It Will Always be Heinz Field
The Hokies travel to Pittsburgh to play the Pitt Panthers in the House of Horrors now called Acrisure Stadium. Expectations are low, and they should be.
dae-quanAs I wrote earlier in the week, my new multivariate model to predict game scores is ready for primetime. The prediction is included in the preview viz below. I have also upgraded the viz in numerous other ways, so I encourage you to view it in full screen mode. It is ripe with grades, stats, and other metrics that are pertinent to understanding, beforehand, how this week’s game is likely to play out.
If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em?
My biggest takeaway from this week’s game viz is that Pitt is doing more with less than Virginia Tech. Recruiting is even and NFL draft picks are even, but in the last five years Pitt has averaged 0.6 wins more per year than the Hokies. And that does not even begin to tell the story.
In 2017, Virginia Tech needed a goal line stand in the final seconds to hang on and beat the Panthers. At the end of that season, Tech’s ELO rating of 1,846 was 261 points higher than Pitt’s. Entering Saturday’s game, Pitt has an ELO of 1,666, and the team has been trending upward since 2019. In contrast, VT has trended downward since 2017 - the Hokies have seen their ELO decline by 526 points since the end of that season.
(Note: Remember that ELO is a method of rating teams that came out of the chess world. It looks at at a team’s results and considers how good the opponent is. A big upset will lead to a big increase in ELO, while wins or losses to teams with a similar ELO have a much smaller impact. ELO looks at teams over time, so beating Alabama would provide a nice bump in ELO, it does not suddenly launch the victor to the top of the pack.)
Pitt appears to have successfully executed on a winning formula that should look familiar to any Tech fan who followed the Hokies during the peak Beamer years: redshirt the majority of each freshmen class, develop recruits into starters by their junior year, and play hard-nosed, aggressive defense. So, in that regard, Pitt is a model of sorts for Brent Pry-era Virginia Tech (yes, it hurt me as much to write that sentence as it did you to read it, but it’s been to Pitt’s advantage that Pat Narduzzi can navigate Beamer Way in more ways than one). Luckily, for Tech fans, the Hokies have some built-in advantages in the fanbase, gameday environment, and number and quality of players in their immediate recruiting area. In short, Tech has a higher ceiling. Trouble is, they are nowhere near that ceiling right now, and future hypothetical advantages will not aid them one iota against this year’s Panthers.
Bustin’ out?
Lost in the disaster at UNC was a quiet, albeit big, step in the right direction taken by the offensive line. As a unit, Joe Rudolph’s guys graded out at 65.8 in run blocking and 65.0 in pass blocking. The run blocking grade was a season high by eight points. Silas Dzansi had a good game (68.9 run blocking and 79.8 pass blocking) and Jesse Hanson, Johnny Jordan, and Kaden Moore all earned decent grades. Parker Clements struggled once again, and he has yet to reach a grade of 60 in run blocking for any full game this season. Still, there is progress. Little by little, it might be starting to click up front.
By the numbers, the Hokies do not have a single advantage anywhere in this game. Pitt is equal or better at every position group. The Panthers grade out much higher on both offense and defense, and while the advantage is smaller on special teams, they’re better there too.
I keep thinking about what it would take to get the Virginia Tech offense in gear. The situation reminds me of a good-but-not-great hitter in baseball who goes into a long slump. We’re talking 5 for his last 45 type of slump to drop the batting average from .250 to .210. Not seeing the ball well, something off in the fundamentals, and on the few occasions he lines up a fastball and puts a good swing on it, he hits it on a rope right at someone. That’s the VT offensive line right now.
The inability to run the football, and lack of big plays overall, is really straining the Virginia tech offense. For the season, VT only has three scoring drives of less than five plays, and one of them began in a goal to-go situation. Incidentally, Tech had one other drive start inside the opposition’s 10 yard-line. That time it took the Hokies seven plays to score. As long as scoring is this difficult, we’re going to keep seeing lopsided defeats. On the flip side, as soon as all five linemen play a good game, it will get a lot easier to move the ball.
Up front the Hokies have been consistently inconsistent, but looking at the numbers together, one can see indications that they are starting to think a little less and just play football a little more. For the Hokies to have any chance at all this weekend, they would need to see the offensive line bust out of its slump. What would that look like? Two hundred yards rushing as a team, average 4.5 yards per carry, and at least three runs of greater than 10 yards, including one over 40. There is absolutely no reason to believe that will happen, but the Hokies are due. They are due to put together a complete game up front, due to have a good game offensively, due to play well in Pittsburgh, and due to pull an upset.
Might past be prologue?
The multivariate model is this week’s shiny new toy, but I also added what I think is a really informative table in the middle of the viz. It displays the three games since 2003 that are the closest match for the ELO difference between Virginia Tech and that week’s opposing team. This week, Tech’s ELO rating is 346 points lower than Pitt’s. The three VT games in the last 20 years whose pre-game ELO difference was closest to that number are:
All three of those games came down to the final minute of play. Tech beat #8 Ohio St. when Donovan Riley picked off JT Barrett and returned it for a touchdown. The Hokies led #16 Notre Dame on the road in the fourth quarter before the Irish went on an 18-play, 87-yard touchdown drive that secured their one-point victory. And finally, back in 2012, the year that Tech lost the 10-win streak, the slumping Hokies rose to the challenge against an excellent Florida St. team. The Hokies took the lead with 2:19 to go on a Cody Journell 21-yard field goal. (A piece of trivia: I was the radio voice of the Giles Spartans for Journell’s first two years of high school). With 40 seconds remaining, E.J. Manuel connected with Rashad Greene on a 39-yard TD pass that won the game for the Seminoles.
I hate to say it, but out of those three games, this one feels most like the FSU game from 2012. Those Hokies, lacking talent at the skill positions, struggled to move the ball consistently all season. Against FSU, the offense only scored 20 points, but a safety had the Hokies up by two entering the final minute of play. The win moved FSU, which came into the game ranked 10th in the nation, up to 9-1, while the loss dropped VT to 4-6. The model was almost spot-on in its prediction for that game. It had the Seminoles winning 27-21, a result I would gladly take this week.
What is the model thinking?
The model sees a struggling Virginia Tech team going on the road to play a good Pitt team, and it expects Tech to get it’s collective tail kicked 49-17. And that is generally what happens every time the Hokies play in Pittsburgh (outside of the 2016 game, and the model was very accurate in forecasting a 35-33 VT win that night). FPI projects Pitt to win seven games this year, and given their 3-2 start, that seems about right. After VT, Pitt’s remaining schedule features the following matchups:
at Louisville
at North Carolina
vs. #22 Syracuse
at Virginia
vs. Duke
at Miami
Louisville and Virginia are likely wins, but the other four games are toss-ups. Pitt is good enough to beat most teams in the ACC, but not so dominant that they can’t be beaten by a team like Georgia Tech. Similar to my model, and most prognosticators, FPI clearly views the VT game as a likely Pitt win.
Gut Feelings
I cannot imagine Virginia Tech winning this game, but except for the whole playing Pitt at Pitt thing, it does feel like the sort of game in which the Hokies might play surprisingly well in a loss. What would that look like? The Counting Crows currently playing in the background would say it looks like hanging around into the third, if not fourth, quarter.
I think the best case scenario is a hard fought 34-26 defeat, or something in that range. That might even include a late Hokie score to make the game look closer than it really was. Like FPI, I honestly don’t think Pitt is anything special. But you can read the numbers as well as I can. Like I wrote earlier - not one grade, stat, or metric favors the Hokies. I’ve seen much better Tech teams lose to much worse Pitt teams in that half empty stadium in the steel city. So, I’ll stand by my dispassionate model. Forty-nine points is an awful lot, but since the UNC game, I’ve seen Drake Maye effortlessly tossing touchdown passes in my nightmares all week. Without Dorian Strong, the remaining cornerbacks just do not inspire much confidence. But, hey, there is always the chance that the Hokies surprise us and bust out of their doldrums…
Record outright: 3-2
Record against the spread: 2-3
Record over/under: 1-4