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7 years 8 months
# | Young Virginia Tech Defenders Demonstrate Improvement, Veteran Breakdowns Negate Effort 
Illinois Hokie's Recent Comments
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7 years 8 months
# | Young Virginia Tech Defenders Demonstrate Improvement, Veteran Breakdowns Negate Effort
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7 years 8 months
# | Young Virginia Tech Defenders Demonstrate Improvement, Veteran Breakdowns Negate Effort In clip c, is Dax being overagressive when he shoots the gap to try to bring down Dillon in the backfield? It seems like he's in great position to scrape across and meet Dillon on the edge like he does in clip d. Is there any chance Dax is actually the free hitter on that play and Floyd is just in support?
We're in an arms race, I'm not denying that. We need to get our shit together before Miami does. The point I was trying to make is that we have a coach who has proven he can beat teams with better players (not reliably, just that it can be done), and, more importantly, unlike his predecessor, Fuente will parlay those on-field successes into improved recruiting.
The reason why we're in the position we're in with recruiting, where our ceiling seems to be classes ranked in the low 20s, is because Beamer didn't grow our recruiting approach the way he grew the rest of the program. After the success of 95-99, instead of branching out and pushing to increase our recruiting budget, Beamer doubled down on trying to lock down the 757. That was a losing strategy, and we're paying for it now.
My point is, Fuente will not repeat that mistake. He understands the necessity of expanding our recruiting footprint. That's what #NC2VT is all about, and that's just the first small step of a much larger strategy.
If you (as the D) can stop the run with 4 lineman and then flood your backfield with 8, then you're winning the battles that will help you win you the war.
Or you're cheating.
I'm pretty sure you're cheating.
You're lamenting 5 drives, 3 of which stalled because of dropped passes and an offensive PI. You're arguing in circles here.
Then your boss sucks.
Living the dream, this guy.
A guy being wrong about Ocarina of Time and a British guy trying to correct him.
This is a great time to be a fan. It's never been easier to get to see every game we play. It's never been easier to feel more connected to the program no matter how far away from it you actually live. Every fall Saturday, my son asks when the Hokies are playing today. And while he doesn't quite have the attention span to sit through a whole game, he'll frequently check in on the score to see if we're winning or losing. My daughter will curl up on the couch beside me. She's mostly looking at her phone, but she's there. And she'll randomly ask about a play we run, and I'll get to explain things like RPOs or the difference between man and zone coverage. For twelve eleven days (fuck ECU), I get to be back in Blacksburg in my soul.
This is actually something I really hope French covers in one of his film reviews. Something broke down in that stretch, but I'm not football smart enough to know what it was.
Yeah, they do. I was just joking around that I said the last two games "of the season" and he said we have four games left.
4 & 5 are postseason, brah.
I find it interesting that you're trying to point to the GT game while making an argument that it isn't an issue of the players not executing, when two dropped passes and an offensive PI resulted in 3 of our 5 non-scoring drives. That isn't play calling or adjustment issues. It's execution errors, plain and simple.
But hey, whatever you need to tell yourself.
Well let's run with that analogy at the end there a little bit. Imagine you screw up a project at work, but then when your boss called you into her office, you explain that most of your team is new to the company, and that for most of them, this was their first big project they'd ever worked on. You realize mistakes were made along the way, and you did your best to limit their effect, but ultimately you just didn't have the team to complete the project the way it needed to be. You explain your vision for what the end result should have looked like, and point out that two years ago, when you worked on a similar project, the end result was strong, because you had a team under you that understood what was needed and could produce results. You also mention that you understand that it's ultimately your fault that the project wasn't up to snuff, and also that you think the team under you showes a lot of promise, but it's going to take some time for them to acclimate to the company culture and understand your business model.
Are your saying that's a fallacious argument?
If your definition of a bad season is a winning record and a bowl, you're proving my point.
Holy shit, a film review twofer?
About as often as they go the other way. If you don't think random chance plays a significant factor in the outcome of football games, then you don't understand football.
I'd like to see us not play him against Pitt, just to be safe. That way if the unthinkable happens and Willis and Hooker both get injured, our hand isn't forced by having to play him in the last two games of the season.
I agree with you, but I'm also gonna restate this in a bit more positive light. With the level we're currently recruiting at, in a year or two we can routinely win the Coastal. I also think we will be able to knock off Clemson/FSU/whoever rules the Atlantic, if we get a few lucky bounces. We nearly did in 2016, and Fuente proved against Mississippi he can take down a better team if he has the right recruits for his system.
If we can do that, we can parlay on field success into recruiting success. Unlike Frank, who thought he could live and die in the 757, Fuente will go wherever he has to to find the right recruits for his system.
Regarding Rivers to DE, he has the size, but I'm not sure he has the bend. Also, DE isn't quite as thin as DT, we're just very green at the position right now.
We did make adjustments. After BC went with two deep safeties, we tried to exploit the suddenly emptier box with the run game. It should have worked, we had the numbers advantage. But Willis made some bad reads in the zone read, and some of our linemen just got beat. Right adjustment, poor execution. (Hmm, didn't somebody say something about that recently?)
Also, go back and watch how quickly Willis leaves the pocket before he was damn near broken in half vs after. He missed some open receivers even after BC dropped their second safety, because he was leaving the pocket much sooner after taking that hit.
Thanks for the response, Joe. Something to keep in mind for future development of the site. I don't think the extraneous vent threads should be deleted, because they often make valid points. They just don't merit their own separate thread a lot of the time.
Also, to clarify, I mean one vent megathread per loss, not one big vent thread for each season.
I mentioned this in another thread, but this fanbase truly does not know how to handle a genuinely bad season. The consistency we had under Beamer was insane, and we got too accustomed to it. If we actually miss a bowl game this season, I think people are going to lose their shit. And if that happens, we could be on the cusp of a Tennessee-level mistake. Not that I think Whit would put Fuente on the hot seat after one season, but if you get enough fans acting like imbeciles, Fuente might tell his agent not to stop taking calls from other interested programs.
I get what you're saying, but Slept On It is an editorial feature. Some conjecture is to be expected, and points of contention are always discussed in the comments. The second comment on this article is a strongly worded rebuttal by Fernley.
I have said this before, and I will say this again: the pent up angst and frustration from the twilight of Beamer's career is carrying over to the Fuente era, and that is both unfair and dangerous. People wanted the decline under Beamer to be a blip on the radar, immediately fixed by transition to Fuente. That is a myopic and naive aspiration. Significant problems crept into the program between 2011-2015, well beyond struggling on the field. Cleaning up some of those issues, coupled with some unexpected attrition for more commendable reasons, stacked the deck for a down year. But let me say this as clearly as I can: THE STRUGGLES OF THIS SEASON ARE UNIQUE, AND SHOULD NOT EVOKE THE FRUSTRATION OF BEAMER'S TWILIGHT.
In three seasons, we've gone 10-4, 9-4, and currently 4-4. The success with which we have restocked the QB, WR and OL positions are indicative that we are recruiting to succeed even if we miss out on some of our top targets. The only way this season is prompting anyone to press the panic button is if they're either A.) carrying over some repressed frustration from the end of Beamer's tenure, or B.) simply have no idea how, as VT fans, to react to a truly "lost" season.
As a fanbase, we've become too conditioned to expect an abnormal amount of consistency in our on the field product. You could always count on Beamer's teams to be okay-to-very-good. We might not get that consistency under Fuente. We probably won't. It was an aberration in college football while we had it. But my impression of Fuente is that he has both a lower floor and higher ceiling than Beamer. He should get more than eight games in a bad season before people start to completely lose their shit.
What we need is not a new play caller, a new OC, and definitely not a new head coach. What we need is a QB who can make the reads this system requires (instead of a capable but inherently limited stopgap), and one or two halfbacks who can play with at least the same productivity on a regular basis as Steven Peoples this season. We aren't gonna get those things this year, but that doesn't mean we aren't gonna get those things.
That's the TKPC-exclusive film review we'll get later.