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i think that's unfair. He's having to clean up an epic mess of all messes. He's only had 8 games. I think everyone is overreacting. I love LT3 because he shows a lot of heart and he fights hard and is obviously the leader of this team. But he is a tight end, not a quarterback. I don't think it's fair to expect more than a 6-2 record out of an offensive coordinator who is trying to get a bunch of tight-ends-playing-other-positions to unlearn years of terrible coaching and execute a brand new offense. He's doing what he can but cleaning up the mess that has been left over the last decade+ is going to take some time. As somebody pointed out on another thread, excluding Thomas, the most productive players we have on offense are the youngest players who don't have to unlearn old habits from bad coaching under the previous staff. I don't think we're ever going to have a flashy, fast paced, high flying offense like the Oregons of this world, but give Loeffler 3 years and I'll bet we field a pretty effective offense that will help the defense to win a bunch of games every year.
As the old saying goes, if you've got a "multiple" offense, you've got no offense.
Pick something and get good at it.
I think it's valid to expect more of Loeffler than where we are currently.
To say a quarterback got rusty from a bye is just perplexing. I love this site, but some of the things I read make me really confused. And if any of the film reviews this week have a pro-Logan slant I'll be further puzzled.
Growing pains and it will take time. That's how I see the hire, and that's why I'm not totally surprised our offense hasn't turned the corner.
Duke. Losing to Duke and beating Miami basically guarantees us the coastal since they probably will lose to FSU. From there if we show up and beat or respectfully lose to FSU, keeping them in check, scoring a couple times, it'll help make the Duke loss sting less.
However, beating Duke and losing to Miami keeps us in the same rut we have always been. Can't win The Big Game. Playing in the ACCCG will do more to our perception than beating Duke ever will, especially after everyone thought we'd be at the bottom of our division. And who knows? Duke has a very good chance of winning two or three of their last four. This will show that Duke is no longer the conference punching bag and actually has some fight to them and in hind sight the loss won't be as bad to us or analysts, but the polls wont ever reflect that.
#5 should be #1 and should read, "Logan played terribly. We go as he goes and we need that to be the last time he ever performs like that."
Kendall should be #2. He's the fucking man.
We have two other QBs on the depth chart as well who are both really young. Whenever the coaches talk about Thomas, they talk about him as a leader. His playing qualities kind of get washed over. I can only assume this speaks to something about Leal. I don't know what it is, but the coaches just don't feel like if he's on the field everyone's going to play to the best of their abilities. Sure he might be talented, talented enough to be the best choice if Logan gets injured, but there's just something that the coaches are worried about.
I feel like next year those younger quarterbacks are the choices for starter.
we don't even need miami to lose to fsu...if we beat them we're driving. Both Miami and VT will then have 1 conference loss and we'll have the head to head tie breaker.
We're gonna b ok!!!
Main take away from this right here. If there's nothing else you read on this site today, read "We're gonna b ok!!!"
duke already has the two conference losses, so we're still ahead of them. if we beat miami and presumably they get throttled by fsu, then we're in the driver seat. all that is of course if we can navigate the murderer's row that is bc, maryland, and uva.
I believe we wore orange pants and jerseys with maroon helmets against UVa in 1993. I know we've worn orange pants more than four times. I know because surely those two losses shouldn't account for the horrible painful memories I have of orange pants.
EDIT: I reread that. Sounded like I was doubting you. I meant orange pants in the pre 2002 era.
Is it his fault the receivers tip the ball and the dbs pick off a deflected pass? No!
Is is his fault we have a Td pass waved off the board due to a stupid penaly by an experienced WR? No!
Is it his fault a Sr kicker misses multiple "gimme" field goals? No.
Is it his fault he has to be the leading running back for consecutive seasons? No!
Im tired of hearing this crap!! If he had some help we wouldnt be having this discussion. The coaches know that. The team knows that. And i think for the most part....most of the fans do.
We've been here before. We should consider ourselves fortunate to be 6-2.
We're gonna b ok!!! Go Hokies!!!
I'm not so sure we're gonna need Leal next year honestly. Take Thomas out and the little bit of offense we had goes out the window.
I agree completely. I went through the effort of looking into this Duke team this past week (by which I mean I went through the effort of reading most of what was on this site the week before hand) and do you know what? Duke is a damn fine team. Damn fine. Damn damn fine fine damn. Fine. I'm not ashamed to have lost to them. I understand that at one point Virginia Tech was suffering from an affliction known as the 80s. Well. Duke was suffering from an affliction known as the aughts. Guess what!? They're good at football now. Expect this trend to continue. Expect that team to become a force to be reckoned with. Expect them to become the toughest game in the Coastal. Expect them to win a few Ay See See See Jees. It might not be this year. It might not be next year. But unless things take a drastic turn for the poopieballs, that is a team that will be really good at football.
We just need to be better. We need to be better than we were yesterday. I think that is something that we can reasonably expect to. I've been saying it all over the site, and I'll say it again. This team is tough as a giant bag of bricks made of nails. They won't sit and mope if I know who they are. They'll go out on the practice field. They'll go into the weight room. They'll eat good meals.
Better is something our team can do.
My data only goes back to 2002
We've also lost to UVa in orange pants.
I think a lot of people are looking it at as Loeffler is coming in to a blank slate. "Sure the guys who are there aren't the guys he had picked for his scheme, but he can shoehorn them in somewhere right?"
To me it's not that simple. He's coming into a group of guys that have been taught when X, do Y. But he wants them to do Z. That means completely unlearning old habits and then getting the good habits. And it's not just him either. Our line and wide receivers coaches are going through that too. It shows too.
Who have been our standouts? Willie Byrn, Joshua Stanford, Kalvin Cline, Trey Edmunds (to a lesser degree). All of them freshmen. Who have been our habitual worst offenders? Thomas, Coles, Knowles (to a lesser degree). All of them upperclassmen. Thomas and Co. aren't going to unlearn 3-4 years of bad coaching instantaneously. I would say that Thomas was probably at the blank slate phase at the beginning of the season, if not still lingering in the O'Cainspring era of coaching. He's shown improvement most of the season, and had a rather big sized flop yesterday (it was a pretty big flop). I would assume that him and Lefty are starting to get into the hard stuff now. He can't learn fast enough what he needs to know, so when he's focusing on the new, he's gonna mess up the old. Do we stop trying to coach him into a better quarterback because it's working decently enough? I don't think so.
After yesterday, we're 2-2 with wins against Duke and Marshall, losses against Duke and Cincinnati
Could someone compile a list of games that we have played in orange pants for me? My guess is we lost most of them.
Look, Frank Beamer was never going to bring in a rock star offensive genius. Scot Loeffler was the right guy to Beamer because they share a football philosophy (which many would probably argue is dated). We are foolish to think he was going to come in here and get the program right on track in the limited time he had before this season. It is going to take a considerable amount of time before we have an offense that actually looks like what Loeffler and Beamer WANT to have. I think it's unfair to cut him down after 8 games. I also think that a lot of people are overreacting here after ONE (somewhat unexpected) loss. Yes, I realize we lost to Duke, but Duke is not the terrible team we're all accustomed to. Cutcliffe is a terrific ball coach, and he has that team trending in the right direction. It's taken David Cutcliffe(who is somewhat of a QB guru himself) 5 years to field an offense that is capable of scoring 13 points on an elite defense. The mess he had to clean up is probably comparable to what Loeffler has to deal with. Think about that for a minute.
It's a huge disappointment but we need to see how the team recovers before we really start to lose our shit. I'm willing to give Loeffler benefit of the doubt here. I think we'd all agree that the previous staff left him a pretty huge mess to clean up. If our offense is still ranked in/near the 100s in 3 years, then I think it will be time to be concerned. But for now, calm down....we've played 8 games. Not a single one of them has been pretty. We should be happy that we're already bowl eligible before the end of October. There aren't a whole lot of teams that can say that. S.Beamer is absolutely right when he says the VT fans have been spoiled. Most schools would be pretty happy with a 6-2 record and still in control of their destiny for a conference championship berth. And we're doing it in a rebuilding year with a completely different offensive coaching staff. I don't think we have anything to complain about.......yet
stepping off soap box now
Go Hokies! Beat BC
Mmmm... Kicker.
Reality'd
People need to stop with this NFL talk. Training camp invite at best.
If your favorite NFL team were (hypothetically) QB'ed by Blaine Gabbert, how high would you draft LT? History is not kind on college QB's with poor accuracy working out in the pros. More worrisome to me is the total lack of development in scanning the field and working through progressions. Almost every time it's: stare down primary and then scramble or launch it regardless of the coverage.
I could look this up myself but I would rather bring it up here...who was no. 19 on defense I guess filling in because kyle was out? Also I had to mute the volume watching the game, I could not stand listening to that announcing team. Anthony Exhume