669TH MEMBER OF TKPC
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1 year 7 months
# | Pry "hopeful" that coaching staff will remain intact this winter 
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JACK'S STATE
TOO LANE
BOYS STATE
THE MIAMI
AZZ STATE
TEJAS
LOU'S ANNA
OREGANO
NEW KID IN TOWN
(Thanks for running it this year - enjoy it despite it confirming I am just an Average Joe)
coach speak nothingburger
Simple enough solution for this week.
I will say that when I made my picks I thought this format may have been on purpose and thought to myself:
Is this something we may wish to consider for next year? Put a slate of say 10 games up and everyone makes their picks on the 6 games of their choosing. It would bring another element to the contest. Now what I don't know is how much additional effort on your part that would require. It is all fun and games on our end. 😁
Thanks for the additional context.
And fuck this incompetent organization if they don't force changes.
it's not the size of the turkey leg, it's how you use it
Highly competitive college football is not luck or magic. A tooth fairy isn't going to come down next year with this same staff and tap them on the head and win 9 games. We didn't sign a top 5 class. The portal is TBD but a magic bullet isn't coming next year. Changes MUST be made or you will get the same results.
Sigh. If there's no coaching turnover and we are a .500ish team again next year, it's going to make it very hard to watch.
This feels very Fuente-like.
The committee said they
weren't going to penalize teams for losing in an extra game
I still don't understand what happened between the 2019 and 2020 classes. If Fuente and staff just flat sucked at recruiting, shouldn't it have shown up in the first 3 classes instead of the 4th (very suddenly)?
Staff turnover & vibes:
- Foster and Wiles left. They may not have been 'ace recruiters' but they knew every high school coach in the state, and had instant credibility.
- Chuck Cantor - who did a lot of the heavy lifting around recruiting operations and strategy - left in April 2018. Recruiting for the 2019 class was already underway, so the staff was able to close there (especially with Foster/Wiles on) keep that alive
- Vibes were off in 2018, when recruits talked to guys on the team, the guys on the team told them the culture wasn't great.
Leading up to 2020, all of the pipelines had dried up because no one on the staff had been recruiting players for the 2020 season. At this point, Fuente needed players, he was grasping at straws, so he hit up his texas connections, was able to fill out a roster there (albeit with questionable talent). But that's not a sustainable. And that's when the bottom fell out.
669TH MEMBER OF TKPC
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1 year 7 months
# | Pry "hopeful" that coaching staff will remain intact this winter If you've proven that you cannot recruit, develop players or scheme, you have no place on this coaching staff.
If you don't want to fire your coaching son - fine I get it. Fire Quinn, move Marve to co-DC/STAR (with a subsequent paycut) and bring in a Jerry Kill-type co-DC/LB coach.
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I wonder how much having Bud Foster around helped keep those VA HS relationships going. And once he retired at the end of the 2019 season they started expecting more from Fuente.
I mean, what else is he going to say in that position?
I'd love to think this is just coach speak and he is planning to shake things up but I'm worried he's being completely genuine here.
His career as HC is going to hinge on his ability to evaluate his coaches and make necessary changes. The defense has been stagnant for 3 years. It hasn't been good and it hasn't improved. It's got a terrible habit of giving up backbreaking plays at exactly the wrong times. If he doesn't fire Marve he's not going to make it as HC.
We'll see. But if this staff is mostly unchanged going into 2025 my expectations are 5 or 6 wins at best and I'm checked out on Pry and VT football until he's fired.
Totally agree.
There was definitely a buzz around Fuente early as an offensive and QB guru that resulted decent recruiting without (apparently) much actual effort recruiting.
And if you listen to Bitter on the TSL podcast, he says he doesn't like asking those questions because they always come with the least interesting answers. He still asks them (it's his job), but he fully expects coach speak.
He is pretty good at making some of these quotes more interesting than they are, though (also his job). So props to him.
VT and Blacksburg are lucky to have his talent. And I think even luckier he didn't bolt when the Athletic downsized. He's too good for a college-dedicated media site, but also, there is hardly any other beat reporters in Blacksburg these days. And none that are solely VT-specific besides him.
1. Negative recruiting- mack brown, dabo, franklin telling recruits Fuente was looking for other jobs. 2. Fu's demeanor around closing and the state of Va caught up to him more with each passing year.
I still don't understand what happened between the 2019 and 2020 classes. If Fuente and staff just flat sucked at recruiting, shouldn't it have shown up in the first 3 classes instead of the 4th (very suddenly)?
I've spent way too much time trying to understand it over the years, but I can only think of 2 factors:
1) we won more games and had a lot of hype in 2016 and 2017 that helped the brand but then ran out after 2019
2) Guerry left (but was he really so important that we dropped all those spots?)
I wish it made sense
CLASS WAR VETERAN
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1 year 7 months
# | Pry "hopeful" that coaching staff will remain intact this winter Well, now they already signed
kidding, I know that means virtually nothing these days
I would not expect either to play significant snaps as QB at VT. If they do, they make major leaps in their QB play (and hopefully they can). I expect one to remain a backup and one to transfer positions. If they want starter time at QB, I would expect they transfer to G5 or FCS. Both Watson and Belfort have better HS tape.
Brand and Ryan are good running QBs, and average around 100 rush yards a game (137 ypg for Brand in 2024). Ryan, imo, is better than Brand at passing. Brand does have some crazy passing stats from his JR year and won a state title, but is better at throwing while rolling to his throwing side than in the pocket or moving to the opposite side. Ryan is a better pocket passer and has decent deep ball, but is slow at making decisions and releasing the ball.
It's a shame Falzone decomitted. He has a better HS tape than any VT QB commit or player...
Caveat: these are just my opinions based on watching HUDL highlights. And I'm no expert on anything.
Plenty of evaluation duds from Fuente too- Payoute, Hunter, Rivers, walker, Pickney, lofton, moss , pimpleton, every running back, etc.
Hokies!
But boo to a 5pm start.
Yeah this whole video should be in the OP. I get Bitter is limited by tweet count and needs to drive some interaction but that's a really long answer that I don't think was captured well by the tweet.
At a fucking minimum, fire Quinn and move Pierson back to his old job. Replace them with Eddie Whitley and Zach Sparbar who are both killing it at JMU.