Recent Comments
I still think Holmes oculd be a decent rb if he wasn't hamstrung by all that E-W running he was doing last year. Perhaps get him in a better scheme and he'll be more successful. It's a shame the fanbase has completely given up on him.
I have several thoughts about the changes that's going on.
Stinespring may have not been given autonomy probably due to his lack of experience in play calling, and Beamer have had him on short leash. If that is the case, I have to wonder why it took 10 years for Beamer to see the light. Anyway, I don't want to continue to bashing Stinespring, I just wanted to offer a thought about it. Between Leoffler, Grimes, and Morehead, I think they are coming from a background where execution, attention to details, and comprehensive experiences are extremely helpful.
I realize that Morehead have never had a full-time coaching experience, but let's take a honest look. Morehead studied under Harbaugh, yes? Morehead worked closely with Pep Hamilton, yes? Morehead already have made his mark, and I think he is going to be a rising star.
On Nick Acree, it seem to me the coaches could never decide what to do with him when he came, and he moved just about everywhere. Newsome never really developed him, and Grimes must have saw something in Acree that Newsome didn't see. If Acree can prove he can hold up against bull rush, he would help in pass protection, but if he doesn't have the feet for a pulling/trap play, I wonder if Grimes will rotate him with someone else who can do that. Maybe I'm thinking wrong.
I am really excited about Mark Shuman and Gibson finally getting the first team crack because that's something French was riding Newsome all season long last year. I'm telling you, folks, Grimes is already having me dreaming big like a kid in a candy store.
I have to admit I am puzzled at the Jermone Wright move to fullback. He's 5'11" and 223 pounds. I thought he would be used as bruising running back, but perhaps he would be used as a battering ram. As French noted on Twitter, the one question is, can Wright seal block? I also asked French, and have yet to hear something, if Leoffler would be calling more plays like fullback dive and fullback blast.
I have to say that hearing Beamer saying he want to make Tech the toughest team he ever had, it sounds like he is returning to the 1990s root of power football that mowed opponents down with hard-nose running and stout defense.
If, and only if, the offense and defense are that tough, perhaps special teams will rise from the ashes again.
Definitely excited about spring.
The key logo is definitely our new brand. mstrawther designed it, and I think he did a wonderful job. These are some of the design concepts that he incorporated (his words, not mine).
- The Key Play logo signifies Virginia Tech everything -- athletics, community, etc.
- The single key signifies 3rd down on defense -- commonly referred to as "the key play" in Lane Stadium
- The key hole represents a football, which is the site's main topic of discussion
- The right side of the key represents the state of Virginia in which the school plays in.
- The details and cutouts inside the key are abstract representations of the highways that lead to Blacksburg.
- Blacksburg is represented by a whiter and brighter glow on the key in the Virginia-state part of the logo.
I'm unsure what the copyright/trademark restrictions are, but between my actual full-time job, site updates, and publishing content, I didn't have time to investigate. I purposely stayed away from things that I assumed to be trademarked or copy written, like what you mentioned above.
The great majority of our new readers are driven here organically or socially. They aren't sent here randomly. When they come from another blog/message board, Google, Twitter, or Facebook there's already a context. Our returning users, know what we're all about.
I don't disagree with adding in more orange, or doing more subtle things to enhance the Hokie experience. If you have any suggestions, I'd be glad to listen to them.
Thanks for the feedback.
I agree with Bar1990 on not having any Orange or VT logos on the site. Orange was used a lot in the old format and I think that's one of the things that makes it seem like a different site.
Other things that I've noticed are that I'm not being redirected to the mobile site on my Droid 2, I usually use Dolphin and I switched the user agent from Desktop back to Android, but I'm still seeing the normal layout except for the banner not scrolling with the page. The other issue I've noticed is that whenever I upvote something it takes me to a page showing what appears to be the code for the turkey leg adding.
Actually, this is likely just simple physics.....
for every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction.
We've moved so many TE to OL, that the tide is now moving out and going in the opposite direction. Change is good.
Oi, I just got a really weird error and I'm not sure if it's on my end or yours... I took a screen shot, but wondering if you need me to go figure out my flickr password to put it up or not.
Long story short, a little pop-up screen yelled at me that "An AJAX HTTP request terminated abnormally"
Kind of agree with sparko. I just miss the look of the previous site, mainly the title bar at the top of the page. To me, it's like a big time brand changing their logo, I just don't (yet) associate the new look with The Key Play. When I go to TheKeyPlay.com, it doesn't immediately strike me as a Virginia Tech Sports forum, but appears much more generic.
That being said, perhaps I'm just not used to the new format. It does work noticeably smoother on my iPad.
Anyway, thanks for all the hard work and upkeep you do around here. The content here is BY FAR the best of any VT blog/forum (TSL, Espn, gobblercountry etc.)
EDIT: Going back to how the new layout relates to The Key Play "Brand." There's no orange on the homepage (I'm all for #allmarooneverything, but Burnt orange is beautiful too!!!). There's also not one VT symbol, no VT logos, no lunchpails, no hokie birds, not even the words "Virginia Tech". I assume there's some legal issues you're battling here, but there needs to be something that screams at a first time visitor and lets them know that this is a Virginia Tech blog! Find someone random, not a VT fan, show them the new layout, and see how long it takes them to figure out what the site is about. With the last layout, it was immediate. This layout... Not so sure, wouldn't be surprised if it took the person a few minutes. That's not what you want.
I don't mean to shit on anybody's hard work, just trying to offer constructive criticism. Hope it wasn't too harsh.
Andy Bitter also mentioned that at least some of the players that we have buried deep at RB come fall will get moved to other positions. What other positions are they likely to be moved to? I assume it's probably on a person by person basis and depends on what they played in high school, but any theories?
Maybe some special teams action...?
Looks like most of these are depth moves more than anything.
It wouldn't be too hard to add the extra 15 pounds or so that he would need to be a FB. Oglesby really wasn't all that big either, which is why he was mostly a backup FB. I think the coaching staff is still sold on Holmes at RB even if the fan base isn't.
This should happen!
Did you just add support for more browsers? Using IE8 at work and all of a sudden I can now see the logo. Not sure if it's a glitch or something intentional. I saw where you said below that you updated the menu bar to allow for larger clickable areas so maybe this was wrapped in there too. I haven't noticed any other major changes though other than the logo.
You're welcome. It was a great suggestion.
- Fixed, it annoyed me too.
- Never seen that one before...
- The schedule is live and will be updated with more information as it becomes available.
Thank you for the constructive feedback.
It doesn't surprize me that Acree has been moved inside. I was watching the 6am workouts on BeamerBall.com and he does not have the quickest feet. He is just not that quick. I would not trust him to defend the edge. BUT, he is strong. When it comes to above the waist the man is an Ox. He topped the list on bench press and push jerk but not so much on power clean and box squats. Power clean is a great measure for lineman. Augie Contie is going to have a quicker snap from his stance at the line to the inital push once the play has started. Acree, not so much. Although, on the inside, when he does start pushing we will see some hard pushing. He is just not quick enough to play to the outside o-line.
I saw the subject of this thread and thought "Sweet! Joe has made plans for a TKP social the weekend of the Spring Game!"
I think this would be my sole complaint with the site as well. I'm a big fan of the banner at the top of the old site. I felt like it was a great way to announce what the site is and it's easily recognizable for new and returning viewers alike. I guess the key just doesn't have the same eye-catching capability. I wouldn't mind seeing both incorporated in some way.
Is Holmes big enough to be an FB? Can he block well enough?
Very excited about all of this. I also read that Der'Woun Greene was in the mix for CB. Wasn't he just moved to WR?
A little surprised we didn't see Michael Holmes moving to FB (a la Josh Oglesby). Maybe it will still happen if he doesn't work himself into the top 2 of the RB pecking order.
He didn't have a subject line. There was a bug that was displaying "subject text" in bold that I just squashed. This is off topic from the thread, but I removed the subjects from the comments because I found only 19% of total comments actually used them. When a user left the subject field blank, the cms would automatically populate it by take a snippet of the body text and making it the subject. It was very redundant, so I decided to kill them off. However, some people did use the subject, and for historical purposes, I'm injecting the old subjects back into old comment bodies. There was a bug in the code that was trying to display the subject (an automatic snippet, because it's been disabled) in certain instances on new comments.
If you want a subject, just use the bold button above, or manually with the HTML tags: <strong>Write Your Subject Here</strong> in the comment body.
If there was one thing that we lacked last year, it was toughness. With toughness comes thoroughness. We need to cross our t's and dot our i's. No more of Logan turning to the wrong side for a handoff fake, no more receiver miscommunications.
To beat Bama, we must do everything to the absolute max of our team's ability.
Does your brand new comment have a subject line like the comments from the old site used to have?... If so, how?
Aliens?...
Two positions, I think, could be wide receiver and defensive back. I think that Tech probably oversigned on running backs, so Beamer probably wants the coaches to spread out the "wealth," so to speak, and have them evaluate where they could fit. Beamer mentioned that Tech have many athletes, so I think he is hoping they can thrive else where.