Recent Comments
I'm viewing it in a positive light, but absolutely no one should be stoked unless they know this dude personally.
Feels like a moneyball hire to me, not in terms of saving money but seeing upside in someone who isn't on other people's radar. There have been more than few hires of guys like this that turn out to be wunderkinds. It's unfortunate that our experience we haven't had one and 2/3 (JHam, Marve) have crashed and burned. (#3 is Bowen who is competent but jury is still out).
If Whit is not fired AND not allowed to hire a head coach, then you know the issue is Sands, not Whit 🤷
IMO, they probably had a top 3 to 5, realized that they weren't going to land those guys after some other shoes fell and then went deep digging on a ton of different people (which is why it took an extra couple weeks) and this guy came out near the top.
I think the biggest difference from Marve is that he has coordinated defenses in college before. For me, that was a box that needed to be checked, regardless of what level of college it was. I actually prefer someone from a lower level vs. a P4 retread.
Was not expecting this reaction from you, Alum. I agree.
I had guessed nickel, but honestly hadn't considered a 3 safety look.
👃DAX'S BLOODY NOSE
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1 year 6 months
# | VT Officially announces Sam Siefkes as Defensive Coordinator Look, I'm not trying to be a pessimist - I know my comment on the other thread about him getting the Cards from last to 20th in rushing defense sounded like it...but I also know that we're all doing our best to sell ourselves on this hire right now as well.
I'm ready to give him a shot, and I really hope he knocks this out of the park, because he's *our guy* now. But there isn't a single one of you on this Board right now who could look at any of the rest of us with a straight face and say that you're absolutely stoked about the hire. This was obviously a scramble drill/backup plan acquisition; because otherwise it wouldn't have taken this long - this guy has been sitting on his couch for three weeks now after that win over the 49ers. It's not a bad thing necessarily that we had to apparently go so far down the list...but again, he obviously was nowhere near the top considering we could have announced this hire a little under three weeks ago now. 🤷🏻
I don't hate it. After this started taking so long I believed our best option wasn't a flashy hire, but someone who has called plays as a DC, probably someone from G5 or FCS or maybe even lower who just plain coached good defense. Siefkes actually checks a lot more boxes than that -- he has NFL experience, he has power conference experience at Wisconsin which is a very similar program to us in a lot of ways, has worked with good and innovative defensive coaches like Dave Aranda, Jim Leonhard, Mike Zimmer.
Pry fired Marve, because #1 Pry knows that something had to change and he bought himself at least another season which is a common move in coaching and can work out, #2 Marve couldn't adjust his defense to save his life, #3 his linebackers sucked. We may have whiffed or been outbid on multiple other candidates, but I'm going to view this as a thorough search to find the right guy. Pry is attracted to young, innovative coaches as his coordinators, so this tracks. There are risks, but Pry knows that if this hire fails he won't be making a third hire. I'd rather we do extensive homework than hire a hot name.
Either way, I don't give two shits about winning the press release. I'll wait until next year to see if the defense plays well to make my judgement.
I got in a lot of trouble the last time I hired a fake Misses, so this seems like a bad omen.
I know nothing about hiring football coaches, or even coaching football, or how to recruit an 18 year old to do anything much less run into another human at full speed. So this could be a great hire, it could be a failure higher, but it reminds me the time when a guy I worked with didn't like the price HP charged for harddrives for high end servers so he bought the cheapest drives to get the drive bays and then he bought cheap drives from somewhere else and then spend 2 days replacing all the drives. And it worked and he saved like $20 grand in hardware costs. But we had 100s of drives we had to disposition, he wasted 2 days of time, and if anything went wrong the warranty wasn't the same as a pre-built and tested rack of equipment in a multiple billion dollar company. It might work but if it's a screw you then its all on you where as no one gets fired for buying a Dell.
It's actually Misses Fake, which is why he isn't special teams
Budda Baker got any eligibility left?
Yep. Budda Baker and chicken feed
No, no, no - you've got it wrong Fake Misses aren't real misses, which means they are Hits.
I mean what coach doesn't like rangy athletic defensive players? No one says i want a guy moves like a tugboat
Whit won't be allowed to hire another head coach, but I don't see VT firing Whit. He's going to have to just decide to retire and I doubt that happens in 2025.
Not only that, but I think he pushed the administration/boosters to have a realistic view of where we are in the CFB pecking order.
We need to be realistic. We had people really aiming/expecting to get Al Golden or Knowles. The two DCs from the championship game... Why would they leave their high paying blue blood programs to go to currently a midlevel ACC team where recruiting will be exponentially harder. We love the Hokies and the fan base generally is great, but if we are expecting to pull coaches from National championship game for a lateral move to us then I fear we'll forever be disappointed. I don't know a whole lot about this hire, but am excited for the change and am hopefully we found an up and coming stud of a DC and he can help guide us back to our streak of 10 win seasons, conference championships, a hopefully a run at a natty occasionally.
When was the last time an FBS HC coached through the end of their contract without extending? It just doesn't happen. He's either getting an extension or fired next season. There will be no in between.
So uhh was this the plan for a while?
Just takes one big donor to turn it around though!
CLASS WAR VETERAN
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1 year 6 months
# | VT Officially announces Sam Siefkes as Defensive Coordinator I like Pry. I want Pry to succeed. This doesn't feel like a first, second, third... maybe even fourth or fifth choice.
I hope with Pry and Bud's help, they can help him turn out to be a slam dunk hire
Well, that also means there's an ACC championship in our future, too.
I don't think so. Unless the 2025 season is a total implosion, I think Pry is here for the remainder of his contract. I would say there is no coaching change until after the 2026 season. Now this is the year that will make or break Pry getting an extension or not. But if he doesn't, we will have a lame duck 2026 year.
Could be great, could be a disaster. We will all find out. I hear people with the NFL experience, innovative young mind, etc. But the Cardinals aren't exactly lighting the world on fire in the NFL. We also got really excited about a very respected NFL DL coach coming to VT (Teerlinck) and that ended up being a major flop. I think people oversell NFL experience significantly at the college level.
Can he improve LB and S play, can he make adjustments better than Marve, can identify/recruit/develop good talent (high school and portal). Could be some potential upside if he brings in some additional position coaches around him to bolster recruiting.
Not super excited personally and think some of the VT "insiders" are trying very obviously to spin this as a really strong hire after swinging and missing elsewhere. But we will find out this season if it's going to work or not.