Recent Comments
How ironic to read this, and then read the 'Isaiah Ford Concludes Record-Setting Sophomore Season.....' post.
Great job,Mason! I'm looking forward to Ford with Fuente offense!
I could watch this baby for hours.
Whoever and whatever, he is Gone and I am damn glad. He brought nothing to the offense that showed improvement with His Play calling. BC , you got a bonehead.
Looks like Shoop will be going to UT
For myself, the question has been answered
Not to belabor the RB rotation issue, but couldn't it also be the case that OC Loeffler tells Shane Beamer that he wants to use multiple RBS because the new offense will be using different players for different packages so as RB coach its his responsibility to get the RBS reps. The how and when are left to Shane. The why is on Loeffler. BTW, apologies for any typos, this large smart phone gets heavy after a while and I'm typing in bed trying to get to sleep.
Disagree, not misguided at all. There was a budget. That budget needed approval. It was up to Coach Fuente to decide how to use that money. To balance that budget where some were rewarded he had to take away from others.
Otherwise I see no reason why a new manager would come in and ask existing coaches to take a pay cut. What is the reasoning? "I want to start my staff on a balanced pay scale so everyone will will be back at the same footing for me to assess." That's not good reasoning for me from a management point of view. Frankly, no employee is equitable to another. Some have more value than others. Gray and Wiles had a value established. That did not need to be added to but it also didn't need to be deducted from.
What they made at last season under whoever their employer was is irrelevant.
I think this is misguided. I am willing to bet that anyone in any job everywhere would not accept that reasoning as lightly as you suggest. This is saying that Wiles and Gray were overvalued before. Do you think they were? I have been saying, along with many others, that Gray deserves a pay raise for his level of coaching over the years, not a pay cut.
They accepted so that's that. But again, the management style is not great IMO. Employees are not apples to apples, and compensation should not be apples to apples. Even employees that do the exact same role should be valued differently for a variety of reasons.
anyway, I don't mean to belabor the point to exhaustion. I just don't like that decision.
So the OC didn't like the RB rotation, or the timing of those RBs being rotated, but he didn't have the authority to either end it or modify it? Doesn't that go against your point that OC Loeffler wasn't responsible for the RB rotation? Maybe he just agreed with the RB rotation implemented by Shane Beamer, maybe they are both responsible. For myself, the question has been answered, but I will be watching more BC games to see how much RB rotation occurs under Loeffler.
I can't speak for the others, only myself. Okay here goes:
Early on his tenure, the play calling by OC Loeffler seemed inconsistent and, to me at least, it came into my head that Stinespring was influencing the play calling. Remember that some of us kept complaining that he was in the booth with the OC? I kept going back to the 2011 season when Stinespring was made Co-OC with O'Cain in the booth and him on the sidelines. Great season and Danny Coale caught that ball! Then in 2012, Stonespring was back in the booth and the Offense took a step back. Also the end of the streak. The idea then evolved, or devolved, into a question of perhaps it was Coach Frank Beamer who was calling in specific plays and overriding OC Loeffler sometimes. Keep in mind that OC Loeffler was billed as a real OC who was going to update the offense, so when I started seeing familiar tendencies with the play calling, well that's where the idea originated since the one constant between OC Stinespring and OC Loeffler was that they operated under Coach Beamer.
The never ending RB rotation was on OC Loeffler
I don't think that's what Mike McDaniel said, but regardless if he did or not it isn't a statement I'd agree with. Loeffler does use a multiple offense and even if he specifically requested that Travon be used on Jet Sweeps, it wouldn't explain why the other backs were rotated out seemingly every play.
Shane Beamer was responsible for deciding which backs would rotate into the base offense. He has admitted (even defended) that he wanted to rotate JC, Trey, Rogers, and Travon as frequently as he did. I disagreed with his game plans at the time and Travon's production since the switch has, I think, proven Shane's mistake.
AWESOME SAUCE
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10 years 6 months
# | AD Whit Babcock Promises Uniform, Fundraising, Facilities Changes Coming in 2016 +1 for the laughs. But if I may ask, how will our QB see his WRs? ;-p
There was always a question in my mind as to how much autonomy OC Loeffler had when it came to play calling
Why though? I've heard people say that before, but I just don't know why they would question it. I've never heard anything suggesting that Loeffler didn't call the plays.
this is a great point as well. All at face value at the moment. For me it's simply the management decision, nothing more.
Again, I don't mind Fuente's staff coming in got big raises, but that shouldn't have come at the expense of staff being asked to remain.
I think that's a misguided way of looking at the situation. You're painting a picture where Fuente literally took money away from Gray and Wiles to pay his other coaches. That did not happen.
Basically, when Fuente got hired, he had to decide who he wanted to offer a position under him, and also what his position coaches and coordinators were going to be paid. He settled on a salary of $260K for position coaches. And at that point, nobody currently on staff had a job with Fuente. He started fresh. He decided to retain Bud Foster at his contractual salary, then he decided to offer positions to Wiles, Gray and, eventually, Burden (at a reduced salary), in addition to Vice, Shibest, Cornelson and Scott.
These were very much new hires, regardless of whether the coaches worked for Beamer at VT or Fuente at Memphis last season. None of these coaches were due anything the moment Justin Fuente accepted the VT position. What they made at last season under whoever their employer was is irrelevant. They were offered positions at the salary Fuente was offering for that position, and everyone accepted.
This is a critical distinction. Fuente isn't "new management," he's the new CEO.
You mean to tell me the offensive coordinator called his own plays?
Yes and no. There was always a question in my mind as to how much autonomy OC Loeffler had when it came to play calling. This is not to say he was a figure head, but with the presence of Stinespring still on the staff and with Shane being on the Offense staff, I always wondered who was in charge of what when it came to the offense.
As far as Mike McDaniel goes, he seems just as reliable as other media types. A quick Google search reveals that he writes for a website called "Inside The ACC" and has been on ESPN Blacksburg so I'll just leave it there.
A change in management is a poor analogy here. Corporate restructuring would be more apt. Like I said, the same bank might be cutting the checks, but aside from that, we are a completely different organization than we were in 2015.
Hundreds of companies have a position entitled "Vice President of Operations." What two different people with that same title do at two different companies might vary wildly, as might their salary. And if a company restructures, the title might be kept, but the function and salary be completely different.
It doesn't matter how many years any of these coaches have been at VT. This is everyone's first year at VT under Justin Fuente. Nobody gets credit for prior work under a different coach. Fuente pays his position coaches $260K. Take it or leave it. Wiles and Gray took it.
And, at every public speaking opportunity, Shane announced how important a role JC, Trey, Travon Marshawn, Michael Holmes etc. etc etc. would have in the game plan.
As much as it drives us nuts, lots of teams (especially those that use the spread) use this approach with running backs. It is a trend. The NFL and college thrived on multiple backs getting carries from the inception of modern offenses until the 70's. Jim Brown may have stayed on the field most snaps, but he split carries with Bobby Mitchell and Leroy Kelley. By the 70's, wishbone teams rotated backs and split carries three ways.
The change started with OJ Simpson and the rise of the I formation, and then took the next step with the one back offense. OJ, Charles White, George Rogers, and Herschel Walker all came in a short period of time where the tailback served as the primary ball carrier. Even Barry Switzer abandoned his wishbone for a short time to give carries to Marcus Dupree. Joe Gibbs then perfected the one back offense, which eliminated the second running option. Spread no huddle became in fashion with Ted Marchibroda's "KGun" used first by Boomer Esiason and then most famously by Jim Kelly.
Now, we are seeing a course correction. There are not enough elite backs (in part because running backs are so poorly valued by NFL GMs who don't want to invest with a player who loses his legs right after his first big contract due to wear and tear) to line up and pound teams except on the elite of the elite. Offensive coaches are returning to the mentality of having multiple options, mis-direction, and multiple running options on the field. The hurry up, at least in their mind, necessitates keeping fresh legs in the game.
I, and I would imagine most of you born between 1970-1990, have grown up with the idea of having the feature back, ie that kid from Varsity Blues-stamp his butt US Mail. I cringe when I saw the running back rotation and wanted to see the best back stay in the game when he started to get momentum. But, this isn't just two guys (Loeffler and Beamer) who are off their rocker when it comes to running back rotations. Their general philosophy is pretty much aligned with the industry standard.
Now, their timing for making switches and the use of those backs when on the field... to me that is fair game.
That's absurd. Next you are going to say he told Foster what formations to call. No head coach without a heavy offensive background would be foolish enough to micromanage his coordinators like you think.
I listened to the podcast, and while Mike is well-spoken, his analysis is very narrative-based (and I doubt the accuracy of some of his points). Aside from his byline appearing on InsideTheACC (which published a preseason top 5 list of receivers in the ACC and left off Tyler Boyd), why should I consider him an authority on Loeffler or Virginia Tech?
2) The never ending RB rotation was on OC Loeffler.
The following is from a 2014 Washington Post excerpt (emphasis is my own).
As a result, Shane Beamer said many of his nights in bed are spent wondering how his running back rotation will work once the season gets underway.
"I'm sorry, but we're going to get other guys in the game," he said. "Some guys are better on third down. Some guys are better at running pass routes than other guys. Some guys you trust more in protection than other guys. So we want to do what each guy does well. But yes, I know the big question.
"We're going to have it narrowed down as far as who our primary ballcarriers are, but there's other guys that we want to get involved in different ways as well as we go along week to week."
(There are also post-game quotes from Shane in which he discusses his rational behind the situational substituting of the running backs. My Google-Fu at 12:31 AM is weak though.)
3) Play selection. Yup, you guessed it, it was on him as well.
You mean to tell me the offensive coordinator called his own plays?
Here's what's missing from the conversation, Loeffler and Addazio was a marriage the worked well before. Loeffler was Addazio's offensive coordinator at Temple in 2011. Temple was No. 39 in scoring offense, and were No. 7 nationally in rushing (and the overwhelming amount of carries that season were split between Bernard Pierce and Matt Brown).
I trust Whit and Fuentes. But I also disagree the the reduction for Coach Gray (stated before that I don't care all that much for Wiles). The question has been asked, but rarely addressed, whom would we get to step in if/when Gray leaves??
At first glance you're right, but have you considered that this makes it easier for Coach Wiles and Coach Gray to leave VT for greener pastures? I read somewhere that Ciach Coach Gray was already on Nick Saban's radar as a good addition to his defensive staff should he lose more coaches. We already know Texas A&M and FSU would take Bud Foster in a heart beat. I'm not saying this will happen. I'm just giving you food for thought.
I think it's important to note that we're also operating with limited information. I haven't seen actual contracts, but there could be other considerations that make this worth everyone's while. Perhaps Gray and Wiles have guaranteed multiyear deals now, whereas they were year-to-year before. Perhaps they have opportunities for greater incentive pay than the others do. Perhaps they agreed to take a cut this year with an understanding they will get major increases once there's more money to work with. Regardless, it's over and done with, and I'd argue that many people here are making an issue where there likely isn't one. I know it's the offseason and we need to find things to occupy ourselves, but if the men involved were willing to accept their contracts and focus on other matters, so should we.
Agree with Fuente's handling of the situation and his prospects as a WR that can play TE.
At the end of the day, he's gotta make the decision that is best for him and his family.
I'd love to see stay, though. I imagine he'd be able to put up some good numbers and make an impact in the new offense. With a new QB it would be good to have another experienced guy out there running routes.