What Happened at Duke

Lack of talent and poor scheme fits force Hokies to take one too many chances

It is now abundantly clear that the combination of talent and fit are the root causes of Virginia Tech’s underwhelming season.

It probably should not be as a big a surprise as it has been.

Brent Pry made it clear when he was hired that he was not going to poach any Penn St. players or recruits.

That decision put him behind the eight-ball because he was inheriting a defense whose younger players lacked talent (see: the disastrous 2020 and 2021 recruiting classes) and were poor scheme fits (Justin Hamilton’s defense is very different from Bud Foster’s and Brent Pry’s, which are much more similar to one another).

Pry was not a flashy hire and the NIL situation at Tech is good, but not great, so portal acquisitions have been mainly from G5 and lower level P4 teams, with noted exceptions found along the defensive line and at quarterback.

In 2022 and again in the beginning of the 2023 and 2024 seasons, Tyler Bowen tried to run the kind of offense best suited to sustainable excellence (i.e., don’t get your quarterback killed).

Although the results improved from year to year, ultimately, the Hokies did not have enough talent to run such an offense effectively. In the last two years, that has resulted in a mid-season switch to relying on more misdirection, which works fine in small doses but is not a panacea, and more quarterback runs, which results in injured quarterbacks.

An instructive comparison would be the offensive strategy Clemson employed when the Tigers were winning national championships with Deshaun Watson and Trevor Lawrence.

Not until the ACC Championship game and the playoffs did Clemson begin to incorporate quarterback runs as a major part of the offense.

Clemson had enough talent in those years to win most of its games while running a sustainable offense. Only when the Tigers faced teams with equal or better talent did they need the extra advantage that came with running their quarterback.

Because it was only for a few games, and there were longer layoffs than normal between games, Clemson could get away with it.

Had Dabo & Co. played that way every week, they’d have done the same to Watson and Lawrence as Pry & Co. have done to Drones and Schlee, and before that as Fuente did to Jerod Evans and Hendon Hooker.

Issues on offense

In Friday’s preview article I wrote:

With Collin Schlee the probable starter at quarterback for the Hokies, do not expect Virginia Tech to do much in the passing game. Duke is too good to allow many cheap completions, and Schlee has not yet demonstrated an ability to go through multiple reads and complete a pass downfield to a receiver with just a half-step advantage on his defender.

Additionally, although Schlee is supposedly healthy, it is doubtful that he’s 100%. And given the state of the offense, Tyler Bowen is going to have to run him a fair amount.

Translation: we’re likely to see Pop Watson play meaningful snaps. And while the offense does not change much when Watson is behind center, his game is different from that of the quarterbacks ahead of him on the depth chart.

The fundamental problem with the offense is not Tyler Bowen’s ability to call a good game. I cannot stress that enough.

The problem is that the Hokies do not have enough talent to run a sustainable offense. That was on full display Saturday night in Durham.

Collin Schlee was a big part of the run game early on because the Hokies needed to remove the natural man advantage the defense has when the quarterback hands the ball to a running back or drops back to throw a pass.

An active QB run game also forces the defense to blitz less and spy more, which protects the offensive line and/or makes it easier for the wide receivers to get open downfield (depending on if the spy is a defensive end or a linebacker).

Once Schlee got hurt, Tech was down to third string QB Pop Watson. Behind him is true freshman Davi Belfort, who is not ready to play in a game.

At this point, QB runs were significantly dialed back.

Duke knew the jig was up, so the Blue Devils sent the house on almost every play, resulting in Watson getting sacked eight times.

Ali Jennings played well, but he was the only receiver to grade out above 60, as per PFF.

There was a lot of hype coming into the season around the wide receivers, but their recruiting rankings (high school and transfer portal) never fully matched up. They struggle to get open, rarely make tough catches, and drop way too many passes.

In short, they were finished products when they transferred in. The scheme gave them no new advantage.

Fontel Mines is a good coach and recruiter, but the current wave of receivers is average, at best. The crop coming up behind them, as well as the young offensive linemen, will make or break Brent Pry’s tenure as head coach.

Defensive issues

Bud Foster was able to shut down opposing offenses for decades with a break-but-don’t-bend defense because he prioritized the following in recruiting:

• Elite secondary players

• Fundamentally sound middle linebackers (often trading away athleticism)

• Rangy and athletic backers (will linebackers)

• Twitchy, undersized defensive linemen who were good at shooting gaps and causing disruption in the backfield

As I mentioned earlier, the Brent Pry defense, as coordinated by Chris Marve, is aligned in its positional focus points (with the noted exception of defensive ends, who need to be taller in the age of the spread offense).

The defensive line is currently the closest to meeting these requirements, and it shows.

Caleb Woodson has played well at will linebacker, considering that he is a true sophomore and the position is new to him. He’s still a year away, but it looks like he’ll be a really good player for the Hokies.

Middle linebacker is a major concern.

Jaden Keller played about four times as many snaps on Saturday as Sam Brumfield, but it was the latter who graded out much higher than the former. Pry said before the game that Keller was pretty beat up, and my suspicion has been that Brumfield has been dealing with an undisclosed injury for more than a month.

Still, the issue moving forward is that Keller does not have the instincts to be a starting mike in this system, and there does not appear to be an heir apparent (Brumfield will graduate).

The corners, Dorian Strong and Mansoor Delane, are good, but not great. Dante Lovett has a higher upside than both of them, but he is still a year away.

Marve has tried to use his corners to cover for the deficiencies at safety, namely Mose Phillips at SS, but without a true shutdown corner, Marve cannot roll his defense to the other side of the field and provide a numerical advantage for his weaker players.

Try as Marve might, he has not been able to hide Phillips in coverage. The corners get beat just enough in press man coverage, Jaylen Jones is merely serviceable at free safety, the pass rush is good but not great, and the linebackers are below average in coverage.

Add it all up, and you get what we have seen this season. Good enough to hang in there against good teams, but not good enough to beat them.

Again, the issue is personnel, not coaching. Supporting evidence includes, but is not limited to:

• Dax Hollifield, a true mike linebacker, had his best season by far under Marve’s tutelage (2022), improving from roughly a baseline player to a fringe All-ACC performer

• Quentin Reddish (who did not play Saturday and is likely injured), as a true freshman, has been Tech’s best safety

• J.C. Price has added players out of the portal who were elite recruits coming out of high school and fit Tech’s system better than the system they are coming from (Florida - APR, Oklahoma - Kelvin Gilliam, Alabama - Khurtiss Perry); APR and Gilliam have shined; Perry is a year away, but consider the following from his 247Sports scouting report:

  Stout, compact, but fairly broad front-line defender who lacks ideal height and length, but plays with electric functional athleticism and energy relative to size. Plays varied defensive roles with high activity and violence, from standing rush end to multiple interior spots. Pursuit ability is terrific relative to size and projected position. White-hot closing burst with chase-down athleticism from the back side. Strong tackler with big-hit capability. Heavy-handedness shines at the point of attack and in tackling efficiency. Sometimes detonates through traffic to make plays. Shows stack-and-shed strength, even against noticeably larger blockers. Knows how to get skinny to knife through gaps. Naturally plays to space, senses leverage, and bursts to nooks and crannies to disrupt. Displays excellent snap anticipation and first-step juice. Quick-footed with active, violent hands that foster disengaging ability vs. run and as a rusher. Screams off the edge whether aligned as standing rush end or with a hand in the dirt. Shows surprisingly good pass-rush get-off, dip, and arc-running ability.

  Now that is an ideal example of matching talent with scheme fit.

Moving forward

To become bowl eligible, Tech will have to beat UVA using a third-string quarterback and without the advantage of a heavy QB-run package. The odds are daunting, but the Wahoos are what they are, and the game is Lane.

For the last year, I have been thinking about why Tech has recruited players like Pop Watson and Davi Belfort to be the future at quarterback, when the present (Drones and Schlee) are bigger and stronger, but less shifty and less polished passers.

The answer I’ve arrived at is that big, powerful quarterbacks in the Logan Thomas mold result in Virginia Tech having a lower ceiling as a team.

The only way to take advantage of big, powerful, fast-in-a-straight-line quarterbacks is to run them a ton.

With mobile, shifty, quicker-than-they-are-fast quarterbacks in the Tyrod Taylor/Michael Vick mold, Tech can negate the inherent offensive line weaknesses (they don’t grow ‘em in the mid-Atlantic region like they do in the Southeast or Midwest) and gain the man advantage, with defenses spying not to takeaway designed runs, but more in reaction to scrambles and broken plays.

To win and become bowl eligible, the Hokies will need Pop Watson to be that guy on Saturday. His knowledge of the offense is obviously still a work in progress, but he will need to elude rushers while keeping his eyes downfield, and when forced to tuck and run, he will need demonstrate sufficient shiftiness to prevent defenders from getting clean shots on him.

It is a tall task, and Tech does not have ripe personnel around him to provide sufficient support. But at his point, that’s the only game in town.