This was an emotional loss, but it's not losses that have been concerning to me. The canaries in the mine for me were questionable wins: Delaware (27-0) and ODU (38-0).
Against Delaware we had 15 first downs. 303 total yards and a punt return for a touch touchdown. That means the offense contributed to only 20 points. Against an FCS team! Yes, I know we shut them out but the offense didn't do that. The typical hammer used to beat people who question play calling is that we lack talent. Okay. We lack FCS talent? We put up 27 points against DE. JMU put up 20 against DE two weeks after playing us (Spare me the talk about how good JMU is. We are in different subdivisions for a reason). Even 3-5 FCS Towson beat Delaware.
Against ODU we had 32 first downs and 582 total yards. Impressive right? I suppose. Pretty much inline with FAU's performance of 29 first downs and 550 total yards. Except FAU turned their output into 58 points under first year head coach Lane Kiffin. I don't believe Florida Atlantic has better talent than Virginia Tech. Do you? UNC's performance was similar but again with more points: 24 first downs, 511 total yards 53 points. Even North Texas with a 6-3 second year head coach put up more points on ODU. Does that make sense? No.
Part of what makes Fuente and his staff attractive was their success at Memphis with what could be considered lesser talent. Memphis was a G5 school scheming against G5 talent. One of the most telling images about how well G5 schemes work against teams like Clemson is the first play from scrimmage. matter:
Clemson totally bought the misdirection but they were big enough and fast enough that it didn't matter.
I, and many fans, will be watching to see if our game plans, play calling and talent come together to produce a dominant product. In year 3 I think slow starts against inferior teams should be a cause for concern. Until them lets' he glad we aren't losing to ECU and fighting tooth and nail with UCN and Duke.
Comments
I agree with this post. Everyone keeps bringing up the fact that we will still likely win 10 games and go to a bowl. While I agree that we will win 10 games, we need to realize how bad the teams we've beaten are. Our best win is WVU and that was one of those games where I'm not sure the better team won. UNC is awful, Duke is young and injury riddled, ECU is a dumpster fire, and then we have Delaware and ODU.
We close the season with 3 .500 or below teams (uva will be .500 by the end of the year), all of which I think we'll win. I'll take a 10 win season any year but let's not let our record cloud our judgement as to how good this team is. If this team played in 2015, would our record be much improved? I don't think so. We are benefitting from playing in one of the weakest divisions in The P5.
I get it, but at this point in the program's arc, I'm happy to beat the teams we should beat. Last year we didn't even do that (Syracuse, GT). If we can close out against Gay (autocorrect, but I'm leaving it), Pitt, and LOLUVA, then I will be happy.
If we were coming off a better string of seasons I'd say winning the way we have isn't good enough, but we're still on the upswing. Last year we fell backwards into the ACC game with two conference losses and we made it competitive which was great, but the season didn't really reflect a coastal champion team. We didn't earn it this year, but we could still take a step forward from last year. Next year, let's just win them all.
Very true. Definitely feels good to win the games we should win and that is a step forward.
On the the surface, I can't disagree with any of this, but these comments lack context. This is a rebuild. Our OL goes 1 deep (and it's arguably the best OL since 2011, if not better). We have one non-freshman receiver, a Red Shirt Freshman QB; we're a young team, and most of the experience we do have wasn't recruited by Fuente.
The expectations were reasonable to start the season, but as we won games that we were supposed to, our expectations grew. We knew freshman were going to do freshman things. It finally bit us.e
Good point. Look at FSU, all the talent in the world, Jimbo's been there forever and they probably won't make a bowl game.
We have the #70 rated offense based on S&P, and that will certainly go down after this weeks performance. S&P is probably a much better indicator than standard, NCAA-gathered statistics.
We're sitting just above Maryland, UAB, and Michigan. Our offense isn't anywhere close to as good as many of us think it is. Offensive talent across the board is a fairly significant issue.
Is anyone surprised that our offense is in the top 70? After watching the first half of the season, did anyone expect us to be top 50?
We're still on target to hit almost all of our preseason predictions.
We are meeting expectations, and while we can't win the coastal, we can still win 10-11 games, which IMO would surpass expectations. This team will be a better team at the end of the year than it was at the beginning of the year. That's a successful rebuilding year.
Insert meme here - What he said ^
Right now we have a staff in that have nothing but true freshmen in their only recruiting class, we have a rF as a pretty good QB, a better online than we are used to, a punt team at the top of the charts that has a freshman punter.
Problems seem to be with execution when we have rF players as the focal point of the play.
We are track to win 10 games with our losses being to top 10 teams.
Frankly, I'm not seeing the undo problem.
We need some more guys to step up to give us depth at important positions such as LT and WR and RB. No surprise, these are the things we knew.
The coaches on the 2 teams that beat us know what they are doing and schemed properly for our weak spots. No surprise there. We know where our weak points are and so do our coaches.
Yes, it was disappointing because we were in the conversation for CFP.
Next week we go 1-0 against GT.
For what it's worth, we are kind of in the early Clemson mold after getting Chad Morris. They suddenly looked like a brand new team but 2011, their first ACC championship in my lifetime, they had humiliating losses to GT, got blown out by NC State and finished the season getting beat 70-33 by West Virginia in the OB. They had weird season of super highs and super lows. Their NC State loss that year (like 36-6 or something) and the OB they looked totally out of sorts and made huge blunders.
From 2012-2014 Clemson became a team who beat the bad teams by a lot, but lost their most important games every year, often looking outclassed at the end. FSU and USCjr in 2012 and 2013 left Clemson fans with a bad taste in their mouth. All the talk was about how they would look so good against teams that weren't good at then lose every important game of the season. If we go 10-2 with losses to Clemson and Miami we are following this mold exactly.
The difference? Clemson capitalized on their winning, despite some big losses (2011 games and 2013 loss to FSU who made them look like children at home on gameday) their recruiting took a huge uptick and we've seen the payoff over the last three seasons. Unfortunately, that's the part I'm not sure we are going to be able to replicate to that level. However, after a few more years in the system, our offense could find Memphis level comfort and play within the system (their WR are great at blocking and create huge plays from this execution) and with a confident understanding and entrenchment in the system mixed with an influx of at least slightly better talent, we could find ourselves taking the next step.
It is always hardest to see any positives after a bad loss, it was a miserable game, I felt like crawling in a hole of heartbreak for the rest of the night. We lost in a brutal, mistake-filled fashion where we failed to make plays and cost ourselves points multiple times. The OL looked so outclassed by Miami it felt like we somehow took three steps back as a program. That said, remember that most teams go through these bad games. Hell, Ohio State won a NCG a few years ago and after yesterday has maybe the two most embarrassing losses of the last two seasons after getting shut out by Clemson last year in CFP and getting thumped like a drum by Iowa last night.
College football is full of inconsistency and head scratching games, that is one of the biggest appeals. The only team this doesn't really apply to is Alabama. Even Clemson has a bad loss each of the last two seasons and won a National Championship in a year where they had 7-8 one score wins and needed NC State to miss a chip shot FG from dead center to get there. Sometimes the chips fall your way, and other times they smack you right in the nose.
All of this to say, we have some serious issues to work out, particularly with our OL and young offense, but try to keep some perspective today. We could still have a 10 or 11 win season after replacing almost our entire offense. And Miami? Let's geT our revenge in Lane next year and look forward to righting the ship against GT this week.
But Alabama ain't played nobody PAAAWWLLLLL
I'm not trying to make any excuses; but we really did lose our 3 biggest weapons- we were not supposed to be a GOOD offense this year. We were bound to have a game where we came out on the losing end and looked like a team with a lot of freshman contributors and we did. I'm disappointed just like the rest of y'all are bc I too thought the u was overrated af and that we were gonna be the crap outta them. But we were loooonnngggg overdue for a game like this. But I know we'll go 1-0 for 3 straight weeks and take out the anger on our 3 favorite head coaches in the coming weeks. And, btw, why can't we shake the 3-1 stretches?
If we don't score against GT we will lose that game! They control the ball and you can't play from behind against them. If we get ahead then we make them come out of what they like to do. GT scare the heck out of me with our O. Bowl games should not be our goal.
I was more worried about GT than Miami heading into last night. GT's defense has a lot of issues, but the question will be whether or not our offense will take advantage. Many times, in both wins and losses, our offense has failed to take advantage of a bad GT defense.
^^This^^
I don't expect us to beat GT for this very reason. And for the record, I thought we'd beat Miami and then lose to GT. They will control the clock and score eventually, especially if the horrific tackling effort that we saw this week surfaces again. And while GT is burning up clock and stealing possessions from us, we will punt.
Here's the reality: JJ isn't going to lose us any games, but he certainly isn't going to win us any games this year either. That's not a knock on JJ... He just simply isn't there yet (and he may never be there physically). Add to that the fact that he has freshmen and first year starters/players all around him, and its the perfect storm.
He won the WVU game.
Thought the TEAM won that game.🤔
If we don't score first against GT, we will probably lose. Because we start so conservative and our constant slow starts, if we go down by a touchdown or more, GT will run down the clock and limit the number of possessions for our offense. Hopefully Fuente will implement a faster/uptempo offense from the get go
Yeah kinda hard to win a football game when you score 0 points.
We lost Ford, Hodges, and Evans.
Say it with me
We lost Ford, Hodges, and Evans.
All teams really have to account for now is Cam Phillips. Savoy isn't quite there yet, there's a reason Clark never panned our at Ohio State, Murphy is still learning the game of football, and Grimsley is only playing out of necessity right now. Under any normal circumstances where you don't lose basically your entire offense in one offseason, Grimsley redshirts and probably doesn't see the field till his sophomore year at least.
You couple those things with a freshman quarterback, and you're going to get games like last night. I will still take this offense over many offenses 2004-2015 (although I'd love to have some of those running backs that we had), though. Keep things in perspective. We will get better.
Unless some unforeseen shit happens [chopping wood], Savoy will be our #1 WR next season.
Either him or Hazelton. Everyone seems to be pretty high on Hazelton.
Farley.
When I think about our season, I keep coming back to our only two losses are to top 10 teams. I know we like to put Miami down (and for good reason, mind you) but it's possible that they are actually good this season.
I don't think there's much shame in losing to two top 10 teams, especially when you can see the fight in our team. We aren't where we all want to be, but this team plays hard. They can get better, of course, but I'm not sure it's time to start questioning the program.
Hell's yes. You learn a ton about any team or person from losing. We still faught hard to the end. As long as we learn and grow from this, we will be winners in the future.
We replaced our entire offense. There were bound to be growing pains.
Let's not forget how high Miami has recruited as well. They generally pull in top 15 recruiting classes. Their previous coaches have not been able to to get that talent to gel and be a team. They were more focused on highlight reals and making it to Sunday than a true team effort. Some of that still exists, see gawdy TO chain.
However Richt is the one coach I believe can put Miami truly back. He inherited a lot of great talent and knows how to get them to gel. Plus he's likeable which sucks even more.
Miami played their best game to date. Let's not act like they were unramked and lost all the games we said they should have. The ACC will be better with them being good as much as we don't like it. We need to man up and beat them in years going forward. It's looking like it's coming to be as it should that the coastal should always rest on that game last night. Between two ranked VT and Miami teams. Last night they got the better of us and we honestly probably played our worst game to date. Nothing we can do about it now. Need to refocus and beat GT who I hate even more than Miami.
Fuente is in year two with a ton of freshman playing and people are questioning his calls and game planning. When I can predict three runs up the guy with stinespring it was bad. I have no idea what play Fu is going to call except maybe pass or run based on down or distance. People need to relax with trashing the program and staff after a loss to a top 10 ranked team.
You've had the night to stew about it. It's a new day. Let's focus on what's ahead because our ranting correlates to onfield success /s.
All that being said. In Bud we trust. In Fuente we trust. Go Hokies!!
Yeah, but they barely beat UNC! We all saw it!
Yes, miami was beatable. They turned over the ball three times. Bethune Cookman scored 13 against Miami. The only team to score fewer points than we did was Duke. The only defenses to give up more points than we did were Bethune Cookman (41), Toledo (52) and Duke (31).
Finding a good and consistent Offensive plan is our kryptonite. The defense gets turnovers, but few points are scored off of those turnovers. Sometimes I feel the team doesn't go downhill as much as sideline to sideline. I think they run better in a more up tempo style. Sooner or later the defense is gonna get gassed if the offense is going 3 and out or can't put points on the board.
If the team fails to meet some fans' expectations, is the problem that the team is underachieving or is it that the fans' expectations are unrealistic?
Yes.