https://www.pff.com/news/college-football-ranking-all-127-fbs-offensive-...
4. VIRGINIA TECH
The Hokies boast some of the best tackle play in the country this season. Their tackle unit ranks first in the FBS in combined PFF grade and is anchored by Christian Darrisaw. The junior ranks first among Power Five tackles in PFF grade, at 95.6 — a mark that flirts with the best single-season grade a Power Five tackle has earned in the PFF College era. He has yet to allow a single sack or hit on 250 pass-blocking snaps and is hardly ever going to be out-leveraged in the run game. This dominant play has led him to earn a first-round grade on our most recent 2021 NFL Draft board. Luke Tenuta starts at right tackle for Virginia Tech, and while he isn't as good a pass-protector as Darrisaw, he's one of the best at the position in the run game. His 87.2 run-blocking grade ranks 10th-best in the FBS among qualifying right tackles.
Comments
#MakeTheMo... oh wait, this is good news right? And not about basketball? Sorry, I can't quite remember how to respond to that for football
one would expect a better performance from this offense against teams like Pitt and Liberty and Wake with such a good line....it's almost worse for the coaching that line is soo good and yet this offense is kinda meh
I've said it before, but the development of the OL is certainly an unimpeachable positive of this staff. Really really hope both these guys continue to play at a high level and cement themselves as mainstays at the next level.
It's why I'd be ok with Vice becoming interim HC
Hot take: Vice is closer to Mike Young than to Justin Fuente. I mean, can't you just see Vice cutting a press conference short to go get a cold beer?
Actually I see him bringing the beers to the press conference and pounding them while he regales the reporters with OL analogies of driving cattle back on his farm in Oklahoma.
Problem is that as good as it is now, in two years it will be bad again if we are not getting elite talent. OL is difficult to judge and you will have players that develop like Darrisaw, but we have much better odds with bringing in excellent transfers like Hoffman or better yet recruiting elite talent like Hudson and Nester
That's exciting to see, but it's also frustrating. The efficiency metrics and PFF and other analytics services love us, but it's not coming up on the score board. I think part of that is luck - it just feels like the defense and offense can't have a good day at the same time - but I think part of it is also poor play calls coming at in opportune times.
Felt that way since at least 2001
since 1990...
exactly -- tenuta can absolutely maul a fool on a given play and grade out excellently for it, but the QB power on 3rd and 5 still might not have gotten the first down against 8 men in the box
You think Vice will want to stick around after we give Fuente the boot?
Guessing Justin Fuente is not going to land a P5 job in December. So Vice can stay or he can coach the OL at Tulsa or a similar spot.
or...He gets poached to a legit P5 team that is impressed by his work on the OL here.
He's going to get Holman'd after the season is over, no way he drops down to G5.
Assuming CJF leaves, he's either going to be a G5 HC or a P5 OC. Personally, I'd love to see him as OC at an SEC school. Would be pretty cool to see what he could learn under Saban if Sark gets hired away.
Would be but I've heard Sark has had tons of offers and wants to wait it out for Saban to retire.
His salary, past addiction concerns, and comfy position at Bama (little criticism comes to a Bama OC who offenses like this) allow him to be extremely selective. If he took a prohibitively difficult job like SCar or similar I would shocked.
I bet he's looking around for other jobs. His stock is high right now with all these rankings on our line.
Couldn't put a drive together against liberty when it counted. Couldn't block Pitt consistently all game. Spreadsheets don't win games.
Couldn't pass the ball to get the 8th man out of the box.
If hooker has a legit pocket, he can pass. The OL is the key to the passing game. You can't have a great OL AND not be able to pass on 3rd down. Doesn't work that way.
The line does have a weakness pass blocking. But they are also usually facing more rushers than blockers. Hooker has to be able to punish the defense for manning up on the receivers. Instead he seems to wait for the wide open receiver to break out of the coverage, by then the pressure gets him.
Also, we gotta actually pass on 3rd and manageable from time to time instead of running a qb draw.
Sounds like our receivers need to get open sooner. Also need to more than a 1 look offense
ive always felt like it's two fold: our WRs dont get good separation (hence a lot of fades), and our QBs aren't good at anticipating and throwing a player open (or that the QB doesnt trust the receiver to make the right break at the right time into a throw)
Yep and yep. Receivers and scheme play their own part.
Double post. Go Hokies.
I think part of this is that Hooker knows his accuracy isn't elite and the radius of where the ball ends up vs where he intends it to go... and so he's waiting for a big window between his receiver and the defender to open up, such that he can be confident that if the ball ends up behind the WR it won't be going directly into the trailing defender's hands...
This observation is astute. He is Inaccurate. His best passes were off play action when we were running well. Teams realized this, adjusted to shut down the run, and we cratered.
Only partly related, but I'd love to see some analysis on Hooker's time to throw. He appears to process and execute things slowly. There are so many times where you can see him look at the open guy and then wait a beat before cutting it loose. He does not appear to have a good sense of urgency and takes way more sacks than he should.
I'm going to have to disagree. Hooker really wasn't (isn't) a good pocket passer this year. He has thrown several literally in the dirt, and several directly to the other team or way over the head of the receiver. His lack of drop back passing has paralyzed this offense - moreso that the Oline, and (hot take)...moreso than Corny. And yes, I know it's unfashionable to criticize the players, but that's the hard truth from my vantage point.
Tend to agree here. We're limited in what we can do by the qb position, we simply can't really run straight drop back passing. Most of our completed passes are off of PA where there isn't a defender in the zip code or bombs down field where you don't have to be as precise. Everyone loves to complain about QB sweeps on 3rd and 9 but what pass concept do people really trust us to drop back and hit? Hooker is a dynamic runner behind a good oline and I would take the odds on him getting close enough where an attempt on 4th down is more feasible.
Me, an engineer who continually has no less than 3 tabs of excel open:
I've been watching Hokie football in a fog the past few weeks. A family member went to the ER during the LU game and ultimately passed away last week. This comment caught my eye because thought "geez, I know I didn't catch all of the game, but I felt like the offense was serviceable against LU." So I just did a review of the play-by-play data on the LU game. Holy crap.
To be fair to the players, the offense did drive down the field for game-tying touchdown drives on their final two possessions against Liberty.
They had 9 drives, scored on 6 of them, and got into field goal range on another.
Punt, FG, Touchdown, Touchdown, FG (end of half clock management problem), Punt, Missed FG, Touchdown, Touchdown.
Doing this review just makes me mad all over again.
The Defense's failure to get off the field allowed LU to shorten the game significantly, the coaching staff's bungled clock management at the end of each half, the muffed punt, and a couple rough play calls at critical moments ruined an otherwise effective (albeit imperfect) performance by the offense.
On the missed FG drive? We had a 3rd and 6 from the Liberty 35, Hooker ran for 2 yards and we tried a 50 yard FG. Maybe a different play call could've set up something more manageable. At the end of the half? We settled for a FG on first and goal from the 1 because (1) we ran the ball with 8 seconds left, and (2) we were afraid we'd get stuffed and come up with nothing.
Hats off to LU for a great game plan and effort, but this is just infuriating. After years of great defenses being wasted on useless offenses, we're blowing games to brand new programs because coaches can't get out of the way of an offense that (for the most part) did what it was supposed to do.
I've got nothing on the Pitt game. It was like a bad dream.
Yeah the offense certainly did their part when it counted in that game (of course, the same can't be said in the games against Wake, Pitt, or Miami). The defense just couldn't tackle at all or get LU off the field.
Yep
You would think the team with the 4th best offensive line in the country and one of the leading rushers in the nation would be able to score more than 16 points against Wake Forest or 14 against Pittsburgh.
So... you're saying Fuente doesn't deserve a contract extension, for having a Top-5 O-Line?
Lets just say the pros and cons list gets one more check mark in the pros list, but is still heavily outweighed by the cons list.
We have a teenager on a learner's permit (OC) behind the wheel of a Ferrari (OL). We're lucky to get out of first gear.
That is the great things about stat nerds, they can use their data to prove their point whenever they want. Results on the field would say otherwise...
is the 75 in your username your age or?
I'm dubious of several PFF grading styles, sometimes because I don't know enough about their rubrics, and sometimes because I disagree with the weighting of and lack of opponent adjustments of the factors I DO know.
To me this seems to skew towards run blocking, and they have lots of outs to blame sacks on the QB (which is fair, you can hold the ball too long, or run yourself into sacks), but I don't need PFF to tell me our pass pro has not been elite. In modern college football I don't think you can call yourself a top 5 line with the kind of pass pro we've shown the last few weeks.
For recruiting purposes I hope we plaster this all over social media, but I don't necessarily give this ranking (OL unit) a ton of weight (personally). Though I wouldn't argue that PFF is complete trash or anything. Their ratings are tool to be utilized like many others.
I also took note that there was no commentary on how the guards and center have played. A lot of the issues that I recall seem to be more in the interior and not on the edge.
Dear new coach (whoever you are),
please consider hiring Vance Vice as either a recruiting assistant or as the OL coach or as both.
I won't be mad if you don't. I'll likely be happy if you do.
Vice is getting paid by someone way more than we can afford next year.
Dunno how much I buy this ranking, how heavily is run blocking versus pass blocking factored in? For the great O-line we still seem to give up way to many sacks in the drop back game now that can be linked to Hooker holding onto the ball way to long but I dont feel the pass protection has been that good.
Soo, what does everybody think this means for the Clemson game? One of my major critiques against Fuente is that he exercises very little creativity...he appears to have a rigid process and sticks to it week in and week out.
For example, "I Always call a T.O. to ice the kicker before the last second so we can get the blocking team on the same page...". Even when the situation does not call for icing the kicker (it's a 50+ yarder for goodness sake), we do it anyway because "that is what we do".
This leads to a very predictable team in critical situations. The playbook appears set and the game hinges on execution...and our talent does not support that. With our talent, we occasionally need to out-coach the other guy, and for that there is plenty of opportunity. However, Fuente appears unwilling to try for fear that our own team can't handle the change. So, any chance we use this above average offense and O-Line to pump the ball down the field early in the game? Or, do we stick to the Fuente script...ball control, misdirection, protect the D, etc.?
We won't win doing the same thing every week. If HH has such a good arm, why not use it? Put Clemson on defense, make them do something different, be the aggressor for once.
Meanwhile, on the basketball court....
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