After all the preseason hype, Virginia Tech came out unprepared and lifeless to play football in the first half of Vanderbilt with coaching miscues and other issues stacking up as the day progressed on their way to a stunning 34-27 overtime loss at Vanderbilt. This was a roller coaster of a day for the Hokies' offense which was awful in the first half and then showed their massive potential with a strong second half.
So with all that in mind, let's take a look at my takeaways from the Hokies' offensive performance in Nashville.
1. A Bizarre Offensive Gameplan
Let's start with the offensive mess of a first half that was rooted in a nonsensical gameplan.
The Hokies stretched the field horizontally a ton, but failed to try much of anything vertically despite the fact that the Hokies had the clear advantage at WR with playmakers like Jaylin Lane, Ali Jennings, and Da'Quan Felton along with a QB who's hit his fair share of home run passes in Kyron Drones.
The data also backs up the bizarre reality of the lack of downfield passing or even play designs for that as VT Scoop's Doug Bowman posted on social media.
This wasn't just because Kyron Drones was throwing to guys underneath solely, though he did miss a couple guys farther down the field early on. As mentioned, so many playcalls in the first half were set up to attack the flats with little being done to push the ball downfield.
Star WR Ali Jennings basically confirmed in his comments after the game on what changed offensively from the first to second half.
“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.
To not take a greater volume of shots down the field from the start makes absolutely no sense. It's not like Virginia Tech's vertical passing threat isn't already on tape for future opponents to scout anyway. Some of this looked like Tyler Bowen trying to get greedy and go super vanilla to avoid putting too much on tape for future games, rather than focusing on making sure the Hokies took care of business against a weaker Power 4 opponent.
And the obvious funny thing is once the Hokies decided to more intentionally push the ball down the field in the second the half, everything in the offense suddenly opened up. Vanderbilt's defense could no longer cheat on everything underneath and suddenly things opened up on Tech's variety of horizontal options along with the ground attack, with Bhayshul Tuten's 24-yard touchdown drive coming at a time when Tech pushed the ball way more down the field right out of halftime.
This was also against a Vanderbilt secondary that had legitimate questions on the outside yet was rarely targeted despite the playmakers that Tech had out there. The Hokies didn't even really go for 50-50 balls despite the fact that they have some big targets to win those like Da'Quan Felton.
The fact that Bowen chose to go so heavily underneath, most notably on a third and long near the redzone late in the first half, against a secondary with questions that was cheating with being overaggressive, and that it took halftime to realize that via the players telling Bowen and his offensive staff, is absurd. When you have the upstairs view of the field, you should be able to see that as a playcaller and drive that home to take shots down the field and force them to be honest. That especially true now that you don't have to get on the phone but can tell your quarterback that in the huddle.
This was a very disappointing step back from Tyler Bowen after he and his staff did a great job of adjusting after a slow start last season to find their offensive rhythm. This approach is the type of thing that you can't have going forward if you want to avoid just trying to get to a bowl game again, despite having a roster that is capable of so much more than that.
Part of the story with the bizarre gameplan also may be a lack of trust in one unit on offense that had its fair share of struggles on Saturday.
