Recent Comments
Wait...do we want another Brewer?
Or TGray always wearing wind pants to play basketball and softball. No matter how hot it was. Dude was a different cat. And boy did Midget like to talk shit. He certainly didn't appreciate it when you talked shit back to him or drain 3's on him - my bad midget. Haha those lunch basketball games were intense
I agree that it's Evans job rather easily, but I also expect Motley will beat out Lawson.
I haven't seen anything from Lawson. Looks good on paper. The red flags on him are significant, I can't remember specifically what the coaches said but it was basically that he wasn't mature enough or prepared enough to get on the field. That's a serious problem for QB's.
Haven't really thought about it too much, but I'd say our D line has won more games for us than our DBs have over the past couple years. Those 30-40 chunk yardage plays really hurt.
Keep in mind I am in no way bashing TG, and he was historically my favorite coach, and I have all the love in the world for DBU
In my experience there's usually three sides. His, Theirs, & the Truth, which tends to be somewhere inbetween.
London's player development was a shit show.
That's the discussion here. VT and Fuente have both valued player development over recruiting over the years. With the mindset that if you win, you can recruit. And you can recruit well as a group. Other schools have valued recruiting over player development, Al Groh's UVA staff was a great example. Nobody ever got better at UVA under Groh.
The best schools have coaches who are good at both. That's the difference in money, those $350K assistant coaches who are great recruiters and great at player development.
So is a guy like West worth it? If he brings in 5 good players every year, for other positions than his, that we wouldn't get. Give Wiles a better DE than we normally get. Give Wiggens a better WR. Give Foster a better LB.
My opinion is that West is at least a solid position coach. Guys like Dowling should never have been anything, but was a 1st round pick (2nd round?). Who was the guy who led the NCAA in interceptions two years ago? Harris? Blanding was a 5* who plays like one.
Edit: That said, I can't find where West has been picked up by anyone. Which is a red flag in itself.
Even if he was still our DB coach, we'd need to earn that title back at this point.
We're going to have a hard time paying for someone with extensive P5 experience though.
It's pretty simple (to me at least). If we start producing on the field, the recruits are going to take notice. Hopefully a more aggressive staff will be able to close with these guys when that happens.
Agreed. Not another Memphis guy!!
Even with that said, I wouldn't mind seeing Anthony Midget get a Tech coaching gig. Not because he's a former Hokie, but because I think he'll be a hell of a coach. It'd be hard to pry him away from NFL money, but Whit has magical powers.
Gaines, Fullwood, Taylor and Trevion Hill will all be freshman next fall at DE
He coached under Papuchis at Nebraska.
Someone with P5 recruiting experience.
Weren't two secondary players all conference of some sort?
Fuente's staff was entirely guys he had previously worked with or Foster's guys. He didn't take a risk at all in hiring someone he didn't know very well.
That's not entirely different than Beamer's insistence over the years to hire VT guys or his golf buddies. Guys he knew would value staying at VT when or if someone else came calling. But rarely did other teams come calling because we settled for coaches. Stability over ability? Maybe.
I'm not sure what Fuente will do, I really hope its not another Memphis guy but I can understand why he has done that so far. Maybe he lets Foster pick a former VT guy like Midget. But, IMO, I hope we look for a little more of an unknown and someone with a strong recruiting background.
A few of his players have received All-ACC honors, freshman All-American honors by Nicholson in 2011, and All-American honors for Blanding last year. Dowling was a 2nd rd pick in 2011 under him as well. His recruit list on 247 is impressive, and he was named ACC Recruiter of the Year twice and once a finalist for national recruiter of the year by 247. I have to take my O&M glasses off and say he would be a great candidate.
That's what I found so incredibly beyond fucked up. The young teen had just gotten through CANCER. Fucking sickos.
Really on West? While he recruited well I always felt his "stars" both at the position he coached them and the ones he recruited didn't live up to their potential and hype once in college. Maybe that's just my OM glasses though.
Which further illustrates the point that we don't have the faintest idea of who will be considered targets for this position. It will be interesting to see how long it takes Whit/Fu to make a hire, and for sure it will be interesting to see if that hire has ties to VT, or if they go in a totally different direction. The way Whit has worked so far, you'd think he and Fuente are working together on this and likely have a successor picked out. We'll see. Until then, I'd say Saban is my choice of conjectures so far.
I like how everybody jumps on the bandwagon to hire a former Tech DB. We've become so accustom to having former players and long-tenured coaches at Tech. Now that Beamer is gone, we're on the coaching carousel like everybody else...
Maybe, but they won WAY WAY more games than they 'lost'.
The ONLY thing that makes me think there is a chance we will be okay is that we had good DBs before Torrian coached. The good run of DBs didn't start with him, here's to hoping it doesn't end with him.
Darrell Green knows the NOVA region pretty well.
