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Pry managed the end of the first half against Uva pretty well
Only if he knew he was going to get the turnover.
When UVA got the ball, he had 2 TO's left and UVA had 3. Pry burned his first on 2nd and 5-ish iirc. Then his last TO on 3rd and 3. The first timeout after the 5-ish yard gain on first down wasn't the best move but also wasn't a disaster. The announcer thought UVA called it...and so did I...that should have been their move. I don't think he should have called the 2nd TO at all. Fact is, if he waits another second or 2, UVA may have called both of those. UVA then made the 3rd down conversion with a full load of TO's. And followed that with another first down.
So at 1:07, Pry's "management" resulted in UVA with the ball at the VT 48 and all three timeouts. At that point Pry is probably kicking himself that the half wasn't already over or at worst UVA had only 1 TO left.
Pry got really lucky with Jones' pick and return. And then he got really, really, really lucky with the penalty on UVA that not only stopped the clock, but turned a makable field goal into an automatic chip shot. Without the penalty, VT would have been scrambling to spike the ball in less than 7 seconds...iffy at best.
Beamer also, let's be honest, got lucky with a former player of his from Murray State developing into one of the greatest defensive coordinators to ever wear a whistle. Maybe that's what Pry was trying to do with Marve but Marve is no Bud Foster and is unlikely to become Bud Foster with time.
Good defense covers up a lot of ills. We need to get better on defense.
Why couldn't VT in its coaching contracts just start offering more annual salary on a shorter term deal with nominal buyout protection?
Because agents are essentially operating as a cartel, and they have all the leverage because somebody will pay them what and how they ask.
I think the offense's problem vs Clemson was that the QB and RB were injured. Now, Bowen and/or Pry made the choice to start Drones, but he and Tuten were clearly struggling. I think the coaches waited too long to replace Drones and, hindsight being 20/20, should probably have started Schlee (who was also banged up) or Pop.
Joey Slye got the chance to win the game for NE yesterday after the Colts went up by 1, but his 68-yarder was just a few feet short. Still a great try though!
Sure but the numbers just don't add up, the buyouts are huge and it really promotes coaches to fail in lots of places. Jimbo was never going to live up to his 100 million dollar contract. As I stated that Pry was worth ~7.5 mil over 5 years. That's the number we have to beat to make it worth his time. We'd probably pay him around $20 mil total if we fired him today. We messed up in thr buyout.
I'd think pretty low. Gator is a good, medium-to-high level game. Doubt they would take a 6-6 team with so many having better records. Granted, VT fans travel well, but not that well. But who knows?
HOKIE HOOPS WIZ
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1 year 8 months
# | Steven Godfrey suggesting that Pry's seat is much hotter than we think They got a bit of good news on the O Line front. One of the recruits that had Hokies in final group but committed to Georgia Tech opened their recruitment after GT flipped a lineman from FSU.
He will be visiting this weekend.
In fairness, I thought Pry managed the end of the first half against Uva pretty well. That said, he's been so miserable for most of the season that it's going to take more than one game to convince me he's making any strides there
Something I'm starting to wonder with VT where we get saddled with these buyouts that seem to be problematic for donors to want to pay, which in turn leads to us hanging on to coaches longer than we should. Why couldn't VT in its coaching contracts just start offering more annual salary on a shorter term deal with nominal buyout protection? Like in Pry's deal of $27.5 mil over six years, where we will likely eat a buyout of 70% of his remaining salary if he is let go after four years ($6.2 mil roughly), offer a coach a three-year deal of $7.8 mil annually ($4.6 mil base salary plus the amount of a year year buyout at 70% remaining compensation prorated over the three year term, so additional $3.2 mil). That comes to a total deal of $23.4 mil vs $27.5 over six where you're going to eat a buyout anyway most likely. You could probably also attract better coaches with a higher upfront salary as well. Would go against the norm in contracts but would be creative. The school would basically be committing to at least three years with you as HC for almost as much money as you would get in six, but with the trade off of no buyout or long-term deal. Still could set yourself up well financially. With the transfer portal these days I think having a deal with a coach where you can recruit and say "they will be here all four years of your college career" doesn't really hold as much weight.
That doesn't appear to be the case with other schools and recent deals either.
It's not uncommon for assistants to have buyouts. TAMU assistant pool had ~$20m $8m in buyouts (not counting Jimbo's $50m buyout).
Correction: $8m for staff buyouts at TAMU (source). That was about 25% of the total $32m of assistant coach buyouts in 2023 (source).
I do wonder how much of this blurb came from insider info vs his intuition on things.
Both - he's likely getting comments from a bunch of agents, plus Pry and Whit (both of whom he's spoken directly to often over the years) and is using his intuition to roll all that up into cohesive blurb.
I think there was confusion stemming from the extension. It was a two-year extension that the coordinators signed this year that gave them three years remaining including 2024, but there are only two years left on their deal now.
If the buyout language is 100% of their remaining compensation, then Marve's buyout now would be around $1.7 mil. But it's hard to say for certain since the exact details reported on those deals are incomplete/spotty at best. As discussed in the back and forth in this thread, I sincerely doubt there is zero buyout included for the coach in these deals in the event the school terminates them. That doesn't appear to be the case with other schools and recent deals either.
Read on the other boards that Marve's buyout alone is just shy of $3 mil.
Zero chance this is true. He signed a 3 year deal for ~$850k/year - his buyout is NOT more than his contract. That poster is flat out lying and/or completely uninformed.
He's saying that our DL is so disruptive that making our secondary look good (as in, QB is rushed so he makes bad decisions)
BEARDS > PEOPLE
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1 year 8 months
# | Steven Godfrey suggesting that Pry's seat is much hotter than we think Step 1 would be consistently managing the clock better at the end of both halves
BEARDS > PEOPLE
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1 year 8 months
# | Steven Godfrey suggesting that Pry's seat is much hotter than we think Since the last 3-4 Fuente years I have definitely felt like I'll believe that when I see it and we haven't seen it yet.
Exactly. Don't tell us. Show us.
BEARDS > PEOPLE
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1 year 8 months
# | Steven Godfrey suggesting that Pry's seat is much hotter than we think This hits on one of my biggest areas of frustration. We had a lot of returning production this year. A LOT. And sure, you can say "well they were all kind of mid" but that overlooks that this year was the first time we had enough continuity to see if/how these guys got coached up between last year and now. We got to see how well this staff engendered growth. That, primarily, is why I expected us to be 2 or 3 wins better than we were - guys maybe turning the corner developmentally, guys having the light bulb come on even more.
And on the whole, it didn't happen enough. Tuten was beast mode, of course, but that was a known quantity. Drones didn't progress. Jennings didn't progress. Felton didn't progress. The defense outside of APR didn't really progress. LBs and DBs consistently underwhelmed. The OL played one good game vs BC. One good game out of 12. And by the time enough season had been played for any evidence of evolved elevated play to be visible, all the key guys were hurt. And half the key guys' backups were hurt too. But none of them save Tuten were lighting the world on fire.
If we're going to let Pry out of his mandatory offseason time management bootcamp, it should only be to make some staff changes, at bare minimum. The guys he has aren't getting it done. Sure, recruiting has improved modestly and that's not nothing. But I expected so much more than we got out of our veteran core, and I think saying "well it was clearly the players, not the coaches" is wrong and a cop-out. Think about a guy like Andrew Motuapuaka when he got here, vs when he left. If he'd played under Pry/Marve, he'd still be playing at Freshman Motu levels as a senior.
I can't find any better link, but I'm willing to bet the school doesn't just get off scot free if they decide to fire or not retain assistants with remaining money on their deal. It would be great to see the full copy of those deals and the language in there. But I doubt it's a unilateral buyout where only the coach pays the school in the event they leave. I'm pretty sure we had to pay some buyouts for Fu's staff with remaining years when they were not retained.
I do NOT remember that last one, despite the fact I evidently commented on the story. Wow.
8-10 are just straight up reasons Fu should've been fired. But the rest of these are legit. I didn't want him fired after 2018, but that Duke game the following year was enough to change my mind
So it looks like only the coordinators were extended to 2027, not all staff. So two year extension not three you're right, but they had three years left as of the beginning of 2024.
The reporting on the contracts is pretty spotty, but this article from 247 indicates that buyout protection is included in these extensions for assistants: Link
So two years of compensation for each would be around $1.7 mil a piece. Not as bad as three, but still around $3.5 mil if you replace both coordinators.
Pry is also owed a buyout of roughly $10 mil with three years left on his deal. So there's really some interesting math to consider. If you're VT, would you rather pay $3.5 mil in buyouts to replace two coordinators now, and if things still don't work out in 2025 you'll have two new coordinators with likely two year deals that you'll owe a year for, so $2 mil in additional buyouts plus around $6.5 mil for Pry (so roughly $12 mil total hit)? Or, if you replace Pry now, you'll owe $10 mil plus $3.5 and a little more for the rest of the staff (so let's say $14.5 mil). You're only saving really a couple million by retaining Pry and hiring new coordinators in the event things still don't work out next year.
See my other response with article link. The article shows a buyout, but the buyout is if they leave, they owe the school money. Unless you have some other source that shows they'd get $3M, I couldn't find it searching google. Plus, buyouts for head coaches tend to go down year after year, so even if it was $3M in year 1, it wouldn't be as much in year 2. But again, I couldn't find anything showing any buyout like that.
What $3M buyout? Their contracts were only extended 2 years and their salary is less than a million per year.
Extension article
Previously VT has simply done one- to two-year letters of appointment for assistants. However under Pry, his assistants have also signed multi-year contracts with buyout protection. His assistants were all on three-year deals when they were hired, and after 2023, Pry convinced Whit to extend everyone three more years through 2027. So yes, we owe Marve and Bowen close to $3mil each if we want to fire them.
Also, you could debate the intent/purpose of the buyout from a few perspectives. But generally, success and potential interest from other programs sniffing around leaked by your agent is the leverage for getting you a decent buyout. I'm not sure what the leverage was for extending Marve and Bowen after a 7-6 year, as they weren't going anywhere. If anything it was just a sign of commitment from VT, that ultimately has come back to bite us yet again.
I'm a bit more understanding of 'mistakes' around personnel like this because it's not straight forward - you have the medical team telling you something, the player telling you something, the family asking you something, you have to build a game plan around a player, you have to decide who gets snaps with the starting team, etc.
That is - if Pop is looking fine, but not amazing with/against the 2's in practice, and you see Drones is operating at 75% of his potential, and the doctor says there's 10% risk of re-injury, the family says play him, and the Drones says he feels fine and just needs practice reps to start playing 100% himself again..,. Do you really build your game plan around Pop instead of Drones, give Pop the practice snaps instead of Drones, etc?
It's not as obvious as clock management during the 2 minute drill, or not putting kids with the same number on the field at the same time, for example.