Recent Comments
I was considering buying an orange jersey since I don't own an orange one... Well that is definitely not happening now.
I hate to blame the refs, but it seemed like Duke got away with quite a bit of grabbing and pushing on our receivers, with a few being in the endzone or on plays that would have resulted in a TD. Granted, I saw one play on the Jumbotron that showed Miller clearly hold one of Duke's Defensive Linemen so overall I think the refs were horrible. Correct me if I'm wrong, but did it look like on Duke's TD drive that the Duke player was actually holding on to Kyshoen and not the other way around as it was called? Initially, I saw Ky holding him, but the replay on the jumbotron almost looked like the other way around and the ref just had a bad angle forcing the wrong call.
Loeffler's MO backed up around the goal line is to take a shot deep because most teams will defend the run in that situation. It worked against UNC and it worked against Duke on Saturday.
Oh I agree this season is not going as originally expected. However, people say that elite teams beat teams that they are supposed to beat. We were supposed to beat Duke. Even if they were undefeated, people would think that. No one is giving them any props for being 6-2, as the preception is Duke is well, Duke.
But yeah, we are supposed to beat the JMU's, Dukes, Temples, Miami of Ohios, etc. As long as we keep losing those games, a lot of people won't take us seriously.
Really? Losing to an unranked team that had not beat a ranked team on the road in 40 years is more fun than winning? Not sure how that works; but maybe I enjoy competing for championships.
Here's my take on the whole thing. I love LT for his heart, leadership, dedication to the team, and his ability to represent VT proudly. That earns him a lot of credit and goodwill in my book. The man also has a lot of balls to do what he does, and despite struggles, he has made some clutch plays for us this year, and in the past. He's also made some boneheaded decisions. Overall, great guy, phenomenal athlete, and average quarterback. He holds a lot of school records, but that's probably because he's got to take everything upon himself to do, given that he's our best athlete on the field. Tyrod had to do less passing and designed running because of the supporting cast. Imagine where we'd be if LT had RMFW and Evans in the backfield for two years?
Sorry, spaced out for a second on that lovely little daydream.
The thing about Leal is - what do we know about him? Of course, you can counter (rightly) with, "he hasn't seen any real game action, so we can't judge." True enough. But clearly the coaches feel that the best quarterback we have is LT. That speaks volumes about our quarterback recruiting over the years. We don't have a guy on the bench who the coaches will look at and say, "hell with it, you're in on the next drive - make it happen" like they did with Tyrod. Beamer may be loyal to a fault, but I'm not convinced that's the case here.
LT may be average, but he may also be the best we've got, and all we can do is make our assessment based on the coaches' decisions. They see these guys every day in practice, which is vastly more than any of us do.
Hate to depress you, but it's from Kingpin.
This is such a strange game to digest. The running game was much better than against Pitt, and Thomas was given much more time than against Pitt. Early in the game, Thomas was taking some serious chances where guys just were not open down the field. On the 4th and 11 drive, several balls could have been picked. Then he threw the high interception, where Stanford was wide open on a post and Thomas threw it over his head. After that, it seemed like he would look to that first deep read, and then check down, regardless of if the guy was open or not. That played right into Duke's strength. Duke kept four to five guys in an underneath zone whenever they were not in man coverage, and even though very little was open early, as the game progressed receivers were getting open deep and he didn't pull the trigger.
There were three deep throws. First, the Knowles bomb, which is odd given that deep passes were so rarely called yet this is the second time it was dialed up from their own goal line. The second was the deep throw to Knowles in the end zone at the start of the 4th quarter. On that route, Loeffler called the Four Verts, and Byrn was wide open on his post, but like a replay of the ECU game Thomas underthrew Knowles.
00:17:49–00:17:57
The 3rd was the deep ball to DJ Coles. The Duke DB got away with some grabbing, but if that ball is on the money it is a touchdown.
I am not sure if he was ratttled, or what was going on. He wasn't getting much pressure. Duke basically took away those short crossing routes, and when Loeffler called plays that worked in getting guys open, Thomas didn't make the throw.
I don't feel that this team can be lumped into those other squads. I'm not talking about the ability to reel off wins to end the season (it could happen), but as bad as those Stiney offenses were, we could POUND the ball with a series of 1,000+ yards backs in each of those seasons, and had strong QB play from 2 Veteran Qb's in Randall and Tyrod. I don't think that these backs and LT are on that level. Forget the numbers, just talent wise they are not on that level.
You can only rise from the ashes after you go down in flames; and this offense went down hard. Its not often that a defense will have 4 picks (including 2 in the red zone), less than 200 total yards against, not give up a single 3rd down conversion, only 1 TD and 2 50+ yard field goals and lose. The offense was unwatchable. Duke was daring LT to beat them with his arm, which is why he had 20+ rushing attempts, more than half on passing downs. They kept most of his completions to checkdowns, making VT have longer drives, banking on this team eventually crapping out or turning it over.
Giving LT a pass on the 2 INT's that were tipped, the other 2 were on him. The one in the endzone is a ball you just cannot throw just CAN"T throw, already down, rolling left and throwing back across the middle into triple coverage. It cost the team 3 points, assuming Shaky Leg could chip in a 18 yarder (no safe assumption these days).
And the one where he sailed Stanford was a total "WTF" moment. The announcers can say all they want about running routes but that was not the case here, he threw the ball 10 feet above the receivers head. Who did he think was running the route, Paul Bunyan? He sailed it and plain and simple and Stanford was uncovered.
I am not bailing on this team by any means, but the numbers were pretty telling heading into this game. Our offense put 19 on Pitt, Duke hung 50+. They can score, we can't, and the warts that almost cost us against Marshall (weak offense, shaky kicking) came back together and cost this team a key conference game.
In my personal opinion (which is worth just about nothing), I can think of many interceptions over the last 2 years that were his fault and many that weren't. Some that come to mind include the ones that bounced off his receivers pads/hands/helmet. I get that some people say "well he threw the ball so hard on a 5 yard route." Guess what, they should still catch it. He's not trying to peg them with it and MAKE them drop it. Another INT that comes to mind was last year against Duke when Tony Gregory was essentially stripped of the ball as he bobbled it on a screen and Duke returned it for a pick 6. Those sort of plays count against him as stats, but I don't hold those against him in terms of his ability to throw the ball. Now if we want to argue if he should have thrown it elsewhere to a more open receiver on some of those then I'll agree. But the throws that he made that hit a receiver and were then intercepted were often, not always, the receiver's fault in my mind.
Ha! Is that a Money Train gif? Please tell me that's a Money Train gif!
I will gladly eat that humble pie.
What if it was humble cake?
When you do your offensive breakdown, I hope you discuss why we went away from the hurry up offense. It seemed like we were actually having success with it, but then we suddenly stopped running it.
I can't wait to read it. I had the exact same question while watching the game. As long as I can understand what happened, I can get over it and move on. Great work as always, French. When I saw this story pop up on my RSS, I took my lunch break early to read it because I just couldn't wait.
I have noticed that Thomas was actually mouthing off at Knowles at one point of the game telling to shut up.
I believe on that play Knowles was supposed to motion or be lined up elsewhere, but didn't, so Thomas had to call a time out. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
My point was if he's been staring down receivers all season (and probably throughout his career), he's probably not going to be able to make a change this late in his r-SR year of his career. He has a bad habit of staring down his first read...rather than trying to change his style (which would probably mess up his mechanics they've working on so hard), go against the tendancy and pump-fake.
What Newsome did to our OLine in terms of recruiting and "coaching" should earn him a one-way ticket to Guantanamo Bay, IMHO. The mishmash of skillsets and overall lack of talent on our OLine is unbelievable for a BCS-caliber program.
As for Thomas, the lack of coaching cannot be understated. This spring, he had so much new stuff thrown at him: mechanics, playbook, terminology, PROGRESSIONS (for the FIRST time, are you kidding me, O'Cain?), it's more than understandable he hasn't mastered every aspect of the game by now. We've seen him make huge strides, but growing pains, like what we saw Saturday, can't be unexpected. I fully believe he's a strong enough person and a good enough leader to get things back on track for both himself and his team for BC.
The hellstorm Loeffler and Grimes walked into, IMO, rivals those of USC, Miami and PSU. Those men have the unbelievably difficult task of replacing under-performing coaches who left them very, very little to work with, while dealing with the incredibly unrealistic expectations of a very passionate fanbase.
Also, let me be clear on one more thing: If anyone wants to know what a true man, and Hokie, looks like, look at Brian Stinespring. He took loads of crap, a demotion, a paycut, and now answers to his replacement, and still has nothing to say but how much he loves this school. He's in a position to succeed now and I'm very, very happy he's still a part of this program.
I can not tell you how much I agree with this. So I won't. I will just say that it gets a turkey leg. Oh, and, when everyone sh1ts at the same time, the whole place just stinks.
Question for French (or anyone else):
In 2011 Logan threw 10 pics in 14 games (~.7 pics/game). He's had 26 pics since the Sugar Bowl (~1.2 pics/game).
Were the throws he was making in 2011 equally as inaccurate/risky as we've seen in recent seasons, and was the lower number of INTs/game due to fantastic catches from veteran receivers? OR was Logan making smarter, less risky, more accurate throws in 2011? How many of those 26 INTs would still be INTs with Danny and Jarret?
Ball park figures of course, not expecting anyone to rewatch every INT Logan's ever thrown.
#4 will be the focal point of my film review tomorrow.
If he's not on the field we don't even have a chance
It's easy to say that since Leal didn't get a shot. There's really no way of knowing that.
I don't think he was our best chance Saturday. Before the game I thought so, but after that disgusting performance, how can you say he was our best chance to win? I just don't get it. I think I may have to take some time away from this site because I don't want to continue to be negative, but I feel it necessary to respond to some of the nonsense I see. The fact that we have this discussion every few weeks and yall have to continue to defend him and make up new things to defend him by just proves that he's the issue.
Also, how ironic is it that you say he's our best chance to win every game then immediately follow that up with "He's not a quarterback. We all know that."
I just, just don't get it. I'm not saying Logan supporters should be Mark Leal truthers now, but for christ sake, if he completely sucked, then admit he sucked and stop making ridiculous excuses for him (not just you VPIhokie, just in general)
Considering he's just now being taught to go through more than 1 or 2 progressions, I'd say the whole "HE'S A RS-SENIOR, WHY ISN'T HE A BETTER QUARTERBACK?!?!?!!111one" argument is pretty much invalid. Let's also consider that I'm pretty sure just about all of the spring was focused on teaching LT how to mechanically throw a football.
Love this RealDiehl. Preach it brother. I say, Keep Calm....and Sam Rogers
Understand your point, but Logan is still a 5th year QB. I acknowledge that he has had bad coaching in the past, and maybe this last game was a big aberration for this season. I'm hoping that is the case.
With the OL, we have no converted TEs playing on the OL anymore, so that is a non-starter. Benedict, Gibson, Farris, McLaughlin, and Miller were all recruited as OL and never have never played TE at any level. Wang was recruited as Ol/DL. Shuman and Conte are also straight OL recruits. I'm not sure the converted TE point is valid for this team. Maybe they just have to unlearn the "Newsome" tendencies.
Regardless, I do agree that LT, while being a 5th year QB, would probably be a better TE... I agree that Loeffler needs more time, though. I'm hoping, that at the very least, the run game is improved next year. That would make everything else easier.
Welp...
1. It would be nice to be able to make field goals.
2. Wide receivers need to catch those short drag and crossing routes, because when they tip the ball in the air like that it will be intercepted every single time.
3. Logan sailed many of his intermediate throws early on, and besides the interception in the endzone, I thought he made OK decisions.
4. My question is why we abandoned the the inside zone running game. It worked very well early on, and later in the game we ran it 3 times in a row with Trey for over 20 yards. We clearly could beat Duke at the point of attack, so I'm not sure why we didn't just try to smash them between the tackles. Duke, being a smaller, more athletic defense, seemed better suited to defend option stuff, and that's exactly what we ran at them. What is it that Loefller sees in his personnel that makes him want to run the veer so extensively and abandon the inside zone game?
I don't even know what else to say. After watching the film, the offense didn't really look all that bad....but we just didn't score any points. I believe we could have ran at them all game, and we had success doing so when we did. So what is it that Loefller sees and knows that I don't?
Well, he's done it before. Remember how excited he was when he got to his 5th progression a couple days ago? He's making progress. Too bad he and Lefty are only gonna be together for 1 year...