Reasonable Expectations for Fuente

This is one of the darkest moments of Hokies football in the last 20 years, if not the darkest of all. For one thing, it is the offseason and we are all dying to watch some football. We are also coming off our worst season in a very long time, and our current recruiting class is ranked abysmally low. And many are wondering what's going on with Bud's contract.

There is a fair amount of optimism for the upcoming season because we will be returning so many contributors and a favorable schedule looks to be coming at the perfect time, but the current feeling among many fans, as I have read it, is a deep sense of disappointment in our recruiting and 2018 performance.

With that said, I'd like to mention a fairly likely scenario for all you jaded Hokies fans to consider:

What is a reasonable expectation for the 2019 season? Some are putting the O/U at 8.5 wins. In my opinion that's a little low and I would take the over. It's not incredibly far fetched to see us winning 9 or 10 games this year. This is an optimistic take, but not an unreasonable take (at least in my estimation).

The 2020 season could build on that or stay about there around 9 wins. That's right on the line of winning the coastal or being in the conversation late in the year. Again, I know this is an optimistic take, but it is also reasonable when you consider Fuente's success with experienced talent in his first two seasons. In 2020 he will have a comparable amount of experienced talent.

What is a reasonable expectation for this year's recruiting class? Well clearly it will be a very low overall ranking due to the size of our class, and even a mediocre average rating looking at where we stand with a bunch of guys now. If we have the 9 to 10 win season mentioned above, that will bring a fresh excitement to our coaches recruiting pitch and hopefully that will help us land a few more players, perhaps a couple low 4-stars and a few higher 3-stars. We'll still finish with a low ranking and a mediocre average but is that the end of the world for us? I don't think it is all that bad. Sure there may be spots that we will need to sure up in future classes, but an isolated year of poor recruiting on a small class won't be completely debilitating.

The following year's recruiting class will probably be around where we usually are in the mid twenties. Maybe we finish a little higher with a larger class, but it probably wouldn't be much higher than 20. What does that do for our outlook? Well it puts us about where we have been over the years. With that kind of recruiting I think Fuente could consistently field a team that competes for the coastal title very year, winning it every few years and getting a shot at an ACC title. We would probably have a ranking that hovers between 10 and 25, with occasional dips into the top 10.

Of course, we all want our program elevated beyond that, and I'm sure there are coaches out there who could do that in Blacksburg, but with Fuente we have a guy who appears to be happy to stay in Blacksburg for years to come and who can (in my opinion) sustain the aforementioned level of success. Many fans will be dissatisfied with this level of success, but when I consider the likelihood of hiring a coach who might do better than Fuente, I'd much rather stick with who we have and not risk getting a coach who lowers our program.

Watching the Hokies win 9 to 11 games a year, compete for ACC championships every few years, and dip into the national conversation on occasion is a blast for me as a fan. Though the state of the program doesn't feel great right now when considering our recruiting and our previous season, I'm still expecting to enjoy a high level of success from Hokies football, and I think that's a reasonable and grounded expectation.