Recent Comments
Call it a rivalry if you want, it is more of a partnership! VT Football Trailers > any other teams.
Mrs. French says TKP needs to take us to the Bama game next year, with a trip to the Sizzler thrown in.
I think that the most suprising thing I noticed in watching film of the secondary is how deep the Hokie corners play off opposition wide receivers most of the time, especially with the reputation of being a pressure defense. Even back to the mid-90's, corners who are not in press coverage give a 7 yard cushion at the line of scrimmage, and Foster counts on those corners to fly up to the ball on bubble screens and quick throws and make the tackle for minimum game.
Even more amazing is the lack of success that other teams have had throwing the ball short against the soft coverage, but Clemson made mincemeat of it in the 3rd quarter last year. Against guys like Hopkins and Watkins, I think the Hokies will have to decide to press them and hope that Fuller and Exum are athletic enough to turn and run with them. It is a difficult task indeed.
Great work as always french... Amazing detail..
how can i archive this thread and possibly engrave it into my brain because it's the greatest thing of all f'ing time!!!
that is all.
Project starting o-line combined weight: 1,522 average 304.4 across. I like a slimmed down Becton, he's going to have to move at LT.
Nick Acree at 321... If it's all muscle, then damn I hope he picks up tackle real quick.
Smaller Bruce Taylor? Intentional, or did he drop some pounds while rehabbing?
Bigger defensive ends:
Have never seen Manning play but 155 is way too small. And Exum at 224 is way too big. Afraid he'll have trouble running with the faster guys.
Do you ever sleep?! This is stellar work!
I think somebody deserves himself a TKP bonus check at the end of the year.
thanks for the research. loved seeing the dl get freakishly big as well as md and coles.
manning worries the HELL out of me @ 155...
27 mo days!
It is easy to say that the last 40 seconds of the first half of the 93 Independance Bowl were the most important 40 seconds in Hokie football history. A defensive TD and a kickblock led to 14 points and keyed a route over Indiana to give Beamer his first bowl win and only the second bowl win in the history of the program. Watch the player's excitement!
http://youtu.be/1Sw_Rakxwb4?t=31m52s
Because Michael ran the wrong way, and Temple stunk too much to take advantage. He did it again on the first drive 4th down play against Florida State. That was the loudest I ever cussed a Tech player until the David Wilson backwards run against Michigan with 3rd place being the DeAngelo Hall shudder against Health Miller.
Ryan Shuman was the number 2 left tackle in the spring. I assume that hasn't changed.
DeShazo to Bryan Still in '93 for 70 yards against the twerps.
or
Touchdown Tommy Edwards from Deshazo for 55 yards in the 63-21 drubbing of Pitt in '93
Michael's "everyone go right" call on the second play against Temple when he went left 53 yards for a td without anyone close to him.
Kicker
1. Cody Journell
2. Brooks Abbott
Punter
1. Hunter Windmuller
2. A.J. Hughes
Abott, Windmuller, and Hughes are all freshman.
He's a work in progress, learning offensive tackle since last fall. Strong as a bull. but didn't have the technique/instincts to play d-line, hopefully by the time he's a senior he can be a contributor on o-line. I sometimes have to remember he's just a redshirt sophomore.
Devin Vandyke and Nigel Williams will continue their rehab and not be counted in Tech's 105 man camp roster.— Beamer Ball (@Beamer_Ball) August 6, 2012
I think the original info was a typo from BeamerBall.com (MUST CREDIT BEAMERBALL.COM).
but whats the latest on Nick Acree?
Who is the #2 LT? And what does the rest of tackle depth look like?
Yeah, can't wait to see how that goes after a few weeks!
Sorry if it was unclear what these rankings actually were. :-)
Interesting ideas about predicting pre-season polls. That's not necessarily what I'm interested in going after, but I don't see why Google Prediction (or even any other machine-learning/decisioning suite) couldn't be used to attempt to predict human polls, as well.
What I'm really interested to see is how accurate it is in predicting games this season after about 4 or 5 weeks worth of games have been played.
Thanks for the comments!
"last year's teams"...I thought you were trying to predict pre-season polls at first.
At any rate, what I meant is that "Past performance does not guarantee future results" is the footnote at the bottom of a mutual fund prospectus, but it should be at the bottom of the pre-season polls too. If you were trying to predict pre-season polls, the most relevant performance data was from last season, with each subsequent season counting less and less in step with player turnover.
Once you got completely out of an incoming senior class, say around 4 seasons ago, all that performance data is relevant in an institutional sense i.e. coaching staff experience, athletic department revenue, etc. 8 years does seem a reasonable time horizon to factor in some of these things, and looking at last year's final results, I do agree with your approach.
Go out even farther (probably way beyond 8 years) and you are starting to allow performance factors that were created by a vastly different set of rules to disproportionately impact your current poll. So my point was that the human brain does this at a subconscious level in some way, allowing teams that have "tradition" to creap into a pre-season poll by including all those other years. I bet Google could be used with a sufficiently large data set and proper weightings to predict pre-season polls.
I am also very high on Chris Mangus. He played in the same conference as Keith Marshall, the #1 RB in the nation last year, and had more rushing yards and
touchdowns. Idk if that means anything but I'm really excited to see how he does here.
Tweedy should come in as the starter. If he can chase down & make a tackle on Lamar Miller on the last play of the game, it shows his ability to make clutch plays when needed (and that was the clutchiest of clutch).
cornerback situation concerns me a lot .. and manning still at 155 doesn't help .. i have to wonder what the REAL backup plan is. i'd think jarrett or bonner would fill in at corner if need be with someone stepping in at fs or rover .. just no depth at corner at all really. who knows if tookes will be ready .. the rest of those guys ... hmm