A Season of Goodbyes
Bidding farewell to a season, a bunch of players, and the old way of doing things
In the aggregate, the combination of SP+ and advanced metrics that are highlighted on the above report card reveal a 2024 Virginia Tech team that was heads and tails better than the 2023.
(Yes, the season is technically not over until after the bowl game has been played, but the team as we know it no longer exists, and it is important to measure how that team performed, not just the “2024 Virginia Tech Hokies”.)
The overall SP+ percentile improved from 66th last year to 81st this year.
The gains on offense were huge. Tech improved from the 54th percentile to the 73rd. There was less progress on defense, but Tech still improved from the 69th percentile to the 78th percentile.
So, how then did the Hokies end up with the same 6-6 record that they did last year?
Near as I can tell there were two key differences: strength of schedule and a move to the extremes in the advanced metrics.
Strength of schedule
With how quickly rosters turn over, and how dispersed talent is across the FBS, it has become a fool’s errand to evaluate a team’s strength of schedule before the season.
What looked like another soft list of opponents proved more difficult than imagined.
The difficulty of Tech’s schedule is somewhat reflected in the team’s final SP+ ranking of 26th in the nation.
According to SP+, the Hokies played only four teams ranked in the top 50. Miami and Clemson were the only two opponents to finish the season (before the playoff) in the SP+ top 25.
However, the Hokies played three teams that won 10 games (Clemson, Miami, and Marshall) and two more that won 9 (Duke and Syracuse). Here is how Tech performed in those games:
#10 Miami - lost on a Hail Mary reception that was overturned by replay
#15 Clemson - lost by 10 (Drones and Tuten both injured and very limited)
#40 Duke - lost by 3 (Drones injured, DNP; Schlee injured in the 1st quarter)
#49 Syracuse - lost by 7 in OT (Drones and Tuten injured, DNP)
#68 Marshall - won by 17
Tech’s two losses to teams outside of the top 50 came to #53 Rutgers by 3 (still an inexplicably bad performance) and #58 Vanderbilt by 7 in OT (on the road, where Alabama also lost).
Five out of Tech’s six loses came by one score or less, and two were in overtime.
Despite the team’s flaws, the difference between six and nine wins in 2024 boiled down to a Charlotte replay and Kyron Drones getting hurt.
When Brent Pry said the Hokies are (now were) close, he was not kidding.
All or nothing
Out of the four quadrants of four metrics each shown on the report card, the Hokies finished in the top 25 nationally in 2024 in five areas:
Defensive Passing Play DB Havoc (#18)
Defensive Rushing Play Explosiveness (#19)
Defensive Passing Play Success (#21)
Defensive Rushing Play Front 7 Havoc (#21)
Offensive Rushing Play Explosiveness (#24)
The problem is that the Hokies also finished outside of the top 100 in four areas. Two of them are clearly related to the quarterback injuries, while the other two point to performance issues:
Offensive Passing Play EPA (#102)
Offensive Passing Play Success (#103)
Defensive Passing Play Explosiveness (#118)
Offensive Rushing Play Front 7 Havoc (#122)
All four of these metrics highlight drive killing (or extending, when Tech was on defense) mistakes. As a result, we can safely say that Tech played winning football on the majority of its plays in 2024, but ended up losing games due to hideous breakdowns on a minority of plays.
In contrast, the 2023 Hokies finished in the top 25 on four metrics and outside of the top 100 on two. The winning to losing plays ratio was much more evenly balanced.
Transfer portal departures
While the list of players leaving the program is old news, and many have indeed found new homes (many, not coincidentally, in the SEC), it takes time for 247Sports to post their transfer portal rankings.
Now that the numbers are in for Tech’s top portal departures, we can evaluate the decision to let these players go.
Outside of Jalen Stroman, who probably just needs a fresh start after a career filled with injuries, the Hokies likely could have kept every player on the list above. The reasons for not doing so can be grouped as follows:
Market Value > Value to VT (4: Chaplin, Delane, Moore, Phillips)
Passed on depth chart (2: Fitzgerald, Givens)
Chaplin, Delane, and Moore are fringe NFL players. Tech could, and probably did, offer to compensate them as such.
However, out on the open market, they are all in the top 6 among available players at their respective position.
As markets go, the transfer portal is a mess. Maybe in the offseason I’ll have a go at disentangling it. Maybe.
For now, though, the key takeaway is that likely Day 3 NFL draft picks with P4 experience are very valuable (read: expensive) in the portal. There are not many of them, and each carries the potential to add another win to their new team’s total just by his addition.
The difference between 9-3 and 10-2 could very well be the difference between hosting a playoff game and playing in the Outback Bowl with a roster gutted by the portal.
The difference between 6-6 and 7-5 is essentially zilch.
No doubt, the offers from those SEC teams compared to Virginia Tech’s reflected this reality.
What the Hokies need is a lot of what former baseball general manager Dan Duquette called undervalued commodities. In short, the Hokies need 10-15 guys who can play as well as, or better, than the players they will replace.
The only way to pull off this strategy and net out neutral on NIL expenses is to sign players who lack P4, or maybe even FBS, experience. In some cases, it will also mean opting for players with non-ideal measurables.
As a final note, I would caution against judging position coaches with regard to the players they lose in the portal.
Often, it is not a question as to whether or not the Hokies can retain the player. Rather, the decision comes down to the cost to retain the player and how that amount impacts the program’s overall roster management strategy.
No longer is returning a bunch of starters from the previous year a valuable measure for predicting future success.
In the modern college game, what matters most is assembling the optimal mix of players each year that allows a given team to maximize its strengths and minimize its weaknesses.
It’s like precision tuning, college football style.