Examining Hokies TE Bucky Hodges' Role this Upcoming Season

Editor's Note: Before you read this excellent analysis from Mason, A class 4 misdemeanor public intoxication/swearing charge charge against Hodges will be dropped in six months, as long as no additional issues arise, according to The Roanoke Times.

Spring football is vital for the coaching staff to prepare for the upcoming season. The coaches will try to improve the team by installing plays and teaching techniques while also using the spring as a chance to evaluate the talent at their disposal. Underclassmen who spent the fall working on the scout team will have the chance to impress enough to finally get on the field, and more established players will hope to show enough improvement to justify an increase in their workload. As the spring practices come to a close, fans love trying to piece together what limited information they can get (from interviews, depth chart updates, closed scrimmage stats) and extrapolating from that info what the team will look like in the fall.

One player that I am interested in seeing perform over the next month and a half is Bucky Hodges. Everyone loves Bucky's ability to create mismatches on the edges of a defense and he has "early round draft pick" written all over him. For Hokie fans, the questions isn't if offensive coordinator Scot Loeffler will be trying to get more production out of the talented rising sophomore but how.

Bucky's Role in 2014

We got some hints during the last spring game about the hybrid role that Loeffler had in mind for Bucky. We saw him spread out in the slot and running routes against linebackers or safeties for a good percentage of his snaps, same as we saw during the regular season. Here he is running a Loeffler staple, the stick route, against a linebacker.

The linebacker actually does a great job of defending a potential crossing route by aggressively cutting off Bucky's path through the middle. The second portion of the route, when Bucky sticks his foot in the ground and pivots back towards the sideline proves more difficult to defend. Bucky's length and quickness allows for easy separation and a large target for Motley to hit. The safety who is lined up over the top of Bucky is too worried about deep balls to be a factor on the stick route either. Later on in the game, we saw the danger of that safety getting too worried about getting beat underneath.

This is the same defense and same route combination, with two little variations. The safety is more concerned with the threat of the stick route. He is lined up much closer to the line of scrimmage and his hips are more parallel to the line of scrimmage, allowing him to drive forward and make a play on the ball if Bucky breaks his route off in front of him. Unfortunately for the safety, Loeffler has tagged Bucky to run a go route right up the seam. The safety is in real trouble here. Isolated against a superior athlete and using the wrong technique to defend the route, he gets his hips turned to run with Bucky way too late. The only thing that prevents this 3rd-and-long from being a walk in touchdown is a poor throw.

Bucky was used in the slot a ton during the regular season to put the defense in just this conundrum. In one of the greatest moments of the season, Bucky was isolated against a slot defender in man coverage and was able to get separation.

Just like before, the slot defender has his hips parallel to the line of scrimmage as Bucky bears down on him. By the time the defender bails and gets vertical, Bucky is already past him.

During the first game of the season against William and Mary it became clear that Loeffler was relying on a simple zone-read/bubble screen packaged play to move the ball virtually risk free. This became a mainstay of the offense all season long. While Bucky never ripped off a huge gain as a recipient of those bubble screens, he was able to pick up decent yardage when the defense presented the opportunity.

Hodges didn't spend his entire time on the field in the slot, there were times that he was asked to line up as a more traditional tight end. Most of these instances came when Tech was in a balanced single-back Pistol formation, and usually ended with a simple zone run play. By the end of the season Bucky became an effective run blocker.

Bucky is tight on the end of the line of scrimmage at the top of the formation with a responsibility to get inside leverage on the defensive end. Hodges gets lateral at the snap and manages to get his head in between the defender and the rushing lane. Now that he is in position, Bucky only has to fight the defensive end to a draw and he's done his part in creating a hole for Coleman to squeeze through. Hodges is such a dynamic target in the passing game that he doesn't have to be a dominant run blocker to create mismatches, he just needs to be competent.

Bucky in 2015

So that's how Bucky Hodges was utilized in 2014, mostly as a slot receiver who ran pretty simple routes while occasionally lining up as a traditional tight end to run block. How is Loeffler planning on expanding on Bucky's impressive freshman campaign? This spring should give us some glimpses into his thinking.

One way to include Bucky in a wider variety of plays is to get him involved more with the run game by acting as a traditional blocking tight end. We already saw the improvements he made by the end of the year run blocking, after another spring and fall of practices I'd expect he'll continue making strides in that department. Having Hodges as a blocker on the line of scrimmage will give Loeffler more flexibility to react to defenses with extra pass defenders. If a defense is bringing in a nickel back to deal with the threat of a deep ball to Bucky, Loeffler will have the option to switch to a power formation and make them pay.

The more exciting reason for Hodges to put a hand in the dirt are the play-action possibilities. He would be an elite play-action target if the Hokies manage to get any type of power game going on the ground. It's easy to imagine Bucky running a route down the middle of the field past safeties and linebackers peeking in the backfield, just look at what he accomplishes on this play-action sweep.

Bucky does a good job of selling the arc block to the outside to start off the play and then plants his foot in the ground and gets vertical. The defender had no chance to react in time to keep up with him. Hodges is so explosive that anytime a defender has to guess at Bucky's intentions, there's a chance for a big gain. It's not just those vertical routes which excite me though, I think Bucky can be just as effective stretching defenses horizontally. Here is an example from the 2014 spring game of Bucky beating his defender to the sideline.

This clip is a great example of how effective Bucky could be as a traditional tight end, especially if the running game is working. The linebackers get sucked into defending the run and the safety who is accounting for Bucky is in no-man's land. He actually does a decent job in coverage, but he doesn't have the speed to keep up with Bucky once he cuts for the sideline. The play-action buys Hodges enough time to run his route and a good throw and catch lead to a first down... which isn't a terrible outcome for the defense. If Bucky had been running a streak instead of an out route, there was no coverage over the top and he would have ran right past the flat-footed defender.

Logan Thomas ran a fair amount of bootleg play-action his senior year under Loeffler and I'd like to see that package return regardless of who wins the starting quarterback job. If the offense can line up under center and get some kind of push when handing the ball off, then it's going to be awfully hard for linebackers to stay with Bucky on a drag route on a bootleg play. He is too fast for any linebacker to keep up if they have to also worry about their run gap responsibilities. Pairing Bucky Hodges and Ryan Malleck or Kalvin Cline (or both) up for a power run package with some play-action mixed in would be a nightmare to gameplan for.

Lining up as a traditional tight end is one path for an expanded role in 2015 for Bucky. The other would be to get more work as a traditional wide receiver. If Loeffler doesn't want to see his best vertical threat start off snaps in a three-point stance it would behoove him to start building some complexity into the routes that he has Bucky running. By the end of the season, defenses weren't struggling to figure out what the game plan for the dynamic freshman tight end was going to be. Against Cincinnati in particular, once the Hokies crossed the 50 the defensive backs were all over Bucky's one-cut vertical routes.

If the identity of the offense is going to be more spread based than under center, Bucky needs to get more work on the outside of the formation than he was getting last year. This would allow the team to benefit from his large frame in ways other than just lobbing him the ball on a go route. Intermediate routes like In routes or deep curls or even slants are perfect compliments to vertical routes because it takes advantage of the space that secondaries give deep threats. A cornerback who has a healthy respect for Bucky's speed and size is going to be hesitant to jump those routes for fear of getting burned on a double move. Once he's exploited this space, Bucky can rely on his size and strength to "box out" a defender when the ball is in the air.

This is the type of play that I want to see more of if Brewer is going to be spending the majority of his time in shotgun again this year. Even here Bucky isn't aligned all the way on the outside, but the passing principle would work just the same if he was. Ryan Malleck is lined up to the inside of Hodges and is matched up on a linebacker, who he runs out of the picture on a decoy route. Bucky's slight shoulder fake to the outside gives him the space needed to run a slant underneath Malleck's clear out. The defender on Bucky has to respect the deep threat and can't react in time to get in between Bucky and Brewer. Even if the defender was playing tighter coverage he can't go through the receiver to make the play, he can only hope to dislodge the ball after it arrives. From here, Brewer just has to make a simple throw to a large target and Bucky has to hold on.

Bucky Hodges had a record setting freshman campaign in 2014, although it felt like he was just scratching the surface of what he was capable of. This coming season, there is no limit to what he is capable of accomplishing. He could easily lead the team in yards, or touchdowns, or receptions... or all three. It depends entirely on what Loeffler decides is the best use of his immense talents. As tempting as it is to just lob it up at the tall fast guy over and over, let's not forget that sometimes your biggest strength can become your biggest weakness. If the defense can key in on Bucky and guess what he'll be doing on any given play, he'll be a lot less productive than his potential would allow. This spring, I'm watching to see how Loeffler envisions keeping defenses on their toes.