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It's been awhile...

Sep 24, 2005
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Hello.

This is going to be a little lengthy but I wanted to give both my biased and unbiased opinions. What can I say? I was bored, so...

First, my biased opinion. HA! Loved it when the (C)hokies lost. Love it when they lose in anything. Truly made my day, week, and possibly years and has given me ammunition I can use until.. well, a long time.

Now, the unbiased part. When the season began, I thought VT would be really down - as in barely even .500 if that. Largely because of the losses on the defensive side. Everyone knows that on the offensive side that while VT doesn't really have a "homerun" threat at any of the skill positions, they have enough quality athletes to beat, and getting some breaks here and there, at worst hang with most of their schedule. It would the weakness of the defensive side that would be the detriment this year. Losses that any defense would suffer a down slide. The only for sure losses I saw were FSU and Notre Dame who just had superior athletes and numbers across the board.

Then came the FSU game. Thought that FSU might struggle early due to the new coach and scheme but with all of those athletes against a young, inexperienced defense they would eventually prevail. After about 3 possessions I thought that SOB Foster has pulled it off again - he truly is a genius - and created a heck of a defense out of a bunch of inexperienced kids. After about 5 possessions it became clear that it wasn't really that VT's defense was that good it was that FSU was putrid offensively like never before. Still, a solid win against a brand name that people buy in to just for their history alone.

As for the ODU game I thought "Ha! Welcome to WVU football, suckers". Last year, WVU had a solid offense and a crappy defense. Cost us the VT game and about 2 others. Truth is, its pretty much that way for us every year. But never for Tech - they always had at worst a decent and usually a tremendous defense they could lean on. With ODU, Tech could stop nothing. Not the pass, not the run. I've never seen that before. Even in bad years for the defense they could always stop one. This doesn't look promising for the remainder of the schedule unless Bud can shore up at least the run side of things. The passing side takes more time and experience to build, the run is more about mentality and effort.

To wrap up, this game may be the bell cow of your season. It may turn out you rack up 9 or 10 more wins like after the JMU game when everyone wrote you off. But, I don't see it this time. Unlike then, you had experienced, older kids you could rely on for leadership. Beamer always made his hay taking average to slightly above average talent to greatness through 3 or 4 years of experience and had those kids as leaders to fall back on. The way things are now, VT (like a lot of teams) loses kids with only 1 or 2 years of experience to the NFL, attrition (Hill - who may end up being addition by subtraction), attitudes, or just being softer than Charmin. Either way, VT should be alright in the end. No need to fire coaches or any of that drivel, yet.

PS: Never mind. Fire Bud! Send him our way - Please! Oh yeah, we'll take Charlie off your hands, too!
 
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