Last night was frustrating. We looked awesome early but made some terrible mistakes that cost us the game. 5 fumbles and 100 yards of penalties will kill you. There is no way you'll win with those kinds of mistakes.
The good news...I think they are fixable. The players learned a lesson the hard way last night and I think we will see better ball protection and discipline going forward.
It wasn't like Tennessee ran up and down the field on us. They had drives of 4 yards and 5 yards for 14 pts. We deserved to be on the same field and probably would have won without all of the fumbles.
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Ditto
I still feel good about things. We can correct a lot of mistakes and turn this around.
I also agree. You're not going to beat many teams, FBS or FCS, with the number of lost fumbles we gave Tennessee.
5 more wins to keep the bowl streak alive, I think we can do that much at least
Players have to buy in. That is the key. Boston College is going to be a tough out. Very good D. Loeffler, for all the jokes, has a history of really good game plans when coaching against former colleagues.
C'mon, French. Here I was penciling in BC as a W and looking forward to our first ACC victory of the year. I already have to watch the game at a tiny bar in Sandbridge, but now I have to worry about having to walk home?
I pencil every game in as a W until I have to break out the eraser and correct myself.
Me too. Now the two of us can add our eraser crumbs to the ground up football cleats they made the Bristol field from and move on.
We learned in 2014 that Loeffler's willing to forget about an entire season and game plan for just one game. Somehow the BC offense will be a finely tuned machine next week and only next week.
Ugh :(
Fortunately, so does Foster.
This is true but if Corny and Fuente can somehow manufacture 17 points, we win... BC- Lefty or not- is absolutely horrid on offense- Bud will hold them to 14 MAX, IMO. If the VT offensive staff is better than the last one, they should be able to manufacture 17 points somehow
I agree...we managed 24 points against a decent team even while committing 5 turnovers...cut out those turnovers and we should be able to get 17 or more points against BC. I would love to have a shut-out. Something like 36-0 would make me feel good.
38 is more our speed.
that score is reserved for a certain team (if you can call it that) up the road
Thanks for posting this thread. Despite the loss there's a lot of positives
from the game.
I'll be at the BC game next week to witness the start of our coastal campaign. Let's just make sure we hold onto the ball with both hands, hunched over, and our arms covered in stickum.
I think we'll be ok, too.
Also, no one will remember it was us that got beat at Bristol because the team that lost was wearing black, not maroon or orange.
Thanks, Horse. I know from the earlier threads that my opinion is in the minority, but here at the Fish household, we thought the uniforms last night were awful. Glad for those who love that sort of thing, but on the field, the unis were less than even I had hoped. Tennessee looked like Tennessee, we looked like...Huh? Who? Wat da fuck?
Had we won, would I have softened my feelings? Maybe so, I'm a fan after all, but as it turned out? Nope.
I didn't totally dislike the uniforms, but I think between the gradient of black and gray we should have tinted the whole thing a little maroon. I know the significance of the black and gray original colors, but I don't immediately recognize them as us.
I think maroon helmets would have looked good.
Agreed. If they'd bring back a modified version of that jersey with maroon base with Hokie Stone numbers and accents. You'd also need to make the shirt the same pattern as the pants, but i think that jersey would've been awesome.
I was encouraged by the way we played as well. I thought we actually out played Tennessee as a whole, it was just the mistakes. My only fear is this will be the best we play all year. We have seen that over the last few years. Who thought we would lose to the teams we did after beating Ohio St? We still gave up 45 points, missed a wide open deep ball, missed a field goal, fumbled five times, and had 100 yards in penalties. The QB running killed us again, that wont be the last we see of that and there will be some more big backs we see in conference play. Conner and Hood could make for some long angry days for Hokie fans. If our defense cant stop people, we have 2003, if they can we can have 2004.
Evans actually reminds me of Randall a bit.
I was thinking the same thing! Very similar.
I was thinking the same during the game! At the time it was the feeling of, "you know, he can run well enough to keep a drive alive, but we've had faster/nimbler QB's." Not a knock so much as respect.
I think we'll be more than okay. Honestly, I think we are the better team, we just weren't the better team that night.
I feel very confident in our ability to win the Coastal after the first two games of the season. The fumbles will be fixed, and Jerod has shown a good ability so far to protect the ball through the air. The penalties won't be an issue moving forward; we'll have our share, but I think it was more a result of the game atmosphere, venue, and the way things were going for us that led to a lot of those. No excuse for it, but I think that was the reason. So my only concern is the OL. Run blocking is okay, and at times it is good, but Pass Pro continues to be a weakness. And now Fuente and Co. are doing a lot of shifting on the OL.
As far as our first ACC contest against BC this weekend. I don't like going against Lefty. Go watch VT's first TD against Ohio St. in the 2015 game. Leftly went to this play several times, and I have a feeling he will try to pull it out at just the right time this weekend. Hopefully we cover the play well.
I think that we outplayed Tennessee everywhere but on the scoreboard. I haven't watched the game on tv yet, and not sure I will in its entirety, but were all of those penalties legit? Colossus, the big a$$ jumbotron, did not do a good job of showing key parts of plays. Did we really rough the passer that much, or were they being picky? Did Teller earn his penalties? It all just seemed a bit much.
Anyway, I saw a lot of good. When our offense finds a rhythm, it's damn good, and overall our defense was solid. Anyone will give up points when the other team gets the ball 4 times inside your 30. Especially when the other team is good. If we learn from this and build, or O can become scary, and our Defense is already headed there. We have the potential to make some noise in the ACC this year. And if both sides of the ball are in track by mid November, we could give ND a game.
Some of the penalties were questionable, a few of them were bone headed like Moto and Baron's roughing penalties. Both of those guys hit the QB in the head with both hands. It looked very intentional, and very moronic.
Ok, I've sucked it up and have watched most of the game so far. One play that stood out to me at the game and more so on tv was one that didn't happen. It was about 2 or 3 plays before our 11 yard punt. Shi motioned out of the backfield to the right and headed down the sideline at the snap. Bucky was running a short out to the right sideline and caught the pass for about 5 yards.
But what caught my eye was that just beyond Bucky, in the same trajectory was a wide open Shi. No one had picked him up, and on tv you can clearly see that the safety had already started coming up to help in coverage on Bucky. If that pass had been a little higher (or if Evans had seen him and led him) that would have been an easy touchdown. If I saw that I know that the coaches did, why didn't they ever run that play again and get the ball to the running back?
The view for the coaches from the coaches box was something new for them. They may not have picked up on everything like usual.
I am not sure they ever had to use binoculars or a telescope to see the field before.
I remember that play, and watching it live it seemed to me that Evans was trying to go to Shai and Bucky just picked it out of the air.