Hokies' Loss to Duke Marked by Coaching Mixups, Secondary Slip Ups

Had the Hokies managed to come through on just a few momentous plays, their faint hopes in the ACC Coastal could still be alive — instead, talk has once more turned to the prospect of merely making a bowl game.

At 3-5, Frank Beamer's squad is facing yet another uphill climb toward bowl eligibility. The season-ending slate of Boston College, Georgia Tech, North Carolina and UVA doesn't offer a lot of obvious victories, the month of November will test the resolve of a team that increasingly doesn't have much to play for.

"Coming back from disappointment and showing a little character and being relentless, those things go a long way in life," Beamer said after the game. "If you don't give in, then you've got a chance. If you give in, I pretty much know how the story is going to turn out."

But as fans and observers from all sides make their best guesses about what the conclusion of the story of Beamer's storied career will look like, the Hokies are left with the grim realization that this game against the Blue Devils was eminently winnable.

Yet the troubles in the secondary, which have come to define this season, and some coaching hiccups let this one slip away.

Still More Secondary Slip Ups

On the heels of a thrilling Travon McMillian touchdown in the fourth overtime, the Hokies had to simply keep Duke out of the end zone to finally claim the win.

It took them just one play to dash those hopes, allowing a 25-yard score to Erich Schneider on the very first play of the drive. The bust came courtesy of perhaps the most talented player left in Tech's secondary, with Chuck Clark left on an island with a tight end.

"We were bringing just a five man rush on the last touchdown," said defensive coordinator Bud Foster. "That one play right there was really disappointing because we weren't in position to contest the ball."

Foster is the first one to admit that a player like Clark doesn't make that type of mistake that easily, yet he cracked at the worst possible moment.

"We were in a man free coverage, and it looked like the tight end just beat Chuck," Foster said. "It's normally uncommon for him to get beat that easily. It looked like it was uncontested, so it was probably technique."

But Clark was hardly the only problem in the secondary for the game. Freshman CB Mook Reynolds got picked on for a handful of costly receptions, including an early 23-yard completion, and Foster even went so far as to bench rover Adonis Alexander after he lined up incorrectly and contributed to Shaun Wilson's 58-yard touchdown run.

"We made a change in the second half after the long run, the safety lined up on the wrong side," Foster said.

Even as Beamer continues to note that players like Alexander and Reynolds could end up in the NFL someday, Foster is left sounding a familiar refrain about the frustrations of relying on such young players in the secondary.

"Those are things right now where as a coach you kind of pull your hair out because they're the simple things," Foster said. "We repped that play 25 times this week in practice. That's the disappointing thing. We've got a couple guys right now that are just not executing some very basic things that we practiced."

But Foster's front seven isn't blameless, even with all of the back end's issues. The group failed to generate a single sack against Duke's excellent protection, and Foster was left scratching his head following Duke's game-winning two-point conversion.

"They were in a stack alignment and we were in man and we actually practiced that, they switched up who was their corner route guy and we were passing guys off," Foster said. "So the second time, we went to a zone coverage and had it played right. I saw the end looked like he got cut down, Andrew Motuapuaka was scraping, which he was taught to do on sprint pass and the quarterback made an upcut, I'm just curious to see where our backside pursuit was. We were in good defense, good coverage, and their quarterback made a nice play when it's all said and done."

Clock Confusion

When Duke's normally steady Ross Martin missed a 46-yard field goal with 1:04 left in the game, the Hokies got an unexpected shot to win the game at the last second.

"I pulled him to the side and I said, 'hey Ross, let me tell you a good thing: you don't have to play Virginia Tech again," said Duke head coach David Cutcliffe, referring to Martin's 3 of 5 outing on Saturday that was identical to his effort against Tech in 2014.

The Hokies only had the one timeout to work with, but still opted to take a chance at driving into field goal range.

But things got hairy after a 16-yard McMillian run put the ball at Tech's 45-yard line. A quick throw from Brewer to Cam Phillips produced just a five-yard gain, with Phillips scampering out of bounds soon after.

"We thought he stepped out of bounds," Beamer said.

That assumption would prove fateful. The officials instead ruled that Phillips was down by forward progress, as he was going backwards when he went out of bounds.

It was a ruling that had Beamer asking for clarification from the media after the game.

"Did you guys see that?" inquired a perplexed head Hokie.

The confusion ended up costing the Hokies roughly 25 seconds, and once Brewer threw an incomplete pass to Isaiah Ford, there were just two seconds left in the half and Tech called timeout.

Further exacerbating the problem was that Brewer was trying his best to speed up the offense, but couldn't manage to achieve results fast enough.

"They called him in bounds, the clock started running, we were in a dummy count, so I was trying to get us out of the dummy count and into a fast count, just a 'set, hut' and a lot of time ran off the clock," Brewer said.

Even still, one of Tech's coaches seemingly should've understood the situation and acted accordingly, and Brewer's frustration was evident after the game.

"I don't know how anybody didn't notice that official said he was in bounds, if it was a lack of communication or just nobody was looking," Brewer said.

Beamer responded to the clock snafu by running out Joey Slye to attempt a 67-yard field goal. If he'd made it, he would've been the new record holder for the longest kick made without a tee in FBS history.

But, predictably, his effort fell short.

"I've made a couple in practice off the sticks and stuff like that, just messing around," Slye said.

Duke called a timeout once it became clear Tech was actually going to kick the ball, giving Beamer a chance to rethink his decision. Yet Slye must've proved awfully convincing.

"The lobby for him was we could throw a pass all the way down there that might not reach the end zone or if I can get a hold of it, I feel like I can make a 67-yard field goal," Slye said. "I didn't get all the ball that I wanted, kind of pushed it right. I hit it as strong as I could."

Two-Point Prematurity?

One of the more stressful sequences of the night for Tech fans featured the team's three attempts at a two-point conversion to tie the game late in the fourth quarter.

After a pair of PI calls on Duke, the Hokies finally managed to punch the ball in and even the game, but the whole sequence wouldn't have been necessary had Beamer not elected to go for two on the team's previous touchdown late in the third quarter.

Brewer had helped engineer a mammoth 20-play drive that consumed a whopping 9:46 off the clock, but then the team pulled him in favor of Brenden Motley. As the refs then took time to review McMillian's score, Duke had plenty of time to prepare for the switch in passers.

Yet in trotted Motley once more, and he ended up failing to complete a pass to keep the score at 21-16.

"We didn't have very good execution on that play," Beamer said.

On its face, the decision to go for two at that point in the game isn't completely indefensible (even if the choice of Motley over Brewer was a bit puzzling).

But after the game, Beamer was less than forceful in his explanation for the decision.

"It was a five point game, and you go for one...it's still a four point game," Beamer said. "It still takes you a touchdown to win it. If you make it a three-point game, you can tie it with a field goal. You usually don't start playing that until the fourth quarter, but I thought it was close enough that I wanted to get it to a three point game."

That roll of the dice ended up largely flying under the radar given the outcome of the game, but had Duke not gifted Tech with two more tries at the end zone following the final score of regulation, it would've come under the microscope in a big way.

As Beamer faces ever-increasing questions about his job security, it's not a great look for the head coach to oversee both a key clock blunder at the end of the game and make such a potentially catastrophic decision.

Had the team come up with one stop in overtime, these criticisms might not have seemed so meaningful.

But cast against the backdrop of this massively disappointing 2015 season that's made even worse with yet another home loss to a conference opponent, they loom very large indeed.