After a four-win improvement last season, Virginia Tech embraced talking season with plenty of national media interview and pieces while praise about their roster retention was amidst throughout the country. The hype also seemed fair given that the Hokies returned a lot of quality starters outside of an offensive line that struggled last season.
However, Tech is still led by a coach who was 10-14 in his first two years and had his fair share of issues in his coaching role as head coach in his first season in Brent Pry. It seemed like Pry had turned the corner in his growth as a head coach but today, he brought out an unprepared team for one half of football and then shot himself in the foot with a coaching malpractice of the highest order minus Mario Cristobal's stupidity against Georgia Tech last season. that malpractice played the central role in costing the Hokies today.
Virginia Tech lost to Vanderbilt 34-27 in overtime in a game where the Hokies had Vanderbilt ready to punt but gave the Commodores five yards and another chance after having two players with a #0 jersey on the field at the same time. That is the dumbest coaching mistake I've witnessed in person, with Brock Taylor seizing the moment for a 53-yard field goal that proved crucial in forcing overtime.
Brent Pry had this to say when asked about that moment after the game.
"Obviously with J-Lane not able to return punts, we went to Ali. Keli’s been on and off in those situations and we don’t have a lot of scenarios where that comes up. Stu’s done a great job of managing that, the double number thing’s always tough. I put it on me. I should have called a timeout. Saw it right at the end and just didn’t get it done. It’s bad management by me," Pry said.
It's important to note that Jaylin Lane did fair catch a punt late in this game even as Ali Jennings was doing well, which seems a little odd given this comment. Some may wonder then if he was healthy enough to play at all but as we know, punt returner brings unique risks in terms of the hits you can take compared to wide receiver so I think anyone making that inference is just fishing for something.
Beyond that awful moment, Pry and his staff brought out a lifeless team in the first half that was woefully not prepared to play and had some offensive playcalls that made you dearly scratch your head. Then you also have the mess in overtime when Kyron Drones was clearly not healthy enough to run the offense yet they still send him out for a play where he is a running option of all things, taking the momentum out of what Collin Schlee had going in overtime after his 14-yard run.
Pry also defined the team postgame as being "shellshocked" after the early interception.
"I think there’s too much confusion in the first half. There were too many questions and where’s this guy, where’s that guy. We’ve got to be better than that. We all got shell shocked a little bit. I think it was, ‘Let’s go. Let’s settle down and play like we’re capable.’ I don’t know. Obviously we didn’t play our best or coach our best in the first half. We just didn’t. And that goes back to me," Pry said. "Really, I’m talking about the offense, I just think. Then you’ve got the turnover, I believe it was on the second possession, and you never want to start a game that way. A batted ball. Then we get them to third-and-long and they score. Those things, you’ve got to bounce back quick from those and I don’t think we did that. I think it kind of spilled over into the next series and then all of a sudden, all of the momentum was on their sideline. We can’t let that happen."
For a veteran team to be shellshocked is insane. What makes this crazier is the fact that we heard similar type issues in year one of the Brent Pry era. The fact that the same issues are coming up two years later is concering.
The list of mistakes rooted in what is included in the job of the coaches is long in this one and inexplicable. The second half showed that Virginia Tech is clearly the more talented football team and would likely win this game with equivalent quality jobs with ease. However, the coaching gap was central to the struggles today.
Tech's offense was a tale of two halves with only 85 yards total in the first half before putting up 299 in the second half including 255 yards through the air via Kyron Drones. However, the Hokies struggled up front especially along the offensive line as they ran for an average of 2.5 yards per carry while allowing four sacks. Even if you take out the 26 yards lost via sacks, they still ran for only 101 yards on 26 carries, an average of just under four yards per carry.
Defensively, this was a roller coaster as the Hokies took a little bit to solve the Vanderbilt offense but had them figured out for a long stretch of the second half. However, that shifted right back the other way when the Commodores opened things up for Diego Pavia in the fourth quarter, putting the Hokies on their heels. They only allowed 3.8 yards per carry but it was death by a thousands paper cuts with incisive big pass plays from Pavia who was 12-16 for 190 yards and two touchdowns plus 104 rushing yards and a touchdown.
Drones struggled to find his rhythm early with an offense that seemed to constrained him, pressure running rampant, and his own passes that were a little off throughout the first half early into the second half. However, Drones took off once he found his rhythm playing a key role in the second half surge on his way to finishing with a career-high 322 passing yards, two touchdowns, and one interception on 22-33 passing plus 19 rushing yards.
Letting the downfield passing attack loose played a key role in sparking the Hokies' offense with Ali Jennings and Jaylin Lane sharing the following insights on that after the game.
"Really just telling [Tyler Bowen] and the offensive staff what we were seeing on the field and how they weren’t respecting us attacking downfield. They were trying to jump everything and we started dropping back more, doing a lot of deeper passes, and we were connecting on them. We got to play faster, start off faster, be more confident in our offense at each position, and it’ll be hard for teams to stop us because we have so many weapons. The second half showed that. We just have to do that in all four quarters and overtime, and just make plays when the opportunity presents itself," Jennings said.
"I think we just looked in at what we were seeing at halftime, looked at the film and figured out ways that we could take advantage of their coverages. I feel like we did a good job coming back out at half and taking the lead," Lane said.
Jaylin Lane felt like the spark plug making a couple great catches on passes behind his route and loading up on yards after the catch as he had four catches for 62 yards including 47 after the catch. Meanwhile, Ali Jennings' return to the field went well with two catches for 92 yards including a 62-yard touchdown on a busted coverage that left him wide open. Benji Gosnell dropped a wide open touchdown but responded well after that with four catches for 61 yards while his brother Stephen Gosnell shined with three catches for 71 yards.
Bhayshul Tuten actually led the Hokies with six catches including an 11-yard receiving touchdown, but only have seven yards on the other five. He also had a 24-yard rushing touchdown but on his other eight carries, he had 10 rushing yards.
Keli Lawson led the Hokies in tackles with nine while Caleb Woodson had 1.5 tackles for loss including a sack. Antwaun Powell-Ryland was productive with four tackles including 1.0 TFLs with 0.5 sacks while Wilfried Pene did well with three tackles including 1.5 for loss with 0.5 sacks. Mose Phillips had seven tackles including 0.5 for loss while Dorian Strong had one tackle plus dominant coverage that kept him off the radar completely.
John Love had a pair of field goals from 40 and 38 while Bhayshul Tuten had three kick returns for 71 yards and Ali Jennings had a 17-yard punt return.
There are issues to be fixed for the Hokies especially along the offensive line and defensively, but the root of the demise today for Tech is in the coaching side of things, not the roster talent or performance. Whether that's preparation, playcalling, game management, anything entailed in gameday coaching; the performance that Tech's staff brought today was not up too par for a roster with this level of talent.
Brent Pry is now 10-15 which includes an 0-2 record in road openers as clear favorites, a 1-8 record in one-score games, and a 3-10 road record overall. The Hokies may have the talent to contend for an ACC title this fall but right now, they don't have the coaching to do so at this point.
Brent Pry and his staff can absolutely get better from this and given last year's improvement, they've earned the right for some patience to see if they can make those improvements.
However, what's clear today is that Brent Pry and his coaching staff are not ready to meet the expectations put on them and by virtue of that, Virginia Tech is not ready to meet the expectations that many, including myself, have put upon them. Let's see if they can rally this year as they did last year.
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