The Talent Gap
Part 3 in an Examination of the Virginia Tech Roster: The Sum of the Parts
In Part 1 of this series I examined the drop-off in Virginia Tech’s high school recruiting. Part 2 looked at the decline in on-field performance. In Part 3, I will combine potential and performance to quantify the trend in Virginia Tech’s talent. Then I will present a few hypotheses on causal factors behind the team’s declining success. I will continue to use Clemson as a point of comparison, since the Tigers have been the top team in the ACC, and a national powerhouse, for the last decade.
While Virginia Tech’s high school recruiting is a far cry from what it was in Frank Beamer’s heyday, potential has remained surprisingly steady since 2015. In fact, upon his arrival in Blacksburg, Justin Fuente immediately improved the team’s potential rating (measured by 247’s “talent” metric, which is basically a rollup of the each player’s recruiting ranking into a singular rating for the team). Fuente recruited very well in his first few years, and as those players entered the program and some of the lower rated, late-Beamer era recruits cycled out, the roster potential improved.
Clemson lost in the National Championship game in both 2015 and 2019. During that span of time, the team’s potential improved from 88.6 to 89.4 (although the high water mark was actually the 2018 National Championship team, which had a 90.2 rating). In comparison, Virginia Tech’s potential improved from 85.4 to 86.5 during that time, a difference of 1.1, which is 0.3 greater than Clemson. Fuente was closing the gap.
Then came Covid and the poor 2020 and 2021 recruiting classes, which erased all the earlier progress and hastened the end of Fuente’s tenure. Still, the notion that Fuente drove the roster into a ditch is not born out by the numbers. His last team had a 0.1 point advantage in potential over Frank Beamer’s last team. Recruiting has contributed to Virginia Tech’s slide since 2016, and certainly since 2011, but it is not the only, or the biggest, factor.
While Virginia Tech’s potential has been pretty consistent since 2015, its performance has not.
After two strong years at the beginning of the Fuente era, 2018 saw a major decline in on-field performance. The team recovered in 2019, but really only to a 2015 level, then the decline resumed in a more steady fashion.
Comparing the two graphs, we can conclude that the Hokies out-performed their potential in 2016 and 2017, slightly under-performed it in 2015 and 2019, and badly underperformed it in 2018, 2020, and 2021 (and 2022 is trending in that direction as well).
Combining the two metrics, we get the following graph, a rough approximation of each team’s talent since 2015:
Virginia Tech’s talent range (the difference between the highest and lowest rated teams) between 2015 and 2022 is 19.7, while Clemson’s 11.3. If we remove the lowest talent year for each team, the range for the Hokies would be 14.2 vs. 6.2 for Clemson. Clemson’s potential range of 2.8 is nearly three times higher than Virginia Tech’s, yet the Hokies’ on-field performance was much less consistent. And now, in 2022, VT finds itself with a roster comprised of very average recruits who are performing well below their potential. What is going on?
I cannot quantify things like nutrition, buy-in, or game prep, but among things I can quantify, here are some hypotheses:
Inconsistent strength and conditioning development (the skinny legs problem discussed widely on Techsideline) has resulted in more players failing to reach their potential (and potentially contributing to more injuries).
Coaching changes have brought new techniques and schemes, leading to temporary declines in performance that would be expected to improve over time, but then more coaching changes set back the process further.
Covid made the transition from Bud Foster to Justin Hamilton at defensive coordinator an impossible situation.
Virginia high schools are not producing the same caliber of player.
The best players in the state increasingly leave to play for blue blood programs.
Young players are increasingly forced into action at VT before they are ready to play at a high level.
Each hypothesis merits its own analysis, and I anticipate tackling them one by one in the offseason.