I will have to say that it's the first time since I started following the team, that we have no scapegoat for team failures. For years it was Stinespring/O'Caine. It's nice having a balance of great defense and offense. I'm sure we will eventually develop one, but for now I will sit back and enjoy a scapegoat free team!
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Oh don't worry, my favorite elements of the fanbase will find one in the 3rd quarter of the season's first loss and demand they be fired/benched.
This is the real reason the coaches wants a 10th on field coach.
Gotta have a fall guy
In other words, failure is not an option.
Is it possible that the scapegoat for 2017 will be Jerod Evans for leaving? (if no current QB blows up)
That's exactly what will happen, unfortunately.
nice problem to have isn't it? Even Ron Cherry won't be on the field for Tech games any more.
Depending on the line's performance, the ruling is still pending on Vance Vice for me.
My thoughts as well until I heard him speak at Hokie Club get together in Lynchburg. He seems to be a together guy. He may not have all the tools at his disposal??
He is definitely not recruiting those tools...
Thought did cross my mind, however, I want to see what he can do with his own recruits. More importantly how our recruits do with 1 coach for more than 2 seasons.
I still blame Shane.
Heck, he wasn't even on the staff and he caused us problems last year
But...but...ball-on-a-stick!!!
Glove on a stick??
Jalapeno on a stick??
Beamer on a stick?
Note: we still have sticks and gloves, just no Shane.
Boxing glove on the floor.
You're doing it wrong!
Sure did cause a few problems. A walking $25K problem for which Whit didn't have to write a check.
If the traditional running game struggles again, I fully expect to hear plenty of complaints about Zohn and/or Vice.
Yes cause our offense is set up for "traditional" running game. I think those days are behind us but we shall see
Traditional probably wasn't the right word. But if we struggle to be able to run the ball between the tackles again, we will probably hear complaints about certain coaches.
Sorry about the snippiness, been in the sun all day. I think we will be better than last year. But I have to give VV one more year before I can blame him
I have no idea how to evaluate offensive line performance other than basic "hey no sacks!" or "the line seems to have good push". That said I can already see a Vice scape goat forming in the fan base. Our oline has shifted between mediocre and bad most years. Regardless, I think if we continue to see the status quo or worse at oline I could see the fanbase putting the blame on Vice whether it's deserved or not.
Just blame the last guy. It seems to work for some people.
If the defense is underwhelming, I blame Mama Fuller. Only 4 boys, what was she thinking?!? You have to have 11 players on the field at the same time!
Whispers * she actually only had 3.
Vincent, Kyle, Corey, Kendall?
Vinny was half brothers with the other three.
I really thought this was common Hokie knowledge?
I had no idea
I just found out a few months ago, in some spotlight piece on the brothers after they all went pro.
But then I realized that it explained why there was such a gap between Vinnie and the rest.
Yeah that makes perfect sense.
I'll always remember where I was when I found out Mama Fuller only had 3 of the 4 boys... On the bright side we have narrowed down who has the golden football genes.
Va....va...va..Vinnie and the Rest
Bit of a surprise when she found out.
/s
Nope. Mama Fuller wasn't Vinny's biological mother.
Grossly misunderstood your first response, my apologies.
If she gave birth to a fuller she is Mama Fuller.
Mama Fuller isn't a name it is a designation, a title, like James Bond. The only difference is instead of killing commies, Mama Fuller creates Wahoo killers.
In all fairness..many mothers have created wahoo killers
Agreed. Like the mother of every single Richmond player.
My soon-to-be 2-year-old has more grit than the Wahoo o-line. He hits harder too. His blocking is a little too CPJ for my liking but he's barely 3 feet tall so I let it slide...For now.
After seeing this, I spent entirely too long trying to google for anything saying whether Vincent had a different mother, but wasn't able.
Not that I don't believe you, as I just want to learn more about semi-obscure Hokie facts, but do you have a marinade?
https://www.si.com/nfl/2016/04/13/nfl-draft-kendall-fuller-family-kyle-corey-vincent
From this article.
https://news.law.fordham.edu/blog/2015/12/10/suiting-up/
Yall can downvote me, but I'm about to speak that dam truth!
Mama Fuller needs to have a new child every year until she is biologically incapable of doing so.
Time for the Fuller brothers to settle down and get married. They need to start cranking out the next generation of Fullers.
There are plenty of overused TKP'isms, but I don't think a well placed "yall can downvote me..." will ever get old.
You're 100% right
What about Leal?
Leal is the savior, not the scapegoat.
Something something lawson transferring.
I still can't believe how we mismanaged our runningbacks post-Wilson. Trey Edmunds was fast and powerful, a future NFL rb and in my opinion the true successor to DW. In 2014 and 2015 he struggled to find reps against JC Coleman, Marshawn Williams, Shai Mackenzie, and Trevon McMillian and eventually left the program. The following year he averages 6 yards a carry at Maryland.
Our backfield was too crowded, reps were split too many ways, and nobody was given the chance to develop. I really hope this season we name McMillian our guy and let him grind it out and carry us down the field.
Hi welcome to TKP. If you are expecting a grind it out running game I would like you to read through Mason's and French's reviews of Fuente and his style.
I'm not expecting it, but I will miss it, and our RB production and recruiting will suffer.
I certainly didn't mean to disparage his talents, just pointing out that the mixed distribution of carries and inability to find a workhorse back had a lot to do with injuries.
I loved Trey and wish he'd stayed with the program, but I don't think he was head and shoulders above Juice and Shai when either was healthy. I agree that the situation was mishandled, but there was always going to be a talented back shafted with all that talent in the room.
Trey was always hurt. If he didn't get hurt we probably don't have the rotation.
You're leaving out the most crucial element to all of this: injuries. Trey broke his leg and was never the same guy again. And his 6.1 ypc last year leaves out the fact that he was the 8th leading rusher on the team.
Then Shai and Marshawn tore up their knees to the point of retirement or leaving the program. JC was the consummate hokie but even he found himself last on the depth chart and only started gaining carries when we sustained 4 RB injuries in 2014. Last year we maybe didn't utilize Travon enough, but given the overall success on offense I'm going to give the staff the benefit of the doubt and assume they made the right move. It's been a string of bad luck paired with bad offensive coordinators, but I don't know what else we could have done.
Yeah that 6 yards per carry number at Maryland is deceiving. He did that over 158 total yards, 126 of which came against Howard and Florida International. Against Purdue, he rushed for 2 yards on 2 attempts. The injuries definitely didn't do him any favors, but even when you look at his per game stats in 2013, he had a few huge games, but the rest are pretty average/inconsistent.
I really don't say any of that to take away from him, he was recruited as a LB and unless I'm remembering this incorrectly, that's where we planned to use him. A lack of RB talent his freshman year pushed him into that position and it speaks highly of him that he embraced it. When I think of Trey and what could have been it's on the defensive side of the ball, not that he should have gotten more carries.
Idk much about Maryland running backs, but clearly an NFL front office thought highly enough of him to take him
I would take juice and Shai (when healthy) over Edmunds. McMillian and Edmunds are similar in that they show star potential but not a natural running back. JC just needed to be about a half foot taller and he could have been a superstar. I don't think the running back position has been as much mismanaged as dealt a series of unfortunate injuries and setbacks.
If Hokie Bird would stop half assing it on all of the push ups, we totally would have picked up that 3rd and long instead of giving up a sack. Poor work ethic trickles down from the top.
No scapegoat necessary as long as you're winning.
just wait for a game thread this fall, you'll see who find them quickly
Fire Loeffler...Fire Stiney...Fire Shane Beamer
Boy do I have news for you.
Can we still blame anything on the fact that we haven't brought back Stick It In?
Winner!
All the times that we didn't stick it in.
Fans will blame Curt Newsome for everything that goes wrong until the heat death of the universe.
You have to admit, we've got a point.
Sounds reasonable to me.
If Whit doesn't play the video of the horse on a treadmill on the big screen anymore, you can expect the blame game to start
Paper airplanes.
They're super dangerous, donchaknow
So I'm guessing you would prefer paper rockets?
Make rockets out of paper?? I'd like to keep my job, thanks.
Now that the coaches have finally been taken out of the equation I will finally be able to o figure out which brand of shoes, what borboun, which tailgate foods, jersey's and hats have really been the problem.
UA, Evan Williams, pigs in a blanket, orange, fedora
Please clarify. These are the desired selections or the problems to avoid?
fedoras are always the worst option. especially if it's larry
In which case, it's a visor.
Agree. That's why I'm confused. What's wrong with Evan Williams and pigs in blankets? Those are categorically different than Fedoras of either type.
Bullshit, somehow it is still all ocainstinespringlilbeamer's fault!
As for me, I'm just going to keep blaming Seth Greenberg.
imagine the difference in the trajectory of the football program if Seth had just offered Steph Curry a scholly...
Something something Cole Beck
All of you are off the mark! It's Enter Sandman! The song burns everyone out before the game even starts. I believe we should change it to This.
Nah, we wouldn't want to copy the Hoos hype song.
I think I'm gonna blame the MVs
That's what I do.
Someone will definitely pull a
Milli VanilliUNC and blame it on the rain.I'm gonna blame it on the al-al-al-al-alcohol
OL recruiting is an absolute dumpster fire and that's a fact. At some point, that comes down on the position coach. I'm fine being critical.
As far as I can tell, the OL recruiting isn't much worse than it has been in the last 5+ years strictly going by recruiting rankings. I recognize OL recruiting has been a complaint for quite a while so maybe that slight change is enough to go from a weak point to a dumpster fire for some. All I know is that we are on our 4th OL coach in 6 seasons and outside of Austin Clark (and Teller as a DE) we haven't secured any highly rated guys. Does that mean none of the OL coaches were good recruiters or is it a more of a result of other factors (staff continuity, recruiting areas/relationships, proximity of top OL recruits to Blacksburg, etc.)? It's impossible to say for certain but things I've read seem to regard Searles and Grimes as at least above average recruiters, so I tend to think we should at least give continuity a chance before smashing the panic button.
My sauce tells me Grimes was not a fun coach to play for and was not well liked by the team. I imagine that wouldn't help with recruiting.
Continuity would definitely be nice!
Alright I'm coming in late and there are a whole lot of things on this thread:
1) Trey Edmunds was a linebacker from day 1.
2) Not having a scapegoat scares me.
3) We're young again this year.
Scapegoat: butt dial
Ricky Bustle? JB Grimes? Torrian Gray? Saying hi to mamas? Where are the past scapegoats?
Didnt Torrian also blow up the bathroom and then leave suddenly during an in home visit? Or am I imagining hearing about that?
Edit: Actually I'm thinking that was Narduzzi.
I thought that story was about Joe Paterno...
Kurt Benkert?
Nah if we lose it won't be because of him