Asked Pry if he anticipates keeping this coaching staff intact after a season that fell short of expectations: "I'm hopeful. We've got great people in this building. ... There are certainly some things that we have to do better. And it starts with me." #Hokies— Andy Bitter (@AndyBitterVT) December 4, 2024
So for anyone expecting to see wholesale changes of the staff this winter, HEAVILY tamper those expectations.
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Insert Naked Gun head slap sight gag.
Time for Whit to get his pink slips ready
IIWII- Pry's last year as VT's coach is next year and we start all over again. He's not going to make changes coming off back to back 6-6 years and 1-12 in close games, then we will get the same results. We will be 6-6 next year or worse and he will be fired. Let's be real here. This is the definition of insanity.
Maybe "keeping existing coaches employed" doesn't have to mean the same thing as no changes.... i.e. Hiring over top of someone or getting me on staff to be in charge of timeouts
To be fair, he isn't gonna come out and say "Well fuck no, Andy, I'm firing people right after the bowl game"
True, he did leave open some coaches "leaving" for laterals or G5 positions and pretending he didn't encourage it.
Yeah I wouldn't expect any other answer than what he gave. Its not what I want to hear but it's what I'd expect.
Repeating my post in the other thread.
This is coachspeak for no. But it's the correct political answer.
It means everybody deserves a job and so I'm not going to be directly critical in order to hurt their chances to get work elsewhere.
Eh, I dunno.
I don't expect him to say "well Marve sucks and we need to find a new DC" but you could also say "every offseason we evaluate our staff as well as our players and we'll make the right decisions to better the team as we see fit" as well.
If Pry makes no changes, he's committing to failure and we'll be dredging the bottom of the barrel come this time next year for our next coach.
If absolutely nothing changes with the coaching staff, I will be beyond pissed. Seriously. I love the Hokies, but 6-6 is not acceptable. 1 of those was UVA that did not try in the game, 2 were Marshall and ODU, and another was dreadful Stanford. NOT GOOD ENOUGH... so Pry can do that- he can lose to every decent team he plays and never win a close game- he can certainly do that and not make any changes. And I can call it out and be pissed too.
If you've proven that you cannot recruit, develop players or scheme, you have no place on this coaching staff.
If you don't want to fire your coaching son - fine I get it. Fire Quinn, move Marve to co-DC/STAR (with a subsequent paycut) and bring in a Jerry Kill-type co-DC/LB coach.
You want to fire Quinn and retain Marve?
I think that's about the exact opposite of what should happen.
He says this almost word for word prior to Bitter's quote.
YouTube link
I still don't believe a change is coming. I'm not usually one to read too much into body language, but everyone looked awful comfortable during the signing day event and Marve even announced the first pick.
Love AB, but he has a bad habit of tweeting quotes without proper context. Several times over the years I've seen something and been misled.
Anyways, do you happen to have the full convo/comment?
Edit: thank you for including the link! It didn't occur to me that this presser/comment was done immediately after siding day in the same room that Pry did the whole draft special in. So there's recruits and their families probably watching who just signed a (sort of?) legally binding contract with Virginia Tech, likely due in part to a relationship with an assistant, and Pry is supposed to fess up to planning to fire some of them?
Maybe there is forced staff turnover, maybe there isn't, but either way, given the setting, Pry had to answer the question this way.
We know nothing more today about potential staffing changes than we did last week.
I love Bitter, but he's paid in clicks.
It's added now, I was trying to hunt down the right timestamp.
And if you listen to Bitter on the TSL podcast, he says he doesn't like asking those questions because they always come with the least interesting answers. He still asks them (it's his job), but he fully expects coach speak.
He is pretty good at making some of these quotes more interesting than they are, though (also his job). So props to him.
VT and Blacksburg are lucky to have his talent. And I think even luckier he didn't bolt when the Athletic downsized. He's too good for a college-dedicated media site, but also, there is hardly any other beat reporters in Blacksburg these days. And none that are solely VT-specific besides him.
Totally agree.
I feel like he missed an opportunity of creating a Tech specific blog where he charged a certain amount for an annual subscription. Not sure how many readers he has, but if it's 10k and he charged $15, that $150k. He could have done a poll to gauge interest, both for total interest and what people might be willing to pay. I'd be really curious how many people would sign up for a blog if it was just him.
He should've done a blog/podcast. That's basically what he's doing now with TSL and he missed out on an excellent name I suggested when the athletic dropped him, Bourbon and Bitter(s).
He wouldn't get anywhere close to 10k and I bet it would be below 1000.
If his readership was below 1000, would the Atlantic have picked him up in the first place? He's got 46.7k followers on X, and I bet older Tech fans who don't "tweet/x" are probably a substantial number.
I think zblaetz is saying that Bitter wouldn't get anywhere near 10K subscribers at $15 each. His 47K on Twitter is because that is free. It's the same as TKP after it went full paywall, the number of users dropped significantly.
I get what he was saying. My point stands that if he wasn't going to be bringing a certain level of readership, and paying ones at that, I don't think he would have been brought onboard.
Maybe he wouldn't get as many if he was solo, who knows, but I'd be curious what people would have said if he'd surveyed his X followers.
And I love the content put out by TKP, but do we know that TKP paying membership would equate to what Any would get?
Yeah this whole video should be in the OP. I get Bitter is limited by tweet count and needs to drive some interaction but that's a really long answer that I don't think was captured well by the tweet.
Thanks for the additional context.
And fuck this incompetent organization if they don't force changes.
Thanks for sharing this, I missed it before I commented.
Some of y'all need Pry-ssrs and it shows.
Just kidding, I wish I could've done some breakdowns this year, but I just couldn't find the time.
Not sure of exact timing on this, even if he was willing to be more open, signing day probably ain't the best time to ask. Day AFTER signing day is better. You don't want recruits getting cold feet if they think there will be a change.
and he also didn't say "yes"
I think there will be at least 2 changes and I hope Fontel isn't one of them
This is a VERY bad decision if there aren't at least some shake ups, or key additions
2024 was the status quo year... everyone comes back, the QB comes back, all the coaches come back- let's see if we can win with this formula. Nope. So now fucking shake it up. Pry had his status quo year.
It's signing day, what exactly do you expect him to say? If he says "Marve is gone", there's a chance he loses a commitment (like DeLoatch who was flipped today).
Well, now they already signed
kidding, I know that means virtually nothing these days
I mean, what else is he going to say in that position?
I'd love to think this is just coach speak and he is planning to shake things up but I'm worried he's being completely genuine here.
His career as HC is going to hinge on his ability to evaluate his coaches and make necessary changes. The defense has been stagnant for 3 years. It hasn't been good and it hasn't improved. It's got a terrible habit of giving up backbreaking plays at exactly the wrong times. If he doesn't fire Marve he's not going to make it as HC.
We'll see. But if this staff is mostly unchanged going into 2025 my expectations are 5 or 6 wins at best and I'm checked out on Pry and VT football until he's fired.
Sigh. If there's no coaching turnover and we are a .500ish team again next year, it's going to make it very hard to watch.
This feels very Fuente-like.
Highly competitive college football is not luck or magic. A tooth fairy isn't going to come down next year with this same staff and tap them on the head and win 9 games. We didn't sign a top 5 class. The portal is TBD but a magic bullet isn't coming next year. Changes MUST be made or you will get the same results.
At a fucking minimum, fire Quinn and move Pierson back to his old job. Replace them with Eddie Whitley and Zach Sparbar who are both killing it at JMU.
coach speak nothingburger
I don't think this quote is antithetical to Pry helping Marve find him a new job, especially if that job is in the NFL. I think most coaches would want his coordinators to leave for "better jobs" rather than fire them, especially if they're really close. And if that's Pry plan, he isn't going to openly say "I'm shopping my coordinator for a job with the NFL."
I do think Marve is better suited for NFL as a cerebral guy that doesn't recruit well. So, the SI rumor makes sense. And it also makes sense from the standpoint that he won't be "hired up" for any collegiate position, so the only "hiring up" would be a position coach in the NFL.
If this is Pry's plan, there is a whole lot of risk. First, the NFL hiring season is much later than the college hiring season. That would make for finding a collegiate DC really hard. Second, there is no guarantee that you find Marve a job. Someone has to hire him, and I don't see how you can ensure that happens.
In any regard, here's my speculation that solves the first issue:
Pry will hire Todd Grantham as DC when the Saints' season ends, who is their "lame duck" DL coach at the moment. It would be both a homecoming and reunion of sorts. Grantham, Pulaski native, coached VT's D-line from 1990-1995, overlapping with Pry's tenure at VT. I think Pry and Grantham are both colleagues and friends. Assuredly, Grantham is well connected with Ballein, Beamer, and Foster.
Grantham would check a lot of boxes as DC for VT: (1) a VT guy (2) experienced DC at the highest collegiate levels, and (3) would bring instant credibility to VT at a national level.
I don't think Grantham is a great DC or the answer to making VT defense elite again, but he may be the best answer VT can muster. He has had several defenses ranked in the top 10, but struggled at times at both Georgia and Florida (and was eventually fired from UF). He's recruited well in the SEC but I would not consider him an elite recruiter (he did recruit APR to Florida). He spent 2022 working as an analyst for Saban and was almost hired as their DC in 2023 but took his name out the running to take the job with the Saints.
The fanbase's largest gripe is that Pry hired complete novices at the coordinator position. Another major gripe is Fuente and Whit waited too long (i.e., never) to make changes at the coordinator position. And as Whit and Pry showed when replacing Fuente, they are good at reacting to fanbase's concerns. After thinking about this, it just seems to make so much sense. (And the timing with Marve getting into the NFL would work well.)
So who's excited for a Grantham defense? Anyone? I would be tepidly excited, but I do think he's unequivocally better than Marve and probably the best hire Pry could make given VT's current position. So, sign me up, I guess. And perhaps his year with Saban results in him being a better DC. The list of coaches that improved after being analysts for Saban is extensive, so hopefully Grantham can be another name on that list.
Also, I guess VT would need to open up the wallet. His salary at UF was $1.8M. I doubt VT would go that high, but perhaps they can get him at or below $1.3M? idk. Houses in Pulaski are decently cheap.
(Note: You can probably tell I thought about this too much. Sigh.)
If this ends up happening, then I hope Saban taught him to tone down the emotional blitzing. If we were mad about 3rd and long conversion rate before, just imagine how we'll respond when a team converts on 3rd and 18 after he sends 8 on a blitz.
But, this hire would make sense as a guy who has familiarity with the system and understands the region. The question is if he's really a good LB coach. Looks like he's mostly been a DL coach with only a couple stints as DC/LB when from 2010-2017 when he was at UGA, Louisville, and Mississippi St.
Yea. Agreed, I would be tepidly excited but hopeful that year with Saban would pay dividends. He has a fair number of "issues" with his history. There's the blitzing and the "choking" thing at Georgia and player buy-in culture issues at UF. He's far from perfect.
With unlimited number of coaches and currently having three LB coaches on staff, I would not worry about whether he can coach LBs as much. There would likely be a fair amount staff shakeup if Marve departs and Grantham is hired. Grantham can coach DEs, Price would likely be retained and can coach DTs, and hire a LB/star coach. I don't know whether Quinn would stay on staff or not, he seems like the most expendable defensive position coach. There are a vast number of possibilities for setting up the defensive staff.
Meh, another Joe Rudolph. Grantham will be here 1 year.
Everyone has different motivations, but it would be vastly different than Rudolph, who had zero connections to Pry and Blacksburg. Grantham has jumped a lot in the past, but maybe he wants to settle in again. I could see a Pulaski native and Beamer protégé have the motivation to stay at VT for awhile.
And maybe having an elite coach for a short while would be beneficial. I agree that a 1-year tenure would be of no benefit and probably hurtful, but 2+ years would benefit VT if he and Pry have success.
Graham is not an 'elite coach' - he has worked at a lot of elite schools but hasn't had a decent defense in... 15 years?
Want to hire him as a DL coach? Sure. I'm in. Don't want him calling plays though.
Agreed. "an elite coach" was describing a hypothetical, not Grantham. When describing Grantham, I wrote "I don't think Grantham is a great DC or the answer to making VT defense elite again." The statement regarding "an elite coach for a short while would be beneficial" was about a coach that would leave after 2 years. It would inherently require that any hired coach had success and then moved on. Said coach would be "elite" by the fact he had 2+ years of success.
Emotional, Blitz Todd Graham bring us credibility?! he would make us the laughing stalk of college football.
And VT is currently what? Irrelevant? A national laughing stock would be better.
And the real laugher hire was last year with Arkansas hiring Petrino? How is that working out for Arkansas? -- Seems like it is working out nicely for them.
I would be happy if VT makes a better hire. But can they?
Can we afford to? Yes - Go get Bill Brechin from Miami of Ohio or Nick Benedetto from NIU. Both are coaching top 40 defenses that have (at best) top 70 talent, paired with offenses outside the top 100. They also are each making well under $300k/year (at least they were last year).
Are we capable of making a better hire? IDK, I would hope so.
Don't hire a retread who's ceiling is known to be low. I'd rather hire another position coach who's never been a play caller (ie; Marve 2.0) than hire a play caller who I know is bad (Graham).
I like this approach - find someone at a lower level who is already working as a DC and has play calling experience. Bonus points for someone who has fielded a good unit relative to the available talent. Will we do that, though? That's a big question - until our organization actually does something like this I'm going to view it as something that is unlikely to happen (it just makes too much sense)
agreed
I'm actually not sure I agree with this. The biggest issue I think a lot of folks have with Marve is that he's just super inexperienced. I don't think it's a good idea to hire a position coach to be a first time DC for us after the experiment went horribly wrong with Marve. That would be repeating the same mistake, IMO. The odds that Grantham would improve and be better than Marve because of his experience are slightly better than the odds that some random position coach with no DC experience will be better than Marve. Especially when you consider that a position coach wouldn't have his own defensive identity and would require some mentoring and coaching up from Pry, which would mean that we stick with the defensive scheme for which there is very little coaching tree. If it's not going to be Bud Foster, I don't think I want someone trying to copy that scheme. I'd rather go out and get a DC who is running a more modern defense with a larger coaching tree so that when he inevitably gets poached for having our defense in the top 10 we'll be able to seamlessly transition to the next coach.
I don't want Grantham. I don't want a young up-and-coming position coach with no DC experience. Stick with your original idea and grab a guy who has a few years of DC experience at a lower level and has proven that he can put a defense on the field that is better than the relative talent.
I'm going to swerve on this, it very well could be coach speak. Although it's a bit of déjà vu. I feel like we heard the same thing from Fu and we were disappointed when nothing substantial happened. Frankly, I am not holding my breath. Having said all that. Fuck the coach speak. You know what would have sent a message to the fans, "we weren't good enough and I am evaluating everything from myself on down". No need to throw specific people under the bus, but that message is much more in-line with his "hard conversations" messaging when he was hired.
As said above he pretty much said exactly that in more words
I probably should have watched the full video. Was the tweet missing some context.
Either way, I think the focus needs to be on making Virginia Tech the best, not making it easy for assistants to have a soft landing.
I'm assuming this was a question? But Yes lol.
Prior to the comment that Bitter tweeted, Pry talked about how underwhelming this season was how he's evaluating himself his staff and his assistants, and how that will determine what process and people changes he'll make.
The Bitter asked again if Pry expects any turnover and he's like 'uh I hope not' and the letter was what was tweeted.
Edit: just saw you replied above, kindly disregard!
Agreed and I don't think you can do both especially if that soft landing is eying the NFL that'll put us in way too much of a hole for valid candidates.
Well, have fun looking for another job next offseason, Pry. Don't know why all of our football coaches would rather go down with the ship than try to right things. Pretty disappointing but my opinion on Pry is now made up. Not the coach I thought he was, and a salesman basically.
Captain goes down with the ship I guess?
I'm sure I'm in a small boat with (generously) dozens of TKPers, but I am honestly surprised by the complete disregard of the possibility of improvement from the coaching staff.
Our DC, HC, and OC had a combined, what 3 years of experience at their respective positions? And all of that was Bowen. Three years is not a long time. Hell it even took Fuente longer than that to totally basement the program. And it's not like there haven't been any signs of improvement.
Year 1 - total rebuild, not gonna expect much and didn't get much
Year 2 - beat the bottom feeders and blown out by established programs and QBs
Year 3 - didn't get blown out for a whole game, admittedly had some blunders that cost us a game or two and still matched the previous years win total.
But the defense! Sure they still had their frustrating LB fits and busted long plays, but also saw quarter to half long stretches where they dominated in a way we haven't seen in the last two years.
It's insanity to turn the same door knob over and over and expect different results on the other side of the door. But people aren't door knobs, even if some us act like them from time to time. People can grow and learn, including Pry, Marve, and Bowen. The instant gratification desired by some of this fan base, (and in the case of a program, I'm counting three years as relatively quick) is wild.
Maybe it's because the first VT game I ever watched was the bowl game after I got accepted early decision. So when your intro to VT football is Danny Coale "dropping" a pass in the 2011 Sugar Bowl, you find ways to be optimistic about next year. Same when your prime basketball days at Tech are with James Johnson. You weren't there for the glory days of ten win football seasons and knocking off No. 1 Duke in Cassell. .500 becomes your friend. So when this next coaching staff is hitting the benchmark that's basically all you've known as a VT fan, why call for there heads? especially when compared to the last guy, they're at least showing a modicum of progress. We can sit around and talk about the streak and Odysseus and Tyrod and the Minotaur and other legends of the past, but that hasn't been VT for a long time.
I hope he's just saying this while actively working behind the scenes to get the ball rolling, but iono...
I thought the best question was from Teel just prior to the staff/program Q's...asking whether Pry knows how much of the House revenue share football would get and how he [Pry] would distribute it. Pry squirmed a little and said "...I feel really good about the commitment of our university..."
With the last questions, Pry was ready for that interview to be over...neck scratching, finger tapping, eye rubbing, face rubbing...he made a couple laps around the track on program/staff evaluation responses. He was not comfortable.
Nobody wants to talk about money to players or coaches. Especially as they tell Drones they are giving at least half his money to Pop.
I would honestly be more than modestly surprised to see Drones back in Blacksburg in 2025.
I think another P4 is gonna make him a big $$ offer and we won't be able to match. Plus, after a very mediocre year, I suspect there is a lack of confidence with the ability of the Offensive staff @ VT to make him NFL-worthy (I'm not sure that's in the cards for him in any case but I'm 100% sure some other Staff will try to sell him that).
I also think that Pry can use Pop's better than expected performance to try and sell the fanbase that something new and exciting is coming when the appearance so far is that he's going to largely roll with the same crew that has been really disappointing to date.
anyone have any background on who decides who gets paid what? does triumph take the pool of donation money and decide that? do they work with coaches/admin to decide that?
if big donors were deciding, i would think drones would be out of luck...the offense looked slow and plodding with him running it, and much quicker with schlee and pop running it...to my very untrained eye. drones would be in for a massive pay cut, imo
The players whose agents threaten to transfer get paid- of we want to keep them. That and the "stars" get paid.
Yeah the problem is we paid Drones and the WR's the most (other than I assume Tuten) and we didn't get our money's worth from them. Money would have been better split between OL and DL.
I hope we put more money towards the OL and DL. If someone comes in with a big offer for Drones, then they can have him. We can spend significantly less on Pop, grab a cheap backup similar to Schlee, and hopefully spend more on the trenches.
To update (based on tweets), Babcock says that the majority of the revenue sharing will go to football, and men's and women's basketball; the non-rev sports will see their benefits in increases in scholarships.
here is a link to the interview (I'm listening now)
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5sUIi6HRJNCH0BNK9bxz75
edit: very informative!
Yup, that was a good listen.
To me it sounds as if Babcock has gotten the message and it's either shit or get off the pot time
I was really hoping he would have tossed in a please for donations or for people to join the Hokie Club when he was talking about the additional scholarships for Olympic sports. My best guess is he is reluctant to do so after the way the football season ended, but I think most Hokies would get behind the idea that they are helping a student athlete through scholarship rather than funneling money to the mediocre football players through NIL. I know that we need both, but I think both type of donors exist and you never know who is listening.
Twitter is now a piece of shit that is very spotty if they allow embedding, so bear with me...
There will be no changes at all. Book it. Pry is going to sell Whit on how we were just a few plays away, and sell the hope of Pop for next year. And Whit will go along with every bit of it.
We were a few plays away due to bad coaching decisions, either we can remove the one that made those decisions or we can improve lower levels to overcome those decisions.
My reaction looks something like this
I can see it now, the only coach that doesn't return will be Fontel, the only coach who can recruit.