While Hokie Nation braves the doldrums of the offseason, Virginia Tech strength and conditioning coach Ben Hilgart prepares the team physically and mentally for its upcoming season. Tech's offense needs both that Ricky Bobby I wanna go fast mindset as well as the stamina and strength to actually burn up the field.
Mike Barber posted a brief interview with Hilgart last Thursday, and Hilgart's quotes allow me to reiterate a point I conveyed during spring ball.
"We're totally in line with how we train and how we play is the same thing," said Ben Hilgart, Tech's first-year strength and conditioning coach.
"A big goal of ours is to last fast and stay stronger longer. That's part of tempo."
"We train that way. We train with a great sense of urgency," Hilgart said. "Our guys our focused throughout. If you came to a practice and you came to a lift, I'd like to think they'd look very similar."
It's no secret Justin Fuente wants to mash the gas pedal when Tech's in the driver's seat with the ball, and all aspects of the program reflect his up-tempo vision. Contrast Fuente's philosophy and execution with what Bucky Hodges said in March about Scot Loeffler's offense under Frank Beamer.
"The tempo is very fast," Hodges said. "Getting adjusted to that, because we never did that since I've been here, it's a process, but I'm getting adjusted to it. The best thing is the tempo is hard on us right now, but it's gonna be hard on other teams during the season."
Throughout his tenure, Loeffler went up-tempo as a package ("six reps of sonic, man!"). This season and beyond, playing with a sense of urgency will be part of the offense's soul. Practice is built around it, conditioning is built around it, drills are built around it. Virginia Tech's offense will have an actual focused identity and everything the team does will reflect and reenforce it. For the first time in a long damn time, the Hokies' offense won't be an an amalgam of concepts.
Comments
I know I am looking forward to this season more than any in recent memory. Can't wait to see Fuente offense!
i like the hyphen. My email is nchokie02 and whenever someone is saying it they say "n-chokie 02". So annoying.
I don't know what their problem is. I read N. C. Hokie without even thinking about it
I would recommend you spell it as NCHokie...
I'd recommend using a lot less letters if you want anyone from UNC to be able to read it.
if you're going to make a joke about someone's intelligence, be extra careful to check your grammar.
***checks sentence five times...still probably missed something***
That only makes it worse that you didn't capitalize the first word. I'll be taking your Grammar Nazi Party membership card.
very excite!
Much wow.
I feel like we will see a bit of Oregon was like in the Chip era.
Plus Bud's D...lets go!
Not ashamed to admit I spent a good 10 minutes watching this...
So you're saying you
?
This is something that I have had on my mind for the last few years. I remember an article about Stiney a few years back that described him as a cerebral kinda guy who liked to play chess. He was always looking to different offenses and trying to pull from them different facets that he could employ... even visited the Indy Colts to study what made them so successful with that fella named Manning. He was looking to add more tools to his toolbox... more moves to his chessboard. Loeffler followed somewhat the same philosophy. Playing the game and calling plays not necessarily to break for big yardage but to set the table some more plays later for a play that could be the game changer. Trouble for both those guys is that most kids don't come from a high school that uses nuanced systems with multiple blocking schemes and complicated route running. They have them for 3 to 4 seasons if they are really good athletes and 4 to 5 seasons if they are good players that we work to make great players. That is really though a very short time to get a well oiled unit together if you allow that the starting units are never all experienced senior level players.
Rickey Bustle did not run a super complex system in my recollection. He ran a very aggressive system that used misdirection to break the big gainers that, in the hands of a superior athlete like Mike Vick, produced amazing output. Vick complained after he left that the system did not do much to prepare him for the NFL with all its complexity but I think Bustle was closer to being right at the college level when the time available to teach is so short. With Bustle we had an identity that got lost in all the push to generate a more complex system that could, if executed perfectly, produce significant output. Unfortunately the closest it came to that was Tyrod's senior year when we had a very experienced QB and the team around him was as well.
Fuente, if the news articles are right about his system, will take us back to a simpler base. He will run a wide variety of plays for sure but, according to reports I've read, they will all be run from a very small number of basic sets. That's the beauty of his system. There will be no pre snap telegraphing of the play's direction and the OLine will be taxed, not to remember an encyclopedic variety of blocking assignments made more complex in the face of a stunting DLine, but to keep up the pace of the high tempo game. In my mind that will make it easier to keep their brain from tying up their feet and allow the aggressive junk yard mentality to reassert itself into the Hokie offense.
Time will tell if this is all true, but, for now the anticipation of cheering great offenses again in Lane is getting me pumped!
I love this phrase. It seems almost an oxymoron based on our past, but for the future:
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I agree. I saw a tweet a few days ago from Lefty's new BC twitter where he was with his daughters watching film...of the New England Patriots. I also remember quotes from Shane last year talking about how Lefty would stay in the office all night watching film of the San Francisco 49ers run game, trying to implement some passing game elements from the Patriots, etc. I appreciate the dedication to the art of football, but I couldn't help but think how counterproductive that was for the college game.
This post is so good, it deserves the Patrick gif seal of approval
I am both honored and jealous at the same time. I really need to learn how these embedded gifs work... feeling very behind in my keyboard skills.....
It's my thought on the Offense, that it was Beamer that prevented Stiney and Loeffler from showing their full potential and having a great Offense. The Veto button was a threat and control for maintaining the Beamer Offense from 1995. Both OCs could get away with a few 'trick'/fastpaced plays before a veto was thrown in, and the never consistent play selection. That was why Loeffler was studying like crazy, to me he was trying to maximize the chances he had to make a trick play. Many teams have complicated playbooks, its about maximizing the Coaching time to make it work
Duckgistics
But Not Only was it play selection I believe the Training and Conditioning was held back by Coaching agendas. Our players were not in shape to play a fast pace or even 4 quarter game, or heaven forbid Both. The amount of injuries Tech had over the last few years seems like poor Training and Strength Conditioning. The poor play on the field of tired players is not training to play 4 quarters.
I think your thought on Beamer is completely false. I recommend you read the book "Let me be Frank". It will change your perspective (as it did mine) and you'll see that Frank is not only a very hands-off type of coach who lets his assistants do their job, he actually is a fan of playing offense and scoring. An apparently little known fact about Beamer is that he was a High School Quarterback who played in an up-tempo offense that threw the ball all over the yard (and he loved it!). He actually came to VT with intentions to play the QB position but he was moved to CB for various reasons. Because he played as a CB during his career at VT and hired a hall-of-fame defensive coordinator who stayed on his staff for 20 years everyone thinks of Beamer as a defensive minded coach. It's a lazy and ill-conceived conclusion. The offense over the last few years can be blamed on Beamer only in that he didn't hire a coach capable of fielding a productive offense in this era of college football. It has nothing to do with Beamer holding the offense back with some magical veto button.
I definitely don't think Beamer was ever intentionally holding back the offense. I think he just did not have a good track record of hiring capable OCs later in his tenure, as you mention. But I do believe a trademark of the entire Beamer era was allowing the offense to take its foot off the gas later in games if we had a decent lead. I don't think Frank ever wanted to run the score up on anyone, and I read somewhere recently where Loeffler said Frank told him in the booth during the Military Bowl "remember to run the ball here, Scot" once we had a comfortable lead.
It makes complete sense once you're up big to just try and run the clock out, play it safe, don't turn the ball over, and not run up the score. But a lot of times, we unintentionally let an opponent get back into the game by calling off the dogs too soon and trying to not lose rather than close it out. I definitely attribute this to Beamer. In no way do I think Frank meddled with the playcalling or vetoed anything, but I think he did have power to call off the dogs.
I agree. Beamer may not have been calling the plays, but he had a deep conviction to certain ideas, and I think his hiring decisions (and the resulting offensive coaching strategies) reflected this. It was Beamer's team.
I've also wondered if the reason we did not hire a proven OC away from someone else was because Frank did not like "stealing" coaches from other programs, or Weaver would not approve the budget for it.
I remember thinking about the conditioning a few years back. I thought about it because typically, VT players were the ones taking others out of the game. At some point, it seemed more VT players were getting injured than was normal. Not sure what changed, but it did.
In addition, how many games have we lost in the last 2 minutes. Games that we manhandled the whole time, just poof, imploded in the last quarter and gone in the last game.
The last few years, it seemed we were slow starters and stronger finishers. Not sure why that happened, but didn't work out either.
This. I remember reading an interview from a player on a team from a game that we shall not speak of, of how they were being told by their coaches where to be on plays based on our alignment and how shocked he was that it not only worked, but worked continuously throughout the game and we never adjusted. They knew the plays we were running or at least where the ball was headed based on our alignment.
Sure looked like it.
All around...
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You should be working at work.
Oh no that's cool, I'm sure Joe and Co would be totes chill if major corporations, many of whom have a habit of looking at VT grads when needing new hires, started blocking TKP due to the risque content its members were posting...
Yep, I'm sure they wouldn't mind at all...
Yea and how about "Not Safe for Sitting on the Couch Beside the Wife"
NSFSOTCBTW >>>>>> NSFW
Much better than whatever was happening to the pink thing from sponge bob.
And not sure why that one didn't get a bunch of NSFW comments...
Definitely interested to see the new identity of the team this season.
Also will be interesting how the offense complements the defense.
The best part about our offensive identity going forward is that we actually have one.
Very good article and great post gahokie76. Both of our prior OC's were students of the game. Lefty could drive any team nuts and infuriate fans with his brilliant to terrible playcalling. They both meant well but it just wasn't their cup of tea.
Thanks leeanderthal. I remember several games where color commentators were effusive in their praise of Stiney and Leftey for their play calling prowess and looking at plays that ended like train wrecks where in the post game reviews, it was revealed that but for one missed assignment, the plays would have broken for big gains or TDs. As a mech engineer who has designed many complex systems, I have come to appreciate the difficulty of getting multi-component systems to operate in perfect synchrony. That is essentially what is going on with the offenses for both Stiney and Leftey. It seems the KISS principle is more the case for HCF. His complexity is built into the nuance of applying the same look with multi options that boil down to the QB making the call on which option. I am really looking forward to see this new scheme in application.
Full court press.
Although the results are not in, the expectations are high. Hats off to Whit for getting a HC with this mentality, rather than allowing Bud to find an OC. Love Bud, but he is where he is needed most.
Basically Bustle's offense was a mix of power, option, and play action pass off of both. Minus the power game on a consistent basis, that is what Fuente's O looks like to me. The 99 season we had an O line that was aggressive and played well together with a very athletic QB. We still have elements of that kind of talent on this year's team. QB performance will mean everything, IMO.
ok... I think we agree that Rickey's offenses were the last to truly have an identity at Tech, but; you put me to shame by saying in 4 lines of text what I took 30 to say (not nearly as well). Good job AGR.
I appreciate sharing your perspective '76. Thank you for your compliment. Let's hope Fuente gets fully dipped Hokie brethren and Bud brings the Terrordome type fear! Let's go!
HOKIEEEEES!
I'm just excited at the prospect of our offense no longer looking like a pack of dogs trying to fuck a watermelon.
"Wait... this isn't what we were supposed to do."
- The dog on the left, probably.
what a way to put it too
Could you do gif of such?
Closest I've found in all my years of searching.
Well played sir!
I hope you have been clearing out your search history in that time.
best post I've read in a long time...classic!
In hindsight, it's pretty intimidating to bring an offense that sensationally inept into games we still expect to win.
this comment should have way more legs...
I'm excited about the prospect of having an offense that isn't offensive.
Is a top 40 offense enough to make a difference with a top 30 defense? Even if not in wins and losses hopefully in recruiting! Beat UT!!!
Yes. And, a top 25 offense and top 10 defense is a prototypical championship team.
Click Here
Thanks for the info!
Did anyone else's heart skip a beat when they read "Fuente's up-tempo offensive philosophy and it's implementation" only to find out it wasn't French?
... No offense, Joe.
#sauces
French is too busy consulting the coaches on the skill sets of the current players to dedicate that time to us now...
Nah, he's been fishing.
and here I was thinking we were talking about "no offense Frank."