I'm going to leave this article here and open for discussion, but Josh raises several valid points. This post game quote was not just a jab, but a huge kick to the groin area for the offensive performance yesterday from one of the greatest Defensive Coordinators in the country.
CFB Country: Bud Foster Should Leave Virginia Tech
Just how bad has it been this year? Just ask Foster:
Probably our second season at Murray Statewe went 4-7, and that was the year we gave up about 13 points a game on defense, but we only scored about 10 points a game. So, that was one I could remember probably our worst season that weve had. I know it was our worst season we had at Murray State.
You guys catch that jab?
that was the year we gave up about 13 points a game on defense, but we only scored about 10 points a game.
"He's covered the offense's ass for 20 years"
Speculation and rumors are becoming more prevalent. But this week, it's about one thing: Beating UVA. Things will fall as they may after the season is over. But, damn I hope we are able to keep Foster.
Also - please, Virginia Tech, never wear the orange pants ever again.
Comments
Foster definitely deserves better than what he's had in recent memory
Honestly, I would be devastated, but not surprised, if Bud took a job elsewhere in the next year or two. I will silently be rooting for him wherever he ends up but he has literally been VT's only saving grace for the last decade+
Without Bud, VT will fall so much further from grace than we have today....The games that we HAVE won this season have been mostly due to Bud's defense...if we were trotting out an average ACC defense all year we might be looking at 1-10 or 2-9 right now
But, the night is darkest before the dawn, as they say. I'm trying to stay optimistic. When Loeffler was hired I figured we ought to give him at least 3 years to prove himself. He did come into one of the ugliest messes in the country and we knew it wouldn't be fixed over night. I'm just concerned because it doesn't look like there has been a lot of progress but maybe we'll lose to UVA (night is darkest) and then come out and surprise folks offensively next year with a big nasty Oline and a new signal caller (dawn)
one can only hope
Maybe we can get a plane to pull a banner before the UVA game: "Save the Bud"
It seems to me that now is the time to announce Bud as the successor to Frank.
RIGHT NOW.
We need a shot in the arm. And as French pointed out, we have a defensive heavy recruiting class lined up.
If Foster is the man, we will at least have half of the equation covered with the new coaching administration.
Not too many people are foolish enough to want to step up to replace a legend. The NEXT guy - the one that replaces the guy who replaced the legend - is the dream spot.
Maybe Foster can take the reigns, bring in a great offensive staff with a young coordinator that would be poised to take over when Foster hangs it up. That would be the ideal situation in my mind.
This^^^ x1000!!! Foster has been the best thing about Virginia Tech since at the very least 2001 (Michael Vick's first year gone), and arguably since he was promoted to DC.
This came up a few years back when head coach in waiting deals were all the rage and I think it was pretty much settled that such an announcement would violate Virginia public employee (which a coach at a state school would be) hiring practices.
I for one am SHOCKED Josh Parcell would write a poorly researched click bait post based on nothing more than reading between the lines of a post-game quote. Shocked. That was a half-assed Clay Travis impersonation.
Foster loves Blacksburg, the NRV and Virginia Tech. It's his home. He's not leaving because the offense failed to score points against Wake Forest.
In my estimation he would leave Blacksburg for 1 of 2 reasons:
1. He gets a Power 5 head coaching job.
2. He isn't Frank's successor (and even then I'm not convinced he's gone).
Thank you for once again being our calming safety blanket in our Sunday's of panic.
Two thumbs up...!
I don't think he leaves VT for a lateral position.
Only serious consideration is. HC.
There are a lot of HCs we could bring in that Bud would want to stay for.
I honestly don't think it would take a new HC, I think it would take a new OC.
yeah I'd like to think that they would be hand-in-hand...what's the point of bringing in a new HC if he's not going to be bringing in the type of OC that would keep BF around? I'm about certain that IF it came down to it, Whit would want to line up the HC and OC together and go over everything with the board and with Bud before making any moves...
Insert wild-haired history channel guy with the word journalism across the bottom meme
Yep....should get some legs for this one lol....
Teamwork!
home run
I think the list of programs that Bud would leave VT for is smaller than that (I believe I read in Frank's book that Bud turned down the offer to become Pitt's HC...Pitt went with Chryst instead). IMHO, he's only leaving for maybe 20-25 programs.
Bud will only leave Tech after Frank leaves Tech. Bud's not seriously looking for a P5 head coaching position, because he is too content here. Oh, sure, he'd interview for the Florida job, or other top P5 programs. But he's not getting calls for those jobs, and hasn't gotten calls for those jobs in a while. His last shot was Clemson, which I think he actually wanted strongly, because of so many similarities to VT. Vandy wanted to talk to him, and he refused. Bud's set the bar so high for job consideration one has to wonder if he did that to make it more convenient to stay with Frank. So let's forget about him being serious about looking for a head coaching position anywhere except Merryman.
As for him leaving out of frustration? Then why didn't he leave years ago? He's not going anywhere. He wants to follow Frank, and that is it. I think ideally, he might even like to retire with Frank, but the age disparity doesn't really work for that to occur.
The only rational possibility for Bud to leave is that he doesn't get named as Frank's successor. Then he might go elsewhere for whatever job he could find for the next 5-6 years, before retiring & returning to Bburg. Until that (his not getting Frank's job) happens, he's staying here.
I'll take misinterpreting quotes for $600, Alex.
I'll take "The Rapists" for $300
That's "Therapists" Mr. Connery.
I'll take "ape tit"...
That's a petit, NEVERMIND!
InDooRs!
I loved our unis yesterday. The orange pants and white helmet with the orange VT looked awesome imo.
We're 0-2 in that combo
Pretty sure it's the first time we've ever worn it (white, white, orange).
That's what was reported on hokiesports.com , that the was the first time worn.
I'm pretty sure Bud has said numerous times that he would not make a lateral move, IF he did leave VT it would be for a head coaching job. I'm with the writer of this article tho on his point that Bud should be VT's next head coach, I'm all for that
I would like to see Foster reverse engineer an offense...VT style!
If I was admin at VT, Foster would help in the new OC search.
Kurt Roper will likely be looking for work this year. Just a thought.
While I do think that quote is a little bit misinterpreted, I do not think Josh is off with his opinions. He's 100% correct in saying that Foster deserves a better offense to match what he puts on the field every season.
Don't get it twisted: neither this article or I WANT Bud to leave. That's crazy talk. Josh Parcell doesn't even really think he WILL leave, this article is simply saying that in the team's current condition, Bud Foster deserves better.
Unlike others here, thanks for actually discussing his opinion, not the author himself.
whit will get this right.
Bud Foster has done his job. He deserves the same from the offense. But Bud is a VT guy and he should stay to right the ship. VT needs him in this trying time.
Am I the only one who logs into TKP expecting to see a headline that reads "VT schedules press conference at 2:00 pm"?
I think this very well may be Beamers last game. He has seen the Paterno/Bowden wind down. He knows he is already done significant damage to his own legacy. Firing Loeffler and bringing in another OC is just kicking the can. I think Frank knows that the Loeffler-led coaching changes would be his last chance....if it didn't work, he's done....and it hasn't worked.
He has always said he won't have a Jeter last lap. He will just hang it up. If he's sure this is it, and he announces it this week, that may be the kick we need to win this last game.
It would be great to see him go out with a win vs. UVa and both streaks intact. Then, Foster picks up the reins and brings in a big-time OC hire with the money we would be saving by paying Foster less than we do Beamer,
No. Beamer is not leaving until after the 2016 season. He knows the talent on the team and has repeated the fact that he thinks we'll be really good next year. We'll see. But there is no way he leaves this year. They said this year was going to be up and down. It has. It has really been nothing short of what he said it would be. After the OSU game everyone thought we had the ability to run the table. We have the talent just not the experience and execution ability.....plus as much as everyone doesn't want to hear "injuries", we have had a crap ton of them. I mean top 3 RB's go down?? OL injuries, D injuries. I don't expect Frank to quit and Bud isn't going anywhere.
They originally were high on next year... Until they realized what they had at OL and saw what they really had with Brewer and then the focus shifted to 2016 very quickly and quietly mid-season. Now? After that game on Saturday? I wouldn't be shocked if we're now eyeing 2017 at the earliest, and should we whiff on Sweat and Settle it'll like be even longer than that.
A lot of damage can be done if Beamer sticks around to the end of 2016 at the rate we are going. A lot. Right now the risk of keeping him around completely outweighs the benefits of keeping this staff intact in hopes things turn around.
I'm also guessing the reason you say 2016 is because you think he's earned the right to coach the Bristol game. While normally I would agree, what would his legacy be if he coached that game and we saw an offensive performance like we saw against Wake? Especially if keeping him around to coach that game was the only reason he was still on staff?
I don't recall anyone being high on 2015 prior to the season, I was always under the impression that 2016 was the target. I think it makes sense to think of 2016 as the target, as a new offensive staff was going to require a few years to undo the damage that was done to that side of the ball. I remember hearing the coaches talking about how 'the future is now', though. I refuse to understand this, as if this is the future then I'm off the bandwagon.
We're seeing a lot of new, talented players getting reps this year, another recruiting class and another year of experience should do us very well, so that by 2016 the current crop is in their junior or senior years. I didn't expect us to be this bad while rebuilding. But it is still a rebuilding job, one that should take four years to complete. We're in year 2. 2 years from now, we'll be able to judge for sure.
But there are two things that stop me from getting too worked up about this season and the massive amount of disappointment I've experienced in the last couple months.
1) Of all the older talent and non-talent we had on the team, a lot of it is getting moved out for the new kids.
Malleck? Eh, here's some Hodges.
Stanford? Whatever, have a Ford.
Edmunds? Only after you've had your McKenzie, and finish your Marshawn first.
With a side of Teller and Conte, your plate is replenished. Needs a little seasoning, though.
2) I don't think we have senior leadership on this team. I think it will be next year or, more likely, the year after before we get the senior leadership we'll need to be successful. When does that line up? 2016.
Beamer: Hokies could face 'growing pains,' chance for greatness in 2015
Beamer was openly talking about how 2015 was going to be THE year we finally saw VT football back to greatness during the media days this year, and directly before the season kicked off. And it was for the same reasons you laid out above. Everything should have been coming together just right for that run, and we were going to be good going forward.
Then, quietly that completely changed to 2016 being the year, as if all that talk about 2015 never happened. Good thing its still well documented by everyone reporting on Beamer's own words preseason and the early parts of this year.
And, for what it's worth, ESPN mentioned during the Miami game that 2015 was "the year" for VT. Media definitely has elaborated on the high expectations for 2015.
Thank you for that dose of reality. There are multiple other media reports that verified the same talking points during the pre-season and up until about midseason as well. Despite how the conversation has changed by Frank & his ultra-faithful followers, early on, we were told 2015 was going to be the 'special season', the return to glory year. Now the time frame has shifted, and we're supposed to keep giving Frank more time, until 2016, evidently so he can have his Bristol moment.
When we produce similar results in 2015 to this year, will the time frame again be moved, to 2017? That's the problem, for far too long, there has been a stubborn reluctance among the uber-fans of Frank to hold him accountable. The blame always gets shifted elsewhere. So here we are...
I see your references, but don't remember this ever being the common perception. Maybe he was hopeful Loeffler would turn it around in a season. Maybe he hoped for 'everyone comes along' a little too optimistically.
Whatever the case was, I'm not going to trust the coachspeak, and I don't think the average fan does, either. We've been harping on the same points for the whole season now, in that it takes a new coach or coordinator a few years to get his guys in and get the system working. We knew we lacked talent back when Logan Sneak was our best play call (2012), suffered through a second year of that (2013) where Loeffler had to do something with the players he had, recruit, then had to make massive transitions to new players all over the offense, bumping the more experienced players out. So we didn't have experience or talent, destroying Beamer's predictions.
All of this was plainly evident when we made the transition to Loeffler before the 2013 season. At this point, I'd hope we'd have improved more. I said we're in year 2 of a four-year transition, but the overall lack of progression in building a roster and scheme didn't start until this year, so maybe it should be better to view it as year 1.
As for the goal being 'quietly' shifted to 2016 (spitballing here), maybe Frank realized that the players he had weren't progressing in skill or leadership like he would have liked and didn't want to throw people under the bus because they wouldn't be able to bring us back to our regularly scheduled win totals.
Either way, I guess my point is that Frank's optimism was decoupled from my expectations a long time ago, and so I never bought the idea of 2015 (and, as should be apparent now, I would have thought it foolish of anyone to buy that timeline).
edit: looks like you've answered below. whoops!
i understand (like most fans, i hope) that rebuilding is a process. i think 3-4 years reserved for rebuilding is reasonable. but it is getting increasingly harder to justify that time frame for scot loeffler. he needs to give the fans something, anything-- that shows we can get where we need to be at the end of 4 years.
the fans have been hungry to see even the tiniest glimpses of improvement in year 2. i'm not seeing that. i'm seeing significant offensive regression.
Yeah, I can understand needing 4 years to establish greatness, but it shouldn't take 2 to put something that resembles a football offense on the field against the (previously) worst team in the ACC.
And no, it's not just that one game. Loeffler and his offense have looked just terrible more often than not this year. Personally, I think that's unacceptable. You shouldn't need a squad full of your own guys to make SOMETHING happen.
I hear you, and share your disappointment in the current state of the offense.
I mentioned in a reply to Alum07, above, that I'm starting to think of this as year one in the rebuild. Let's call it the redshirt rebuilding season. Last year was just a, 'get anything you can out of these players' year, so little reconstruction occurred. It seemed to be more along the lines of dissecting the players that would move forward with us. Maybe last year was an initial deconstruction year. Redshirt rebuilding.
Year two, we have recruits, are starting a lot of young players, and are regressing. Seemingly a lot. I hate that we didn't score a point against Wake, I think this means we're at our lowest offensive point right now (we'll see how long that situation persists, hopefully only last Saturday, but I'm not in the mood to be optimistic about this right now). This is the first rebuilding year, and it's going poorly. So what's the plan for next year?
Rinse, repeat. We need another crop of freshmen to get in here, find the right positions for them, and get them game action. This will lead to more growing pains. Probably lots more. Maybe a few of this year's true freshmen are ready to contribute as redshirt freshmen. Surely there will be at least a few. And we'll probably see a few true freshmen come in next year and get immediate playing time. And we'll make mistakes, sometimes it will be ugly, and we'll probably be saying the same things next year that we're saying now.
And that will be year 3 (!), but really only the second year of the rebuild. Still, if improvement isn't shown next year, then we can start to say that things might not work out. I'm still a proponent of the four year plan (overall, even with a redshirt rebuilding year included plus three rebuilding years).
So, 2016. Book it. Back to ten wins or bust.
I think Bud's window to leave is gone. He will retire at VT. He is getting to old to start something now. Not to mention I don't know if he is true HC material. He deserves it sure, but not sure he would be necessarily good at it.
Yes, see, "Bradley, Tom"
David Cutcliffe says hi
Except Cutcliffe took a job that no one wants. Bud won't take over a Duke level program, which would probably jump at the opportunity to take a coach of Foster's level in a heartbeat. He's getting too old for the jobs that he wants, if he even really wants them anymore.
Cutcliffe was 45 years old when he was hired as head coach at Ole Miss. He was fired five years later and worked as an assistant for two programs before getting his second head coaching position at Duke at age 54. Bud Foster is 55 years old. That is pretty old for a first head coaching job, being at a Power 5 program.
We all love Bud, but he will never be a HC or more importantly the HC for VT. At this point right now, it is about the alumni base getting restless with what they are seeing on the field (or lack thereof). When the money stops coming in, you can bet your bottom dollar there will be change. CFB, IMO, will not be coaching much longer, and we will see someone new from the outside come in to take over. Who knows, and will most likely keep Bud as the DC.
Foster even gave encouragement to Brewer on that last drive while none of the offenssive coaches even came over to him. Foster puts his heart and soul into this team which is why I think they should give him the head coaching reigns now. He's done his homework, his got a schedule, he's well prepared. If he becomes the coach, he would definitely promote a guy to D-coordinator and bring in at least one more guy to run the defense or one of its units. You look at FSU, they had to push bowden out and 2-3 years later Jimbo win a national championship. I think Bud for head coach needs to happen soon.
"Foster puts his heart and soul into this team"
Fact. Preach.
But that alone...the effort...or maybe even the loyalty, or the dedication, the time served...
None of that, while surely admirable, should be enough to hand a guy the reigns.
But the results sure as hell are reason enough in my book.
Think about it this way- it's like my sister..she pisses me off but she's family. If Bud didn't have this O to piss him offhe might not be the BEST DC EVER!
In Bud we Trust!