After three-straight losses caused a once promising turnaround to spiral into a disaster of a season, Virginia Tech enters the Commonwealth Cup needing to beat UVA to reach a bowl game, the seventh time in the past 13 seasons that's been the case. The Hokies are 6-0 in those situations prior and will be looking to make it 7-0 on what will be a frigid night in Blacksburg. Meanwhile, Virginia will obviously be hungry for their second Commonwealth Cup victory in the past 20 matchups, and first win in Blacksburg since 1998 in pursuit of their first bowl game of the Tony Elliott era.
So with that in mind, let's dive into my Hokies to watch against UVA.
QB Pop Watson
There have been no confirmations made about who the starting quarterback for the Hokies will be against Virginia. However, given that Kyron Drones hasn't really shows signs of improvement in regards to his injury and that Collin Schlee just suffered a head injury last week, I would be surprised if Pop Watson didn't make his first career start Saturday night against UVA.
Watson showed plenty of promise in his first game action against a first team defense in a competitive game, going 12-25 for 148 yards and an interception while running for 50 yards on 10 non-sack carries. In this game, Watson showed plenty of moxie and lots of flashes of potential with some nice throws in tough situations including a third and long conversion on his first pass of this game. He also had some questionable decisions and mistakes at times including a late throw on an out route that was intercepted with ease.
Of course, there are two big differences from last week that may even things out. First is the fact that Watson is getting first team reps and that Tyler Bowen has a chance to build out a gameplan around Watson rather than having to build the plane on the fly to some extent. Meanwhile, Virginia now has tape on Watson and can start to figure out some tendencies that they can exploit, including in how he reads defenses and different pressure looks pre-snap.
