What Happened Against Clemson
Despite rash of injuries, Hokies play Clemson close enough to send fanbase into tizzy
Hokie Twitter (technically X, but “Hokie X” sounds strange) was an awfully dark place Saturday night.
Some of the loudest voices skipped past “fire the coaches” and began calling for Athletic Director Whit Babcock to get the boot.
Burn it all down and start over.
This fanbase deserves better.
I don’t blame the fans for doing something better with their time than watching this team blow another second half lead.
Quick to judge, quick to anger, slow to understand.
To level set, there are two other traditional college football powers who are coping with a similar number of injuries at key positions as are the Hokies: Florida and Florida St.
The Seminoles lost to Notre Dame 52-3, falling to 1-9 on the season (their pre-season top-10 ranking a distant memory). Yesterday, Head Coach Mike Norvell fired both coordinators and the wide receivers coach, Ron Dugans, who played for the school under Bobby Bowden.
Florida, down to its third-string quarterback, a transfer from Yale, lost to Texas 49-17, falling to 4-5 this year. The Gators have games remaining against #21 LSU, #10 Ole Miss, and the aforementioned Seminoles.
Meanwhile, with two beat-up quarterbacks and down to their fourth string running back, the Hokies lost by 10 to Clemson. In the process, they blew a second half lead for the fourth time in 2024.
With that as perspective, let’s break down Saturday’s game.
Running back usage
In Football 101, we all learn that no matter how well a running back carries the ball, he won’t see the field in an actual game until he is a competent blocker.
According to PFF, Bhayshul Tuten is a slightly below baseline run blocker, but a pretty good pass blocker. Most importantly, he is very consistent:
Pass blocking: all but two games between 71 and 78 (but the two, against Rutgers and Miami, were total stinkers; sub-25)
Run blocking: all but one game between 57 and 60 (the one was 69.1 against Boston College)
Malachi Thomas is a terrible pass blocker (19.3), but a pretty good run blocker (70.0). Jeremiah Coney is a bad pass blocker (48.9) and a roughly baseline run blocker (59.4).
Thomas was ruled out for the Clemson game, leaving Tuten and Coney the lone options among the top four running backs coming into the season (PJ Prioleau is out for the year).
It was obvious from the opening kick that Tuten was nowhere near 100% on Saturday. For the game, he split snaps about evenly with Coney.
If Tuten was going to play, he had to start. Clemson already knew he was nursing an ankle injury. Starting Coney would have telegraphed the severity of the injury, inviting even more Clemson defenders to tackle him low and try to knock him out of the game.
So, the ankle was clearly going to limit his carries. Still, he’s the best blocker among the team’s running backs. In a normal game, the difference between him and Coney in pass blocking is about 25 points, which is quite large.
Where fans have room to quibble is with not giving Coney a few carries when he was in. I suspect one of the following was behind that decision:
Coney has put the ball on the ground a few times this fall in practice (a guess, I do not know this for sure)
Coney may himself be nursing an undisclosed injury (possibly suffered on the fumble at Syracuse)
Tech’s offensive line was struggling to move the Clemson defensive line and, on the few carries Tuten did get, he was usually hit immediately in the backfield.
So, that was thinking when both running backs were available. All that went out the window when Tuten’s ankle was reinjured.
Without Tuten, Tech was down to its fourth-string running back (Coney) and then a bunch of young guys who are not prepared to play in a game.
“Not prepared to play in a game” is the polite way of saying they would get the quarterback killed because they can’t block.
And since Clemson knows that, they would blitz on every play that one of those guys lined up in the backfield.
The only way to stop the blitzing would be to line up with an empty backfield.
After Tuten’s reinjury, the Hokies were just one play from this disastrous situation. Running Coney would have increased the risk of him getting hurt by a significant amount.
We also don’t know how healthy the running backs are behind Coney (there is no such thing as a scout team injury report).
But, as long as Coney was in the backfield, the Tigers had to at least honor the possibility that Schlee (by this time) would hand him the ball.
This is what Brent Pry meant when he said after the game, as reported by Andy Bitter of TechSideline.com, “We had a game plan that made sense for the situation we were in. I give them credit up front. They’ve got a salty front, but obviously Bhayshul goes down, and Malachi wasn’t able to play. So the game plan is what it was.”
Tyler Bowen was dealt an awful hand with the backfield situation. There is a little room to quibble with some of the tactics he employed, but not much. His hands were tied.
Of course, injuries to QBs 1 and 2 didn’t do the Hokies any favors.
Talent issues
Hokie receivers dropped six passes on Saturday, almost all of which, had they been completed, would have gone for first downs. On a day in which the offense had limited options due to injury, these drops were absolute back breakers.
Here are the drops by receiver, as well as each player’s original 247 information coming out of high school:
Ayden Greene - 2 drops, 89 (3-star, #62 WR, #11 in Tennessee)
Da’Quan Felton - 1 drop, Not Rated
Stephen Gosnell - 1 drop, 86 (3-star, #141 WR, #29 in North Carolina)
Ali Jennings - 1 drop, 85 (3-star, #138 WR, #24 in Virginia)
Jay Lane - 1 drop, 85 (3-star, #174 WR, #25 South Carolina)
The transfer portal rankings were higher than the high school ratings for the four players acquired via the portal, leading many to believe that Tech’s wide receiver room was more talented than it really was.
In truth, the Hokies got three productive G5 (or below) players and one rotational power conference player. Except for Ali Jennings, who has been injured for most of the past two years, these guys have developed and improved.
However, it is clear at this point that they arrived in Blacksburg pretty close to finished products, and their ceilings reflected their high school recruiting ratings.
Greene was a good signing for the Hokies and, hopefully as he develops and gets stronger, he will drop less passes. If not, he risks getting supplanted by the equally talented receivers Tech signed last year, Keylen Adams (89, 3-star, #61 WR, #in Virginia) and Chanz Wiggins (89, 3-star, #63 WR, #7 in Virginia).
Kyron Drones earns demerits from many for his work as a drop-back passer, but it is important to remember that he is throwing to experienced receivers, not necessarily overly talented ones. Next year, that is likely to invert.
Lack of talent was an issue everywhere on the field against Clemson. The Tigers are ranked 5th in team talent. The Hokies are 52nd, and the yawning gap was clear at several key points in the game.
Remember, every player is capable of playing at a high level. Talent is really about the consistency of that high level play.
On the Tigers’ second touchdown, Mansoor Delane (87, 3-star, #55 CB, #13 in Maryland) was unable to get Cade Klubnik (98, 5-star, #2 QB, #3 in Texas) to the ground when he had Klubnik dead to rights on a corner blitz.
Klubnik spun out of the would be tackle and found T.J. Moore (98, 5-star, #4 WR, #6 in Florida), who had gotten behind Dorian Strong (84, 3-star, #133 CB, #36 in Maryland) when Strong peaked into the backfield as it appeared Delane would sack Klubnik.
This is not to say that all high school recruiting ratings are spot-on. They are not. Dorian Strong was under-rated coming out of high school. But he was not under-rated by that much. He probably should have been an 86 or 87, but his inability to put on, and keep on, good weight has capped his performance ceiling as a player.
Another example is the interception Drones threw, which was a catchable pass that was ripped away from Felton by Clemson’s Ashton Hampton (87, 3-star, #76 S, #98 in Florida). Hampton’s coverage on the play was very good, but a more talented receiver would have gotten his body fully turned to wall-off the defender, making it pretty easy to secure the catch.
A final example was Clemson’s Jake Briningstool (95, 4-star, #3 TE, #1 in Tennessee) running through the arm tackle of the Hokies’ Keyshawn Burgos (86, 3-star, #66 Edge, #26 in Virginia). After the play, Burgos looked down at his hands, wondering how and why they had failed him.
Final thoughts
Considering the circumstances, Virginia Tech played about as well as it could against Clemson on Saturday. The Tigers had better and healthier players, and it showed in key moments.
Still, Clemson struggled to block the Hokies’ pass rush for most of the night, and holding such a talented team to a -0.09 EPA per play is an impressive accomplishment.
Importantly for Tech fans, the team did not quit at any point in the game (unlike many of the fans, who streamed out of Lane Stadium long before the final whistle had blown).
With a full complement of healthy players, this coaching staff has demonstrated that it can wring top-quartile performance (according to SP+) out of a roster in the 39th percentile in team talent.
That is pretty solid over-achievement.
Andy Bitter closed his Five Thoughts article yesterday with his feeling that a change needs to be made, but that it is not clear where.
I disagree. The obvious necessary changes are on the roster. A lot of guys who have played a lot of snaps for Tech and found inconsistent levels of success (e.g., Parker Clements, who struggled in 2022 and 2023, but has played well in 2024) will exhaust their eligibility in the coming weeks. They need to be replaced with more talented high school and transfer portal recruits.
If Pry & Co. can get the team talent to around 30th nationally, the Hokies will start winning at a rate that will satisfy fans. If not, Virginia Tech will be looking for a new coach and AD in the not-too-distant future.