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They'd be even better on my wallet than the ones at TOTS are, for sure.

Also, we're getting dangerously close to the too-thin-to-read level of nested replies again...

Haha I don't know if homemade rails are good for anyone

And I would love nothing more than that. We will have a top 5 or 10 defense in the country that's for damn sure. I think we have another bud in coach grimes. That man is foster like scary

Quadrouple Windsor!!

Thank you for the question. I am putting together so detailed diagrams and stills to add to this response later in the thread, but being at work I wanted to address this verbally quickly.

In defensive terminology, when the front six (for the Hokies, the mike, backer, stud end, nose, tackle, and end) call the strength of the formation, they are calling the running strength, which is the tight end side. The secondary calls the strength of the passing formation, which means the side with the maximum potential number of eligible receivers. MOST of the time, the strength of the passing formation is the tight end side. However, if an offense has a tight end to the left, and two receivers aligned in twins to the right, the twins side is the strength of the passing formation.

In the BASE defense, which is the 4-4 or the 46 look, the whip is always away from the strength of the passing formation. More often than not, that means he is also to the wide side of the field, because most teams (including the Hokies) run the football much more often to their strength, and the most teams also run much more heavily to the short (or boundary) side of the field. Therefore, on running downs when the Hokies are running their base fronts, the whip will be on the wide side of the field most of the time. If the formation is balanced, ie, one back with a tight end on each side and a flanker to each side, the whip is on the field side.

In the rare case where the offense lines up the strength of the passing formation to the wide side of the field, the whip will be on boundary side. It doesn't happen very often, although I have a couple of stills from the bowl game last year where this applies.

As discussed above, if the offense lines up either in a balanced formation or in strength, but motions the strength of the passing formation to the whip side, the whip and the rover do not switch sides (and if they tried, it would be a mess.) Instead, the whip takes on the rovers assignment for coverage on the inside receiving threat, or the free safety takes the rovers coverage role and the rover takes the free safety's assignment. Communication is critical (hence the early struggles with inexperienced guys at those spots last year.)

Last year also posed an additional ananomly. When the Hokies run their nickel defense, the whip comes off the field. The rover drops back as a two deep safety to the strength of the formation, and the nickel back covers the slot receiver to the passing strength of the formation.

When Michael Cole was injured, Foster made the decision to keep the whip on the field, but, and this is really important, the whip (mostly Alonzo Tweedy) was not actually playing the whip linebacker position. He was playing nickel corner. Therefore, when you see film where Jarrett (the rover) and Tweedy or Van Dyke are on the same side of the field and Jarrett is lined up deep in the secondary, they are actually in the nickel defense.

You see that on all the plays where the number 1 defense played against the shotgun formation in the spring. The backup defensive backs were on the white team, so for the purpose of the scrimmage, the whip (Van Dyke) again moved out to play the nickel corner. The whip must learn the nickel corner responsibilities because if a team comes out in a pro set where the Hokies have the whip on the field, and then spread out after no-huddle, Coach Foster does not have time to rotate the whip out in favor of a nickel corner.

Part of the "slow and methodical" part should also give most of the O time to catch a breather in between plays, so that we hopefully don't have to sub too much.

Please tell me you're NOT going to wear a tie like that, much less show up with that "I just sat on a corncob" look on your face!

Bama will be the first team to see the revamped offense. They can only prepare based on what they guess we will run and with tape of similar offenses. They will no doubt have people scouting us in B'burg. Will they be prepared or can we surprise them early? Will we be able to make adjustments and find success? I hope we punch 'em in the mouth and let them know they are in for a fight.

But the same principle applies to our offense against their D; our subs (especially the OL) have to do their job well.

That's not a bad thing...

The key there is for the offense to be able to slow the game down to keep the defense off the field as long as possible, so we don't need to sub as much. Granted, this requires an offense that is capable of a slow, methodic march downfield, which will be difficult enough in the first year with our new staff, not to mention against Bama's defense.

We have talent to hang with Bama

I'd qualify that statement....we have good talent on the first team....when Bama substitutes, the drop off usually is far less than the dropoff of their opponent's second team. This is where most teams run into problems. You have to sub someone in, and the Bama coaches immediately test them. I hope our subs do their job.