What's in a Record?
A surprising parallel to the 2024 team helps define 'success' in 2025
If I told you that the 2024 Hokies were nearly as good as the only Virginia Tech team to ever win the Orange Bowl, would you believe me?
Can you quickly (and without assistance) name that Orange Bowl winning team?
Ding, ding, ding. Time’s up!
The Hokies have played in four Orange Bowls, all during the Frank Beamer era. The only time Tech actually won the game was on January 1, 2009.
The 2008 team that beat Cincinnati 20-7 is widely considered the worst of Beamer’s 10-win teams.
The offense that season was atrocious, save for Tyrod Taylor and Darren Evans, and the defense lacked stars. The team finished the regular season with an 8-4 record and, at 5-3 in the ACC, needed a tiebreaker to finish atop the now defunct Coastal Division of the ACC.
That Tech team beat Boston College in the ACC Championship on its way to winning the Orange Bowl and finishing with a 10-4 record. It’s 1738 final ELO rating is nearly 60 points lower than the 2011 team’s final rating, which was the next lowest among Tech’s 10-win teams.
(Note: ELO is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of competitors in zero-sum games; for this article I source the data from cfbdata)
About the first point, my assertion that the 2024 team was nearly as good as that 2008 team - it really does hold water.
Here’s the proof.
History repeating…to a point
Just like in 2024, the 2008 season began with a road loss to a middling-at-best team. In 2008 that team was East Carolina, and the final score was ECU 27, VT 22.
Frank Beamer then abandoned the idea of redshirting Tyrod Taylor, and the team (somehow) reeled off five straight wins, including a 35-30 victory at Nebraska (the Cornhuskers finished the year 9-4).
But the wins were ugly, the offense non-existent outside of Tyrod scrambling, and the Hokies hit a rough patch in the middle of the season.
First, they lost at Boston College, then the next week they got down to their third-string quarterback, Cory Holt, who had switched to receiver in the offseason. Holt played admirably and the Hokies kept the score respectable, but they lost by 10 at Florida St.
Just like in 2024, the team entered November with a 5-3 record. At this point in the season, the two teams also had very similar ELO ratings.
The 2024 team travelled to Syracuse with an ELO of 1697, while the 2008 team prepared to host Maryland on a Thursday night with a 1690 ELO.
Maryland, with its 6-2 record, was ranked #23 in the nation. but Tech had a few things working in its favor.
First, Sean Glennon was healthy enough to start and play the whole game. Although a non-mobile second stringer, he was very experienced. Against Maryland, he was efficient, completing two-thirds of his pass attempts for 127 yards and a touchdown.
Second, the Hokies were playing at home on a Thursday night - the crowd was electric.
Finally, the Hokies had a healthy starting running back in Darren Evans, and he played the best game of his career, rushing for a then school record of 253 yards on 32 carries (Bhayshul Tuten broke that record in his final game, against UVA, this past season).
Tech beat Maryland that night 23-13, which improved its record to 6-3. The Hokies would lose the next week at a very average Miami, falling to 6-4.
From there, Tech closed out the regular season with a couple of ugly wins to reach 8-4, before going on a run in the postseason.
In 2024, the inflection point was also the ninth game of the year. However, in that game the Hokies had three factors working against them:
Kyron Drones was injured and would not play at QB. Collin Schlee started and played the whole game, but he got pretty beat up.
The game was at Syracuse, traditionally a house of horrors for Tech football.
Bhayshul Tuten, who entered the game as the nation’s fifth leading rusher, did not play due to an injury.
Despite the headwinds, the Hokies got off to a quick start, building what felt like an insurmountable lead of 21-3 in the third quarter.
Syracuse, however, came all the way back and won 38-31 in overtime.
Virginia Tech’s postgame win probability was 89.0% for the Syracuse game, higher than the 87.9% probability from the week before, when the Hokies defeated Georgia Tech 21-6 at Lane Stadium.
Virginia Tech should have beaten Syracuse.
Had they done that, the loss the following week against Clemson would have again seen the 2024 team matching the 2008 team with a 6-4 record, this time through 10 games.
Even with the Syracuse loss, the Hokies finished the regular season with an ELO of 1675, nearly as high at the 2008 team’s ELO of 1690 after 12 games.
Had the Hokies not loss at Syracuse, which dropped their ELO rating 31 points, a 7-5 Virginia Tech team in 2024 would have finished the regular season with a higher ELO than the 2008 team, which went 7-4 against FBS opponents.
And, of course, the postseason is incomparable due to the transfer portal.
The difference in the two teams was health at quarterback and running back down the stretch.
Had the 2024 team enjoyed a comparable level of health at those two positions as the 2008 team (which, remember, was not amazing), the 2024 team very likely would have finished the regular season 8-4, and the vibes around the program this offseason would be completely different.
Where the similarities end
The 2008 Hokies were experienced on defense, but completely inexperienced at the skill positions on offense.
The young Hokies flashed a lot of promise late in the 2008 season, and with so many key players returning on offense, expectations were high entering the 2009 season.
The 2024 team is just the opposite, with almost all of the offensive skill position players departing after the exhaustion of their eligibility.
That fact, combined with similar questions on defense as the 2009 team faced, results in lower expectations for the upcoming season.
In fact, the best-case scenario for the 2025 team would probably look something like the 2008 team.
But that is just the view from a distance. The transfer portal introduces a higher degree of uncertainty.
The main takeaway is that the 2024 team was much closer to being good than most fans realize. Better conditioning alone probably would have enabled it to beat Syracuse and match the 2008 team in ELO.
As such, although Virginia Tech AD Whit Babcock does not want to set a win total necessary for Brent Pry to keep his job, we can safely set an ELO rating of 1725, which would translate to 7-8 regular season wins.
Anything less, and I would expect Virginia Tech to clean house in the athletic department, not just the football program.