The disaster that has been Virginia Tech's 2025 season ended in miserable fashion tonight as the Hokies were absolutely dominated by No. 18 Virginia on the Cavaliers' way to reaching the ACC Championship for the first time since the last time they beat Tech, 2019. In a word, this game showed why VT had to make a massive investment in athletics and in James Franklin as they look to rebuild a complete mess of a football program.
Virginia Tech lost to No. 18 Virginia 27-7 to fall to 3-9 on the season while the Cavaliers improved to 10-2 on their way to booking a spot in next week's ACC Championship. This is the widest margin of defeat for Virginia Tech to Virginia since they lost to UVA 38-0 in 1991.
This was a game where the Hokies were thoroughly dominated for most of the night as the Hokies' first ten drives had an interception on their first drive on a tipped pass, a field goal miss on their only trip to UVA territory on their second drive, and then eight-straight three-and-outs including an interception by Kyron Drones on the eighth three and out. Tech finally got their first 1st down since the first quarter with less than six minutes to go in the fourth quarter on their 11th possession, with a Kyron Drones in route to Shamarius Peterkin producing a 57-yard touchdown, the only points of the game.
Overall, the Hokies' offense was atrocious in this game as Kyron Drones was constantly under pressure, Tech's wide receivers had multiple drops with Ayden Greene out, Drones had some poor throws, and the offensive playcalling was completely uninspired. More notably, Philip Montgomery didn't try much despite Tech being underdogs and being behind most of the night, whether that was pulling a struggling Drones for Pop Watson or giving Drones more chances to throw the football to try to open space for the rushing attack.
Meanwhile, Tech's defense held UVA under 150 yards in the first half with inconsistent play but the Cavaliers asserted their will in the second half with a stretch of four-straight redzone appearances. Though Tech did have seven tackles for loss, their defense was an issue for much of the night with UVA being able to steadily move it even with a humble 4.2 yards per carry and Chandler Morris being 21-35 for 182 yards.
Tech finished the night being outgained 380-197, though the margin was only 4.6 yards per play to 4.2 yards per play in favor of UVA. Add in the two turnovers for the Hokies and it was a thorough tail-whooping. Tech's 197 yards are the second fewest of the Brent Pry/Philip Montgomery era, with the only game with fewer yards being 140 in a 34-3 loss at Louisville on November 4th, 2023.
Tech's special teams also left a lot to be desired with John Love missing a field goal and the Hokies having multiple penalties from their special teams units.
Kyron Drones' collegiate career ended about as badly as he could probably imagine as he was 4-16 for 78 yards, one touchdown, and two interceptions while running for 35 yards. Drones wasn't the #1 problem for the Hokies despite that stat line, but his play was poor to say the least and Tech should have given Pop Watson at least a chance.
Jeff Overton Jr got his first career start with Marcellous Hawkins out and had 53 rushing yards on 11 carries while fellow true freshman Shamarius Peterkin had a late 57-yard touchdown, the first of his career. Terion Stewart ran for 22 yards on eight carries.
Tech's linebackers were a lone bright spot in general as Caleb Woodson and Kaleb Spencer each had seven tackles with one for loss while Noah Chambers led VT with eight tackles including 0.5 for loss. Ben Bell had four tackles including two for loss with one sack in his final collegiate game while Isaiah Brown-Murray had five tackles and three pass breakups.
Chandler Morris was 21-35 for 182 yards plus 25 rushing yards and one touchdown while J'Mari Taylor 80 rushing yards, one rushing touchdown, four catches for 34 yards, and a one-yard passing touchdown. Maddox Marcellus had nine tackles including one for loss with 0.5 sacks plus an interception while Antonio Clary had three tackles and an interception.
This was an annihilation from start to finish that showed the chasm between a Virginia program that got a pleasant NIL influx and have taken advantage of it and a Virginia Tech program that needed more resources but still underperformed significantly given their resources with a team that hasn't done much well all year except put up good effort. Tonight, the coaching left a lot to desire from an uninspired offensive approach, a disinterest to taking risks as an underdog, and continued issues defending the pass.
Tonight was a reminder why the Hokies needed a $229 million infusion to athletics and a massive expense to hire James Franklin to put VT in the same ballpark funding wise as FSU, Clemson, North Carolina, and Miami. It's also clear that Franklin has a massive task ahead of him with a roster needing a massive talent infusion for year one while building up the high school recruiting foundation for long-term success.
UVA has good coaching taking advantage of decent resources while the Hokies had resources under fan expectations and still didn't even match the reasonable expectations for those resources. There's a lot of reasons why VT is 3-9 and UVA is 10-2, with tonight showing how vast the gap was between UVA and VT, something that can never be accepted and something Tech has to have James Franklin rectify or else Tech will continue to fall down the prestige ranks in this sport.
