Recent Comments
100% in agreement...there is no shame in talking about the injury impact in this one; we had more than just a few of our star players out.
Get that we were hurt / decimated / thin, but... when Hundley ran yesterday I'm not sure we had anyone who could catch him.
Recruit athleticism even if it comes in a kid who is a little over the top or needs some special care. You can't teach D'Lo speed.
We looked slow yesterday and we were probably the smaller team. We may have been quicker than them but in the open field we looked slow. There is a black box where Gentry used to be. Have his methods changed with the times? Are the players getting the bio and techno stuff they need to develop? Are the players sufficiently committed to a development plan? I know we do hand timing for comparability, but I hope we have electronic timing going every day / ever week. The kids should be eating this stuff up. Watching the game yesterday, I'm not sure they are. Not sure if the problem is with the program, Gentry, the $ allocated to Gentry (ahem, Weaver not opening the purse? wouldn't be entirely hard to believe).
We need a little bit of nasty. Great kids, nice kids, but we've been pushed around twice by teams from Cally.
Beamer needs to decide whether he is going to be a man of accomplishment writing books and being above it, or if he's gonna get in the mud pit and get a little dirty. Accomplishment is a cutting edge dirty business... he has accomplished alot... book writing can be a great recruiting tool if its done in an interesting, fun and marketable way... or it can just be about a memoir. Haven't read the book but Frank needs to decide whether he should have written a recruiting tool or a memoir. Get in the game or get out. No disrespect intended the guy has meant everything to VT football.
We need to throw the ball. We got some studs coming in and we need to show that our #1 every year is gonna be a 1000 yard guy. Yes we need the power run game, but Bud has shown that stacking the box with stud DBs is a recipe for shutting down almost every run game. Develop the run game next year but develop and feed these guys coming in. Give SL license to do what he feels needs to be done. Make him fail or succeed on his terms. He seems to be a hard working thinker and I think he's going to get this offensive scheme done in a way to draw talent at all offensive positions.
JMHO
"Those West Coast teams, they'll get after ya!"
Seriously, if ever Hokie Football had an Achilles Heel, it's been playing those teams.
Thats cool, not trying to be offensive. Sorry if I came across that way.
Whoever emerges as QB1 going into 2014, will be the best man for the job. This Ford kid shows great promise, however.
I started really disliking Clemson after the way their fans showed their worst face in the aftermath of that game. The [Phony] Death Valley had some real assholes for fans that day.
Go Gamecocks
Guys, he's not wrong. Even he is, downvoting him is a dick move. I don't know who you are out there, but I don't like you. Downvoting this guy.
Solidarity.
Joshua Stanford is the Truth. He will be incredible for us if he continues to do what he did this season. He looked better than Jarrett Boykin did coming in, and look at what JB developed into.
Totally agree. Going one step further, there were plays THAT WORKED that were heavily scrutinized. After a TD in the BC game, where Lefty called a PA off of the veer and Thomas hit Cline wide open in the endzone, I heard people complaining that it was a bad call because we didn't just line up and run the ball in. It was infuriating! Like the guy couldn't do anything right, when in reality, I thought he did a great job. Yes, there will always be calls you'd like back, even Foster has said that. But what do you expect when you're trying to call plays to keep a defense off-balance? I really hope the fanbase as a whole will realize what we've got in Lefty sooner rather than later.
Let's not forget he went helmet to helmet later on with one of our running backs. Wright I believe. I don't believe either were accidental. Maybe I'm being a little bitter here, but I don't believe I'll cry much if he tears an acl in the future.
I feel bad for Loeffler. The play calling has been heavily scrutinized all season. When a play worked it was a brilliant call. When a play didn't work it was a bone-head call. I'm not sure if that's fair. Let's also look at some of the personnel issues. Pre-season Loeffler seemed high on Malleck and it appeared that the TE position was going to be a big part of his offense. All of a sudden our top TE is injured before we even see him play in a game. I think Kline became one of the few bright spots for this unit as a TRUE FRESHMAN TE. (!!!) The other bright spot would be Logan. An embattled athlete who has been asked to play QB for the last 5 years. In those 5 years he didn't learn fundamentals (progressions, protections, etc) until the beginning of his last year. He also had his mechanics reworked by Loeffler.
So here's a guy who came into a situation where he's trying to build an offense with guys who have never been taught proper fundamentals (LT3) and a general overall lack of talent (how many freshman saw the field this year?)
Do you think it's fair to expect much more than an 8-5 season under those circumstances? Sure we saw flashes of what this offense is capable of but until the pieces are all together (which may take another year or two) I think S.L. deserves benefit of the doubt.
On the plus side, our new coaches have really lit it up on the recruiting trail. I just hope the hard work recruiting pays dividends.
Also, Zumwalt is total scum. I think Oregon fans would agree.
http://blog.oregonlive.com/ducks/2013/10/interesting_video_should_ucla.html
Yes, 11 left in the 4th was when I put the game on DVR and took the kids outside to shoot hoops. Amazing considering the score at the end of the 3rd, but at that point there was no doubt this one was over.
Hearing a lot of Greg Schiano, does the Penn State situation need Greg Schiano?
As a Bucs fan, I can tell you - no.
Does Hundley run as wild as he did in the 1st half with Kyle in the game? I think that was huge loss for this game too.
It doesn't help when your top defensive player doesn't dress, another potential NFL DB doesn't dress, then you lose a threat like Klein and then your team leader goes down early in the game. I don't think anyone would have expected us to do well if you said Logan, Calvin, Antone and Kyle were going to be out in addition to Trey. Thats a lot of talent not on the field.
Wonder if Hackenberg would want to transfer? He can redshirt and still have 3 years to play.
Fair points. I didn't like seeing Beamer's comments about Leal. Mark has taken a back seat and been loyal when he could have transferred, gotten playing time, and developed into a better/more experienced player than we saw yesterday, but stuck it out. Came into the bowl and tried his best given the limited experience he's had in live game situations.
True this. Logan's Run is going down in history to me as the best example of a firework I've seen. Climbed high for a long time, exploded at the top, then was suddenly gone, making you wish you could see it again.
EDIT: I guess the firework analogy would be better applied to Logan's career as opposed to Logan's Run. I originally intended it that way.
Agreed. I was not entirely disappointed because not only were we missing veterans in the defensive secondary (although KyFuller and BFacyson aren't exactly typical freshmen), but we were missing our starting RB, lost our TE early, and lost our QB at the beginning of the second quarter. I have thought all year that UCLA was a good team with a great QB and great coach, but this game was competitive for a full two quarters after losing Logan and Kalvin (2nd and 3rd). It was 14-10 in the 4th but we eventually wore down. Hard not to when most of your skill position players are out.
I disagree with the comparisons to the Stanford OB, though. We had almost the same score at halftime of that game, but in the second half they came out and exploited our lack of coverage on TEs and housed us through good coaching. I don't think that happened here. I think we just wore down eventually, and Leal's two ints were a large part of doing us in. Had he never thrown the shotput int to Jack and had we played within the running/short passing game more in the second half, I think the result would have been closer.
It did seem like it was a foregone conclusion with 11 left in the 4th, though. That was disappointing.
I agree guys we all need to just forget yesterday. It was done when Logan was out of the game. Yes leal did some good things but we really saw how much the offense revolved around Logan. Even the jet sweeps looked bad heck Mangus and Parker went helmet to helmet and somehow Mangus got 3 yards from it. It hurts it's stings but look at what we had to play with and what they were playing with. Hundley is a first round maybe top 10 pick in the draft and he played well and made plays when needed. Yes we missed a lot of tackles but he still put himself/team in the position to win.
On that sum waltz guy I don't know how even after the Logan hit they didn't even take a look at it to see. Regardless if he didn't mean it he still hit Logan with his helmet under the chin. That's targeting I have seen clean hits not get called. I do think the Logan's 6'6 300 lbs lol played into this. But he easily could have wrapped him up by hitting his chest. But that dirty player wanted revenge for the ass whooping LT3 just layer on Jack.
In the end we are Virginia Tech and we Will PREVAIL. Looking forward to spring. Go Hokies
This is definitely a great article, and as someone who has been immersed in State College, PA for nearly a decade, I can tell all of you this is a valuable read in regards to the environment up here.
I think A&M with Manziel would be a disaster for us. The biggest problem we've had all year has been QBs who can make plays when the called play breaks down, and Manziel is the best in the NCAA at that. Don't forget, though, this happens to everyone. We had Vick, who carried us to a MNC game with that skill. Vince Young did it for Texas. Hundley is great at it for UCLA, Mariotta is great at it for Oregon, Winston can do it, Braxton Miller can do it, Nick Marshall can do it... looking across the NCAA landscape, lots of the best teams out there have a QB that can do this. Hell, Logan can do this, too.
You're absolutely right, it's been going on since before the new coaches got here. It's been going on since about 2007, which is right around the time that Curt Newsome was hired. Those failures in big games and the pitiful talent level on the team right now are, IMO, the two biggest reasons for the coaching change. Loeffler told Thomas that if he had had him for 4 years, Logan would have been gone by now. Similarly, I fully believe that if we had our current offensive coaching staff during the '05-'07 seasons, we'd have won a NC, purely because Bud's defense needed nothing more than a competent offense to back him up. There have been TONS of issues offensively which are just now starting to be fixed and it'll take a little while for that to happen.
Defensively, scheme isn't really the issue. Against Stanford, the Luck-Stanford'sRidiculousTightEnds was just a horrible matchup for JGW. Yesterday, poor tackling was the issue against an elite offensive talent in Lumley. Foster's schemes got his guys there, but for whatever reason they just couldn't get guys on the ground.
To sum up, it's gonna take time to get over that hump. It's gonna take better football players in key spots who are developed by a competent staff in a scheme that looks to create and exploit mismatches. I think we saw a good amount of that last bit this year, now it's time to see if the new coaching staff can pull off the first two parts. New season starts now, GO HOKIES!
I hate passing judgment since shit happens fast on the field, but come one...it was obvious to everyone in the stadium and at home that Logan was gonna doink that pass off just by his arm position and body language. It's not like LT3 had his shoulder lowered and Zumwalt was fearing for his life. I'm actually pretty disgusted with it.