This is starting to look like the Sabre around here.
Everyone's self-destructing on here and Twitter and it's embarrassing as shit.
VT is 6-2. It's a hell of a lot better than where we were at this point last year.
Please log off your computers and calm the fuck down. It's Saturday, so maybe I'll catch some of yall at the Hokie House or Rivermill.
Go defense!
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Comments
We just lost to a team that won 8 games between 2000-2007.
This isn't a league that gives everyone medals. Go play soccer some where else
The past is the past. This is not the Duke of old.
Thats doesn't matter.
Perception is reality in CFB.
No this is ridiculous...I AM going to vent here. It isnt like I dont still love hokie football...All anyone is saying is that we suck and lost to Duke
chill yes our offensive self evaluation clearly didn't work and frankly as far as coaching goes little beamer has not impressed, however we still do have 6 wins and one of the top teams and the country and still an open window to the conference championship (sad I know) however should we get there who knows what happens, one upset and we're in a BCS bowl
downvote? for what? little beamer is a hell of a recruiter but sense hes taken over our RBs have not impressed me
Everyone's in a bad mood right now. Offset with a +1 for a reasonable opinion.
thank you guitar man, and pardon the horirble english *since* god damn alcohol doesnt mix well with depression and coherent thoughts, but yeah, am I the only one here who thinks that or has recognized that? we used to churn our NFL RBs back when Hite was coaching butttttttttttttt not so much anymore, I would love to have an intelligent conversation about this
I think Shane's been in an odd spot. A lot of talent, but no clear-cut leader at RB so he keeps having to try guys out in live situations. I absolutely think that Hite needed to go. I remember reading about his recruiting exploits and he had become a liability with his attitude. He was stuck in the past. Shane is essential for recruiting, and I think he will eventually get the RBs worked out, especially with some of the guys we have coming on board. If we can establish a clear-cut best/go-to RB, he can tune his coaching and planning better. Right now, I feel like it's still a fair bit of, "oh hell, no one's doing well, so who's standing closest to me?" I don't know that anyone would do better.
fair enough see i dont remember hite being a nutjob because well...that was before I became a hokie lunatic that being said the dude knew his stuff, I just feel like our RBs don't look as decisive as they used to
Hite was quoted as he had given up on recruiting and dreaded being asked to do it. That is a big part of all of the coaches jobs.
oh....yeah he had to go hahaha
Hite wasn't a nutjob, he just wasn't an effective recruiter in later years; got offended when kids visited other schools and would tell them so. He wasn't diplomatic enough to play the recruiting game.
I can't tell this season what the real problem is. RB vision and decision-making is a problem, but is it because run blocking has been ineffective, causing the RBs to hesitate? We saw some flashes of good running today, but then the game plan changed.
yeah, fair enough thank you, I feel a lot more educated now
this is the first time going home from a game where I feel like what the hell did Loeffler see that we didnt?
DUKE SHARES OUR RECORD.
There is no open window to the conference championship. Get your head out of the clouds.
That said I live and die by this team, and i hate it.
False. Duke has 2 conference losses. We have 1. We have the same overall record, but that's not what determines ACC CG participation.
I didnt say they shared our conference record. I said there was no open window to the conference championship.
You dispute that?
I do. We have 1 ACC loss. If we win out, then we represent the Coastal. Even if Miami beats FSU, if they lose to us, they have 1 loss and we win the tiebreaker.
If you think we have an OPEN window to the championship game after the way we played tonight, i got some bad news for you
We still control our destiny. Whether or not we rise to that challenge is another matter. You said there was no road to the championship. There is. I don't know that we'll walk that road, but it's still possible if we turn things around. Am I completely optimistic? No, but there's still a chance that cannot be denied.
where the hell did I say there was no road to the championship?
Come on man
Quoting you above:
If you want to try to start a flame war, I'm not having it. I simply responded to your assertion above.
I said there was no open window, like, "Hey lets just walts our way into the game without even playing anyone else."
Not that we couldn't get there.
I would perhaps call it a tight window. Not an open window
Thanks to whoever took the time to go through and down vote every single one of my calm, non-argumentative replies. I could care less about my turkey leg count, honestly, but I really hate the negativity building on this site and the precedent it sets. Not a good trend to be on. I didn't down vote a single comment that anyone made today...
I got your back on those posts. I agree, this trend of down voting because you are ticked off is ridiculous. Down votes are for offensive comments, not matters of opinion (or even emotion).
That being said VT has an open door to the championship game. It doesn't mean they can waltz in, so let's simmer down there. It simply means they control their own destiny and don't need anyone's help. If VT plays like they did against GT, UNC, and Pitt, they should have no trouble with Miami (in my own opinion). It will be tough, but as of right now, we do control or our destiny.
Uh yeah, but, not to be "that guy" but isn't the phrase "control own destiny" an oxymoron? I mean if it's destiny then it's going to happen regardless. How is control a factor?
lol ok, 'that guy'....They control their 'path' at the moment. If they win every game from here until the end of the season, they go to the ACCCG. It was made tougher yesterday, but the fact remains. I will say, I never expected an AcCCG berth and I didn't expect to be in contention when we played miami. So it is surprising to me, but hey--I'll take it.
edit: i am truly being humorous when i say 'lol ok, that guy'. You made me laugh.
You grammar nazi you.
I have been up voting you on this thread because I could see the down vote hate. It has been crazy around here with people down voting because they disagree with what you say.
I think until a system is put in place that ID's the voters there are always going to be hidden in the cyber shadows trolls (& probably even some haters from opposing fan bases ie la sabre) that will pop on here.
It's unlikely that there are trolls from The Sabre here. I approve every account and check a few things to make sure the account is valid. Also, you need to have 20+ turkey legs to vote on comments.
Is there some way to regulate the downvoting? Like you only get 5 downvotes a month? Or post up who downvoted?
Or remove the downvote and have it as a report this post or something? It seems like someone is just downvoting for the hell of it.
I'd be against posting who downvotes - I'd hate to start vindictive voting. Most people don't (or shouldn't) care when they get downvoted - losing 1/1,000 legs isn't going to do anything. Plus, I think it's a decent measure to prevent dick-headedness. There was that one guy who got to -50 in a day, and was subsequently banned. If you've been posting for a while, just ignore it.
See, I think the opposite is true. Strip the anonymity and people who just want to screw around might think twice. Like I said above, I don't care about losing 5 or 10 (or whatever the total has been in the last couple days) legs about this whole thing. I'm not complaining about that. I dislike the precedent it sets for new users who come online and want to join the discussion. I joined because after lurking for a few weeks I thought that TKP was one of the coolest, most positive, places online to hang out and talk about my favorite subject.
In an extreme case, someone may come along and see threads like these and go, "wow, if I disagree with someone, I'm going to get downvoted and that sucks because I'm new and don't have legs, which I need to be able to post and vote and stuff." No one should be afraid to post an opinion, provided it is done in good taste.
I agree one hundred percent of the way. It's one thing if they are free internet points. It's another if it affects your ability to interact with the community.
Also knowing that Joe goes through these babies by hand makes me appreciate him even more. It also makes me feel special. I got hand picked to be a part of this community.
Another thing that I would like to say is that I was interested in replying to your post because I want to see how squished over a comment can get.
I too have experimented with squishing comments....it just goes and goes and goes
Fascinating. Does it at any point just freak out? I remember posting on tigsource and the comments started turning themselves inside out. It was just utter madness.
On one thread a few months ago, the comments simply went to a single-character column, even on subsequent replies. Nothing freaky or comical, just really annoying to read if it's actually meaningful. We only did it to see what would happen :)
Totally makes sense. I would do the exact same thing given the situation.
that situation, kind of like he right side of my screen, is ever approaching
A situation that could stretch so vertically that it becomes binary lingo.
You sir have the words of a poet.
I s i n c e r e l y h o p e t h a t t h i s i s g o i n g t o w a r d s a c o m p l i m e n t a n d n o t a j a b a t m y m a n h o o d . T h x ?
It was definitely a compliment. Fact about me: I go to a liberal arts school. We do unmanly things like talk about poetry like it's a good thing that people should do.
hey, nothing wrong with poetry...one can really swoon the ladies with a poetic touch
Here's the thread I believe you're talking about.
I think the complaining about downvoting is really overblown. People seem to get so sensitive ("I got downvoted for that?!?!"). Usually, if you get downvoted for something that didn't deserve it, more rational people will upvote you to balance it out. And suppose you lose the anonymity for it - Say I downvote something I think is racist (or whatever). This guy looks, see who downvoted him, and proceeds to downvote me on every post he sees... Or what about just hurt feelings? People take it too personally already - why risk schisms in the community? Why open up that can of worms? I don't think making downvotes public solves enough problems to make it worth the new problems it introduces.
the only adjustment I'd like to see (and I believe it's something Joe has considered changing during the off season) is the ability to switch your votes. I think a lot of people on here use smart phones to view comments and "fat finger" down votes by accident. If we could have a way to reverse our own votes that would be all peachy.
In the grand scheme of things turkey legs really don't mean a whole lot. It's silly that people get all up in arms about them. I don't want to downplay the legs (it sure is nice to have them and I like hitting benchmarks like 1000 and stuff) but nobody is losing any money over them so I don't see why people get worked up about it.
Overall, I think this community is reasonable and sensible enough to the point that we'll be all evened out. I don't think we need to worry about "trolls". The more we react to "trolls" the more they'll keep "trolling" us anyway. If you act like you don't care about your turkey legs you'll get far in life.
I don't stress on losing the legs, my issue is that people are using them wrongly. I figured the fat finger may play a roll, however a lot of people who do that, post afterwards saying so.
I got multiple downvotes for explaining what downvotes were supposed to be used for. What type of sense that that make? Was it inappropriate? Offensive?
who knows...
Ok, here goes....
Everyone complains about downvotes. But everyone complains about "participation trophies". Aren't turkey legs just another form of that? I mean it's nice to know that you threw a good comment out there, but some comments I see that have 3 or 5 upvotes I just don't get. It seems that turkey legs have become an assumed "reward" simply for a post. Let's remember that we are talking/debating/discussing/analyzing FOOTBALL and everything about it. Yes, some teams have helmet stickers, but even they aren't handed out with the frequency that turkey legs are given.
There's not a mechanism in place to track the top upvoted post, so why does it really matter? Some comments get turkey legs. Some get down voted. Some are accidentally downvoted, and receive 3 to offset that. I say the system is fine the way it is...its a nice little side thing that goes on here, and there's no reason to turn it into something bigger than what it simply is. (Unless a turkey leg was given for a post instead of being a "like" system. Then you would be able to tell how is very active on the site by the number of posts here.)
Oooooo...participation trophies, well played. As someone who has not posted long, I was thinking they were given for posts, however, I feel like I bounce up 1 with each post, so I've always figured the higher leg count was indicative of more active members.
It is, more or less. Every time you post or start a forum topic, you get a turkey leg. The extra up-votes and such indicate members whose posts are particularly insightful, funny, thoughtful, etc, so the total count indicates not only total activity, but in most cases, quality.
Yeah but the "I got downvoted for that?" wasn't a complaint, it was a commentary on the direction the thread was heading.
You obviously haven't seen Miami play the past two weeks
Thats funny, because actually I have. I have seen Miami play the last two weeks.
What I have not seen is Miami lose to Duke. Did I miss it? No..
Well then I don't know what to tell you, if you saw Miami beat two teams way worse than Duke by a combined seven points and you think there's 'no open window' to winning the Coastal.
But he brings up a valid point. Did those two teams "way worse than Puke" actually lose to puke themselves?
I think everyone on this site is in denial that Duke is actually decent. Those two teams "way worse than Puke" have combined for the total number of wins that Duke has this season. Another way to look at it: Miami has just one more win than Duke this season.
I'm not in denial. I live near Duke and have gone to several games and each year Cutcliffe has made them a better team. This is not a team that has the talent to beat many of the ACC teams, but they have the discipline to make minimal mistakes (on defense) and that is what keeps them in a lot of games. They aren't a team that is going to blow coverages or give points easy. Summed up, they are very average. But average and disciplined can win games against the talented if they don't fully show up.
Agree 100%. The coaches, French, and Mason said all week that Duke wasn't a team to be taken lightly. They are a competent football team. It still stings to lose to Duke though.
Miami squeaked by Wake yesterday. VT certainly has a chance against them.
Didn't down vote, but there are many soccer fans on her fyi
I was referring to my 6 year old brothers league where everyone always gets medals, and they don't keep score.
Sorry
2007 was six years ago.....
... and six years ago, Boston College and UVA were more than respectable.
Change happens.
UVA being respectable ...
[chuckling]
Hard to argue w these facts. Wish I could give you more turkey legs since you got hammered for having a an opinion.
Agreed. Wish I could meet you there, instead will stay drunk in my DC home.
If this is referring to our game today then I have a big issue with this. This is the kind of attitude that I think keeps us from rising up and being the team we should have become years ago. How can you not be mad that VT lost to duke at home and we picked them off three times, they were 1-11 on third down and didn't complete a pass in the 2nd half?
I read that picture as "if I wasn't chained down I'd take your head off; you just keep thinking I look cute, just wait".
Being mad and being disappointed are two different things. However I think I agree with what you were really trying to get at, which is hopefully this loss will put a fire under the team and really get the passion going. But as for me, I'm still going to enjoy my weekend and I suggest you try to do the same.
It REALLY sucks ass that this team (this program) needs a loss to light a fire under their collective asses in order to get rolling and achieve objectives. When (if ever) are we going to get past that?
They're definitely two different things, but I tend to feel them simultaneously because of football.
Wow. I tell you what. As angry, sad, butthurt, depressed, and rage filled as I have been tonight, this made me smile. Thank you Nathan. Now I have a dog that I have to go hug.
I'm gonna do the worst thing I could possibly do after a loss. Sit in my apartment by myself without drinking. This is gonna be a terrible night.
I'm doing literally the same thing. Just me and my thoughts lol.
Personally, I think it's fine to be upset after a loss. UVa fans sit around coming up with positives from their losses, like being "the best 3rd down defense in the country." They're content with losing, that's why they continue to lose. If you hate to lose, you play harder.
I agree. I hate losing a hell of a lot more than I enjoy winning.
Speaking of, what was Duke's 3rd down conversion rate tonight? :) has a 0.0 inn front of whatever sig digit there was.
Duke beat us, plain and simple. Come back next week and beat Boston College. Beamer needs to light an Oregon type score as many points as possible fire into his team. Until next week. Go Hokies!
I disagree - Duke didn't beat us. We gave that game away. I want our team to be ticked off at that, come out and just maul BC because of it.
Agree. Unacceptable and changes need to be made on offense. If our first stringers can't do it, let's move down the line. Next man up.
Uh, no. Making two missed field goals results in a win by 3. Without 4 interceptions from inaccurate throws/bad decisions by Logan, we most likely get a win that beats the spread. It was ours to lose.
Don't forget, Ron Cherry stole 7 points from us.
As much as I can't stand Ron Cherry, DJ Coles was moving towards the line without stopping. It was an easy call. Some of the non-calls on PI against both DJ and Demtri were questionable though.
Easy call or not, it seemed that he waited until after the play was dead to make the call. Maybe I just missed the flag entirely, but it didn't seem that he threw it when it should have been thrown which is right at the snap. Instead it appeared to be a flag that was thrown after the play and thus most of the fans will see it as a bogus call that cheated us.
We all know what fans see and what the truth is can differ.
The point is it was a good call regardless of when the flag was thrown. If you want to pick at something then I'd say the PI on KJ or the non-calls on DJ and Knowles as well as the block in backs are more pickable.
At the end of the day, Ron didn't throw a pick on the next play, nor missed 2 FGs. The O laid an egg and how we've played all year finally caught up to us. Hopefully they can learn from it.
Still have to argue that it's a shitty way to make the call though. Part of me wonders if it was incomplete pass if the would have even called it. Some refs keep their hands on their flag the whole game just itching to throw it at anything. It seems that we got those guys on Saturday. They missed some calls that went our way as well so it goes both ways, but it seemed the calls hurt us more. I've already mentioned the PI on Ky in another thread. I definitely was screaming about the 2 block in the back calls. That's the second time this season that I can clearly remember a block on the shoulder/ribs of a player on a return and the refs calling a block in the back.
happy thoughts
Why when someone says 'Happy thoughts' do I immediately think of beer?
I think it's the way we lost this one. 24-21 wouldn't have hurt as badly. I mean come on how are we going to let a team win only scoring 13?
#bowleligiblefor21straightyears
Jesus Christ, I'm upset but you know.. nothing that can be done now.
I wonder what this site would've been like after the jmu loss.
Anyway... whos up next week?
Boston college. Get out your mind altering liquid beverage and a picture of the number 2007. Hate week has begun.
It was pretty bad back then too. Actually much worse, let's go with that.
I was expecting more of this open letter. At least more than five lines. So I'll toss out a few honest, hopefully dispassionate thoughts:
1) Kendall Fuller is now the team leader in interceptions (5). I can't recall a game where a single player had three interceptions, and Kendall had more catches from a Duke QB than all but one of Duke's players. Let's not get lost in the loss so much that we forget that we did have players that played well.
2) But let's also not forget the players that didn't prepare for this game. JR Collins and Deon Clarke were both suspended for the game for violation of team rules. Given that story, I won't guess at what it was, but I think it is one of the usual stories. Early in the game, it looked like they could run outside effectively, and at times I thought the outside was wide open. Who knows if JR would have made a difference, but I have to believe he would have, given that we haven't lost contain on backs like that all year. I also heard a rumor that Michael Branthover had to be called out of the stands for kickoffs. What on earth were we doing today?
3) I've been off of the JC Coleman bandwagon since late last year, and jumped off again when Trey Edmunds had that 76 yarder against Alabama. I think on a different team, with a different level of run-blocking effectiveness, JC could be a good RB. But this isn't that team. JC ended up getting split out wide later in the game, which I think is good for him. He doesn't get enough time to display his quickness when we hand it to him in the backfield. I'd like to see more of Chris Mangus, as he displays the quickness and shiftiness I like to see in our RBs. Trey is a tough kid (see: hitting that guy who caught Logan's pass), and can get tough yards, but Mangus looks to my eye as the best RB (maybe even skill-position) talent we have.
4) Play calling on 3rd and 4th and short was surprising to me. Logan sneak is generally effective. Even the announcer ("Anthony Exhume") called it out. This isn't the first time this year we've seen Loeffler not sneak on something-and-1, including goal line situations. I'll point to something I said to a friend when he said he was debating the winner of the UCLA-Oregon game: "Don't overthink it. Don't fool yourself" Also, hurry-up running with Trey seemed to work on that one drive in the first half. I wonder why we didn't get back to it.
5) Logan didn't play well. But he's the only guy that's prepared. Enough.
6) Journell has worn on all our nerves at this point. Just wait, we only have a few game left with him.
7) Early in the season when we couldn't run at all, I thought it was probably because we were spending all our practice time on the passing game, and I figured we'd spend much of the bye week installing more running options. It looks like we did that (guess), because the passing game didn't look good and we tried to use the running game more, but it wasn't effective. I wish we had at least one option in the playbook (by option, I mean run down the line with an RB behind you and decide when you hit the DE whether to pitch it or not. With Logan and Trey Edmunds, I think the 3rd and 4th and shorts would become a lot easier to make a yard or two if we ran a few of these.
8) I started #1 with a positive and I'll end on a positive. Anthony Exhume, uh, I mean, Antone Exum was back. I didn't hear his name called all day, and not just because the announcer didn't do a lick of research. Kendall had a bunch of INTs, but I didn't see them throwing Antone's way all day. I'm hoping this means he was great in coverage. Either way, it feels like he did well in waiting to return. Can't wait to see the secondary the rest of the year.
That's all. On to BC.
I just hope that the bye week caught up with Logan and he will be sharper the rest of the season...I am waiting for a film review to get a clearer picture
All good points. Hosley had three picks against NC State (against Russell Wilson, no less), so that puts Kendall in good company. Heck, he almost had 5. I can't wait to see what he does for us in the coming years.
#5 should be #1 and should read, "Logan played terribly. We go as he goes and we need that to be the last time he ever performs like that."
Kendall should be #2. He's the fucking man.
First- our defense is still THE defense; it will keep us in all the games we play from here out.
Second- many wrote that this team couldn't afford turnovers and win- well, they were right.
I ain't even mad. We are who we are- its just too bad we can't kick a field goal when we need it.
I have never seen so many downvotes before...it truly is amazing how a loss to Duke can shake things up
agreed. It's almost like the forums should be shut down for a good 12 hours so everyone can cool off, vent, and get sober before getting back on. I have been trying to up vote every down vote for matters of opinion. This isn't a like/dislike system, it is a "like or agree" versus "wow that was offensive."
I think a bigger portion of the sting associated with this loss is associated with the name of the university than we'd like to admit. We typically don't associate ugly losses with Duke, but there's always a first time for everything. I'm not going to ignore that we played badly, because we did, but had this loss been to someone who we have a more even series with (Georgia Tech and NC State come to mind), we wouldn't be nearly as sore.
I agree completely. I went through the effort of looking into this Duke team this past week (by which I mean I went through the effort of reading most of what was on this site the week before hand) and do you know what? Duke is a damn fine team. Damn fine. Damn damn fine fine damn. Fine. I'm not ashamed to have lost to them. I understand that at one point Virginia Tech was suffering from an affliction known as the 80s. Well. Duke was suffering from an affliction known as the aughts. Guess what!? They're good at football now. Expect this trend to continue. Expect that team to become a force to be reckoned with. Expect them to become the toughest game in the Coastal. Expect them to win a few Ay See See See Jees. It might not be this year. It might not be next year. But unless things take a drastic turn for the poopieballs, that is a team that will be really good at football.
We just need to be better. We need to be better than we were yesterday. I think that is something that we can reasonably expect to. I've been saying it all over the site, and I'll say it again. This team is tough as a giant bag of bricks made of nails. They won't sit and mope if I know who they are. They'll go out on the practice field. They'll go into the weight room. They'll eat good meals.
Better is something our team can do.
I dig the argument that Duke is a better team now. I get it.
But the fact of the matter is that the defense squashed them like a bug and the Hokies still lost. At Home. Not at noon. Duke being a better team did not cause the Hokies to lose. The Hokies sucking on offense rather spectacularly caused the Hokies to lose. LT making poor decisions caused the Hokies to lose.
If LT throws it in the stands just that one time in the 2nd qtr, and all other elements play out...We're playing for OT, and the Hokies probably take that.
So, yeah...Duke is better this year. But they sucked Saturday...and the Hokies O sucked more.
The way the defense played Sat, and the opportunities the offense got because of it, an ok offensive effort should have gotten 38 pts for the Hokies.
I have been following this thread since, well, since it started. Other than what I feel are all the unnecessary down votes the only other thing I find somewhat disheartening is the way some of us are bashing Duke and their football playing abilities. Those kids (I can say that, I'm old) came out to play same as our team and gave their best effort. They didn't play dirty (from what I remember of watching the game) and they capitalized on the opportunities that they were given. Do I think they are a better team than us? No they are not, but that day they played a good enough game that, combined with our playing, allowed them to win (in Blacksburg, never an easy thing to do). So let's put our big boy pants back on and win out the rest of season.
#teamnopants
If were going to do that make sure we can undownvote my fat fingers have caused issues in the past :( I always apologize and try to get people to upvote to cancel
This was supposed to be a response to guitarman at the top sorry my phones being weird
Being able to change one's vote has been on the wishlist for some time. I know Joe had been considering it, but didn't want to change something like that during the season.
Speaking of votes, why is it that us so called fans who share the same passion and love for a team a town and the best damn fans in the nation, bash the hell out of each other for having a differing opinion? Some people are glass half full and others are half empty. Some people believe every odd gets a trophy and some believe that you get the trophy for actually playing and accomplishing something. Perfect example is the first comment. He is getting down voted just because he sees the loss differently than most on here. Ill never understand it. We are all a Hokie Nation and I thinks it's time we started acting like it. Hokies Respect.
I won't try to completely psychoanalyze the downvoters here, but I suspect it was because of the last sentence. It's one thing to disagree with the OP, it's another to make a condescending remark that seeks to belittle the original opinion. The OP is entitled to have his opinion respected, as well.
Yes - you have the right to an opinion, but you don't have the right to be an asshole about it. Or you do, but you should expect to get disapproval from others when you are.