Illinois Hokie's Recent Comments
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11 years 7 months
# | ESPN's Travis Haney Postulates about Possible Change at Offensive Coordinator for Virginia Tech 
"Seeking solutions" headed into game 12. Yup, that's the season we've had, folks.
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11 years 7 months
# | ESPN's Travis Haney Postulates about Possible Change at Offensive Coordinator for Virginia Tech My concern isn't his ability to recruit or to coach tight ends. I'm worried about how much of a tie to the past he is. Either we're gonna have a culture change on O or we aren't. And a culture change means we wipe the slate clean and bring in an offensive staff with a vision and a goal held in common. I don't think that happens with the big whistle's son and the old OC on staff.
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11 years 7 months
# | ESPN's Travis Haney Postulates about Possible Change at Offensive Coordinator for Virginia Tech This brings up the biggest question facing VT football right now: does Whit have the balls to release Shane and Stiney to make room for a complete staff overhaul on O.
Yeah that's my angle on this, French. Adjustments that are obvious aren't getting made. To me that indicates lack of communication. The players are still working their nuts off, but like you said, they look lost. That to me MIGHT indicate conflicting instruction or divided loyalty. Your OC says one thing, your position coach says another who do you listen to? Or worse yet, the situation has gotten so bad the coaches aren't even contradicting each other, just going through the motions because they know there's no camaraderie.
All I know is what I saw on the field against Wake was a more fundamental issue than our scheme not working. It liked like a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth.
I'm just gonna throw this out there, admittedly pulled from betwixt my butt cheeks and with no basis in fact or evidence. (Apologies in advance to the guy on the forums who was begging for the elimination of speculation but...this is the internet.)
Is it possible that Loeffler has lost the locker room?
We have a really messy situation on our offensive staff. New OC who brought one assistant with him, who then bolted for LSU (understandably) after one season. Under the new OC we have the old OC, who sits beside the new OC in the booth on Saturdays. And we also have the head coach's son, who has designs on one day being a head coach himself (though not necessarily at this school; that's a debate for a different thread).
This is not a formula conducive to developing a lot of staff cohesion. The more I look at our coaching staff on O, the more I wonder if any OC could be successful in this setup.
It'll be Whit's decision how to structure the positions coaches under the new head coach when the time comes. The new head coach will have requests as to who he wants under him, but it's up to Whit as the AD to give the green light on that or go another direction.
The idea that a new coach gets all his desired candidates for positions coaches and coordinators "everywhere all the time" is a bit of hyperbole. Yes, there are example of wholesale staff replacement, and a new head coach usually (but not always) means a new OC and DC. But retention of at least some position coaches is the norm, beyond just a "token" to the old staff. It all depends on the individual circumstances and the state of the program, and quite often is determined by how many assistants the outgoing coach took with him elsewhere.
The remaining years of the big whistle doesn't change the fact that installing a new position coach takes time. If there were an OL coach out there who could come in and in one season repair all the damage that's been done to our OL, then he would deserve to be the highest paid position coach in college football.
What isn't very realistic is to demand immediate turnaround at a position that had been decimated, or to assume that a new head coach brings in an entirely new roster of positions coaches. Beamer himself inherited Billy Hite, and there is almost always some retention of positions coaches during a head coach turnover. Dont be surprised if many of the coaches on staff still work for Frank's successor.
It's amazing how a good safety can make a receiver look WIDE OPEN right up until he makes his break on the ball. And with the year Brewer has had with INTs I bet he just isn't throwing when he sees a deep safety perioid.
This came up a few years back when head coach in waiting deals were all the rage and I think it was pretty much settled that such an announcement would violate Virginia public employee (which a coach at a state school would be) hiring practices.
Too soon to pass judgment on Searels. We went from whatever Newsome was to athletic Grimes to Where's The Beef Searels in three successive years. Stacy bulked up every lineman we had, and some of our upperclassmen just can't play at this weight, especially after playing their first two or three seasons lean.
I don't doubt that Searels is capable. The question is can Loeffler utilize Searels' lines in his scheme? As French pointed out, there's some incongruence there.
I think I read that in Frank's contract he automatically becomes Advisor to the Athletic Director or some such upon retirement. So that's pretty much built in at this point.
Love that the first item on the list for Texas was "Handle Cornell Brown"
Yeah, this. People don't realize how frickin hard it is to rebuild an OL left in tatters a LA Newsome. Searels has had some growing pains (ba dum ching) in his first season but I could see him producing some monster lines once he gets his guys and they learn his blocking scheme.
WF had safety help over the middle and Brewer was concerned he couldn't thread the needle. A bad throw there would have been picked. And the safety was breaking on Bucky at the time.
"Yay symmetry!"
I am now very concerned about Loeffler as a QB coach, as it appears he has completely mindfucked Brewer. Just watching Michael on the field now vs weeks 1-3 he is obviously dealing with significant self-doubt that was not there to start the season. Not a good sign.
I've watched that a dozen times.
First of all the over the top celebration of mediocrity just pissed me off today. It's one thing to accept that Frank Beamer as a coach is about winning above all other metrics of gauging success. But to literally not give a shit about godawful play against the last place team in the conference is just infuriating.
And then the ending, where Frank just stands there frozen like Weaver was some sort of Medusa. Was it shock? Suppressed rage? Delirium tremens? Who knows, but it was a microcosm of VT football subsequent to the 2006 coaching changes on offense. At least so far as the football team is concerned, we should amend our motto from Ut Prosim to Dafuq?
Yeah after you commented I went back and realized I just kind of threw Elmasian's name out there in my last paragraph without qualifying that we are MUCH better off with Foster. And tbh I could see the same thing happening with Morehead, IF someone were to just give us a vision he could pick up and run with.
Yeah. Ferrum. Damn.
To clarify the point, Foster is ten times the DC that Elmasian was/is. But what Elmasian did was make us look at defense differently. Elmasian begat the lunch pail, and we need someone with that sort of different take on how we approach offense to get us out of the doldrums. So far post-Bustle, we haven't had that. We're just trying to be "newfangled" without a clue what the hell we're really doing.
I just don't know what the hell is going on.
We are regressing on offense. That much is clear. But I don't know why. We went from effective downfield movement and steady third down conversion to...whatever the hell today was.
I'll say this: I don't care what kind of offense we run, as long as we run it well and have the right man coordinating it. I'll be as happy with the wing T as the air raid, as long as we don't look like Sisters of Mercy School for the Blind when we run it.
I know french wants us to go back to power I. I don't know if that is viable in this day and age. With advances in strength and conditioning programs nationwide, running power is harder now than it's ever been. You can't rely on Gentrifying your recruits when every program worth its salt has a Mike Gentry on staff now. Running power almost demands blue chip recruits these days.
Also, the criticism that our offensive scheme is antiquated... Just stop. It just simply isn't antiquated. What it is, is a muddled mess. We need to decide what the hell we are on offense, because for the last decade we've had no goddam clue.
The more I go along, the more I think what's needed is the Elmasian of the offense. Because it's painfully obvious that we have had a dearth of innovation, vision and cohesiveness of scheme on offense.
Kudos to Mike for calling it like it is. Just hope he doesn't get in hot water for shitting where he eats.
Don't give up on Searels yet. A lot of the upperclassmen have never played at this weight during their careers and it shows. Yet look at what a player like Wyatt Teller can do in Searels' system. When Stacy gets his guys I think our OL will return to form.
Digging the umlaut.
The fact that there is a comma after "A proud and grateful Hokie" makes me think that was a closing to the letter and the name has been redacted for some reason.
Also, there are different ways to send a message to someone, and utilizing a public medium makes it a little harder to ignore than just crumpling up a private letter and throwing it in the trash.