Welcome to Tunnel Talk, with the latest on Hokie recruiting.
Recruiting philosophy
It's been interesting to see the offers go out in the past several days: late last week, it was a ton of new quarterback talent on the board. Early this week, it's been defensive linemen (with a slight emphasis on DTs). OL may be up next. That's pretty different from the past, semi-scattershot, approach to issuing new offers. It indicates a bit more of a cohesive gameplan to the process than we'd previously seen. That's not to say it's a guaranteed upgrade in the perceptions among players - you could make an argument that seeing a bunch of other players at your position would diminish how special you feel for receiving the offer - but the upgrades in process might be worth any (extremely minor) downsides there.
This is largely an effect of the reorganization of responsibilities in the staff, with Adam Lechtenberg gaining an Offensive Recruiting Coordinator title, and JC Price coming in as a Defensive Recruiting Coordinator in addition to his positional coaching assignment. With a coaching staffer overseeing the effort on either side of the ball, there's more cohesiveness to the effort to each, and that's a good thing. More than anything else, that's what's been lacking and has led to diminishing returns on the recruiting trail in recent classes. Having one "final say" guy to determine the order of the board, give contact schedules to non-coaching staffers (and assistants), and make sure things are running as they should... it's a step in the right direction.
In that regard, I wouldn't read any departures from the non-coaching staffers as an indication of performance-related dismissals. Certainly, the program's desire to keep personnel around when the overall role within the program's hierarchy has been low-performing... well, they weren't itching to give guys raises and keep them around. Sort of similarly to how not all roster attrition is bad attrition (even if a departing player had some usefulness left to give), not all staff attrition is bad, even if there was more juice to squeeze out of the orange, so to speak.
Hokies trending for Curlee Thomas
The Hokies' coaching staff is hosting virtual visits with some of the top prospects on the recruiting board.
One of those is Texas DE Curlee Thomas. VT made his list of finalists (albeit a massive one) a couple weeks ago, and he regularly mentions that the Hokies are among the programs showing the most interest in him - and that the feeling is mutual. His virtual tour and meeting last night with a couple non-coaching staffers and defensive line coach Bill Teerlinck went extremely well. There's still plenty of time to go for a kid who's only narrowed to 18 schools. But at this point, VT is major stock-up for him.
Of course, we've seen this before, and the level of attention the Hokies give trails off (or remains steady while other programs ramp things up on their interest as they get more serious) over time. A recruitment like Thomas's will be a test of the above section of this story, to say the very least. The whims of the staff's preference needs to be more consistent - one could argue that some of the spotty attention for top recruits in recent classes has been changing their mind constantly about who's atop the board - and the level of 'cruitin going on needs to follow a bit of a flowchart from top to bottom. If Thomas starts talking in a month about how he's hearing from the Purdues or Texas Techs of the world way more than VT, that sense of unease will seep back in.
Khalib Johnson
The Hokies are a finalist for Pinson (Ala.) Valley 2022 quarterback Khalib Johnson, who will announce a college commitment next weekend. Louisville is the smart bet here, but there's also something to be said for the Hokies' rise here (Kansas and USF are the other finalists, but are not expected to be in the picture). As noted above, the VT staff sent out a ton of QB offers last week, and they paused those mostly because they'd identified everyone they wanted to offer in that wave. However, it's also smart to wait on a guy to make an announcement when you're a finalist, if for no other reason than to project confidence, but also because you feel you have a decent shot with him.
And the Hokies do indeed feel they have a solid shot with Johnson, even if they had to play catch-up to the Cardinals when they hopped into the mix. I do think it's likely that Louisville is the choice - the timing of the matter has made it very tough for VT to have enough runway to make up that ground - but even if the Hokies don't get him, this may not be a recruitment that's completely over. VT wants to be a bigger factor in Alabama for players who may not get that Bama or Auburn offer, but are still capable of playing at a high level in the ACC. Keeping up the heat on a guy in hopes of flipping him might be a wise choice there.
The staff's behavior after Johnson commits (assuming it's not to VT) will go a long way toward indicating exactly where they see this 2022 QB class playing out. Is it keeping heat on Johnson? Focusing on other offered prospects? Or once again widening the net?
As always, thanks for visiting HokieHaven.com. Feel free to use this thread for discussions of the topics herein.
Recruiting philosophy
It's been interesting to see the offers go out in the past several days: late last week, it was a ton of new quarterback talent on the board. Early this week, it's been defensive linemen (with a slight emphasis on DTs). OL may be up next. That's pretty different from the past, semi-scattershot, approach to issuing new offers. It indicates a bit more of a cohesive gameplan to the process than we'd previously seen. That's not to say it's a guaranteed upgrade in the perceptions among players - you could make an argument that seeing a bunch of other players at your position would diminish how special you feel for receiving the offer - but the upgrades in process might be worth any (extremely minor) downsides there.
This is largely an effect of the reorganization of responsibilities in the staff, with Adam Lechtenberg gaining an Offensive Recruiting Coordinator title, and JC Price coming in as a Defensive Recruiting Coordinator in addition to his positional coaching assignment. With a coaching staffer overseeing the effort on either side of the ball, there's more cohesiveness to the effort to each, and that's a good thing. More than anything else, that's what's been lacking and has led to diminishing returns on the recruiting trail in recent classes. Having one "final say" guy to determine the order of the board, give contact schedules to non-coaching staffers (and assistants), and make sure things are running as they should... it's a step in the right direction.
In that regard, I wouldn't read any departures from the non-coaching staffers as an indication of performance-related dismissals. Certainly, the program's desire to keep personnel around when the overall role within the program's hierarchy has been low-performing... well, they weren't itching to give guys raises and keep them around. Sort of similarly to how not all roster attrition is bad attrition (even if a departing player had some usefulness left to give), not all staff attrition is bad, even if there was more juice to squeeze out of the orange, so to speak.
Hokies trending for Curlee Thomas
The Hokies' coaching staff is hosting virtual visits with some of the top prospects on the recruiting board.
One of those is Texas DE Curlee Thomas. VT made his list of finalists (albeit a massive one) a couple weeks ago, and he regularly mentions that the Hokies are among the programs showing the most interest in him - and that the feeling is mutual. His virtual tour and meeting last night with a couple non-coaching staffers and defensive line coach Bill Teerlinck went extremely well. There's still plenty of time to go for a kid who's only narrowed to 18 schools. But at this point, VT is major stock-up for him.
Of course, we've seen this before, and the level of attention the Hokies give trails off (or remains steady while other programs ramp things up on their interest as they get more serious) over time. A recruitment like Thomas's will be a test of the above section of this story, to say the very least. The whims of the staff's preference needs to be more consistent - one could argue that some of the spotty attention for top recruits in recent classes has been changing their mind constantly about who's atop the board - and the level of 'cruitin going on needs to follow a bit of a flowchart from top to bottom. If Thomas starts talking in a month about how he's hearing from the Purdues or Texas Techs of the world way more than VT, that sense of unease will seep back in.
Khalib Johnson
The Hokies are a finalist for Pinson (Ala.) Valley 2022 quarterback Khalib Johnson, who will announce a college commitment next weekend. Louisville is the smart bet here, but there's also something to be said for the Hokies' rise here (Kansas and USF are the other finalists, but are not expected to be in the picture). As noted above, the VT staff sent out a ton of QB offers last week, and they paused those mostly because they'd identified everyone they wanted to offer in that wave. However, it's also smart to wait on a guy to make an announcement when you're a finalist, if for no other reason than to project confidence, but also because you feel you have a decent shot with him.
And the Hokies do indeed feel they have a solid shot with Johnson, even if they had to play catch-up to the Cardinals when they hopped into the mix. I do think it's likely that Louisville is the choice - the timing of the matter has made it very tough for VT to have enough runway to make up that ground - but even if the Hokies don't get him, this may not be a recruitment that's completely over. VT wants to be a bigger factor in Alabama for players who may not get that Bama or Auburn offer, but are still capable of playing at a high level in the ACC. Keeping up the heat on a guy in hopes of flipping him might be a wise choice there.
The staff's behavior after Johnson commits (assuming it's not to VT) will go a long way toward indicating exactly where they see this 2022 QB class playing out. Is it keeping heat on Johnson? Focusing on other offered prospects? Or once again widening the net?
As always, thanks for visiting HokieHaven.com. Feel free to use this thread for discussions of the topics herein.
