Great Expectations
Recruiting is on the upswing, and in time more talent will likely drive better results, but there are many other factors that play into the on-field product fans see
Another day, another big commitment for Brent Pry & Co. I’m talking about Keylen “Brodie” Adams, but who knows, by the time you read this, there might be another major commitment. That’s the kind of streak the Hokies are on right now.
Still, high school recruiting is just one part of building a winning program, and these days it is really just a sub-set of roster management, along with the transfer portal.
Since Virginia Tech parted ways with Justin Fuente, a constant refrain has been the degree to which talent has dropped within the program.
So, this week I’m going to start by quantifying that assertion, then I will pull back the aperture and examine what Tech has done with the talent it has had.
Decline in team talent
From 2015 to 2021, Virginia Tech’s team talent ranged from 29th nationally (2019) to 40th (2021). Team talent is a metric derived from the 247Sports Composite that blends publicly available recruiting rankings to come up with a team-wide measure.
Virginia Tech’s two best years on the field during that span, 2016 and 2017, featured teams ranked 36th and 33rd in talent, respectively.
In 2022, Tech’s talent ranking slipped all the way to 52nd.
In Frank Beamer’s last year and throughout Justin Fuente’s tenure as head coach, the Hokies were an average to very good team, all the while maintaining a fairly tight team talent range of 11. So, while the 2022 ranking of 52 was still well within the top half of FBS, it was a greater distance from 2021 than the range of the prior seven years.
The 2022 Hokies were likely to take a step backward based on talent alone. But should the 52nd most talented team in the country really have looked as bad as Virginia Tech did last year? And if not, what does that say about other issues within the program?
The expectations-results delta
To get an accurate measurement of Virginia Tech’s performance on the field since 2015, I created a dataset with rankings from the following sources:
SP+ (a rating system created by Bill Connelly that is meant to be a predictive comparison of teams)
FPI (Football Power Index measures a team's true strength on a net points scale; expected point margin vs an average opponent on a neutral field)
SOR (Strength of Record reflects the chance that an average Top 25 team would have a team's record or better, given the schedule)
Overall Efficiency (incorporates offense, defense and special teams efficiencies into a single schedule-adjusted measure of per-play efficiency)
PFF Overall Grade (team performance grade based on a scoring system applied to individual technique, execution, and decision making each play)
I averaged the five rankings to get an overall performance rank for each season. I then subtracted that number from the team talent rank to arrive at the delta (or difference) between reasonable expectations for the season (team talent) and actual outcomes (overall performance).
The story the data tells is not a pretty one.
Only twice since 2015 have the Hokies outperformed expectations, which is represented by a positive delta between overall performance and team talent.
After the 2022 season reset the depths possible for modern Virginia Tech football, the previous low point, 2018, was reclassified in the common fan’s mind from train wreck to merely meh.
One thing both of those seasons have in common is that the team massively underperformed in comparison to the talent on the roster. In fact, those two teams really serve as bookends, with a clear line of symmetry split right down the middle of the still-strange-beyond-belief Covid season (2020).
To classify each delta in plain language, I bucketed the results as follows:
+/- 0-9 positions in the rankings = met expectations
+/- 10-19 = slightly over/underperformed
+/- 20-29 = moderately over/underperformed
+/- 30+ = majorly over/underperformed
Underperforming in five out of eight years is, obviously, not going to get it done. However, the larger issue is the three years in which the Hokies majorly underperformed their team talent.
Injuries are ever present in football, but in none of those three years were they so extreme as to send the season into a tailspin. Josh Jackson getting hurt and the Hokies winning 4 of their last 11 games in 2018 is, I would argue, an example of correlation not necessarily equaling causation. Jackson’s backup, Ryan Willis, played winning football - the defense did not.
Talent replenishment does appear to be a key factor. Fuente talked openly about the dearth of young talent in the program when he arrived. In 2018, just before the words transfer portal entered the college football lexicon, those recruiting misses caught up with the Hokies.
Later, the 2020 and 2021 recruiting classes would again put the Hokies behind the eight ball, ultimately costing Fuente his job.
Recruiting only matters so much
Back-to-back subpar recruiting classes contributed to Tech’s recent struggles, but not as much as it might appear.
After all, the decline in incoming talent is factored into the overall team talent ranking - Tech fell from 36th in 2020 to 52nd in 2022, due in large part to the 2020-21 recruiting classes.
At the same time, Tech’s combined average of on-field performance rankings declined from 41st nationally in 2020 to 96th in 2022.
Clearly, last season owes its struggles to more than a brief downturn in high school recruiting.
Many other factors can conspire to ensure that a given season fails to meet expectations. Below is a list of such factors, along with commentary as to each factor’s particular applicability to Virginia Tech in the last five years.
Strength and conditioning issues
Contributing factor - epidemic of skinny legs in the late Fuente era and the known issue with Parker Clements playing nearly every snap in 2022 despite not being able to lift in the offseason due to an injury
Misalignments within the coaching staff and/or between the staff and players
Major factor - 2020 was absolutely the worst year imaginable for a coordinator transition, and 2022 featured a disjointed staff coaching players who were recruited to play in a different system
Character/discipline issues
Contributing factor - 2018, ‘nuff said
In-game coaching
Major factor - Clock management and communication stand out, but in too many instances in recent years it was clear that one or both coordinators got out-coached in a tough loss
Schematic issues
Question mark - Scheme is always a popular topic for critique, but at present the only open question is Tyler Bowen’s offense (former offensive coordinator Brad Cornelsen’s schemes were great, though his play-calling could be head-scratching)
Off-field distractions
Major Factor - Galen Scott’s dalliances, which led to his resignation in the spring of 2018, as well as Covid, which prompted the cancellation of spring practice and turned the entire 2020 season on its head, both had an outsized, negative impact on the program
The Takeaway
The 2023 offseason has been an unmitigated success for the Virginia Tech football program. Quality players were added from the transfer portal, the 2023 high school recruiting class was a step in the right direction, the Spring Game showed an improved team and gave the fanbase its first glimpse of young stars-in-the-making, and the staff is landing one highly ranked 2024 commit after another.
It has been a while since the program felt a steady breeze at its back. With ACC Media Days and the start of fall camp just around the corner, we will soon find out the extent to which that momentum is carrying over in other areas.
Coaches talk often after a loss about “having some things to clean up”. Recruiting is improving, and that is important, but the Hokies will need to demonstrate improvement in many other areas if they are to meet, or exceed, expectations in 2023.