Some good, some bad, and some really ugly...

[hokiemtc]

The good:

1) VT handily won some key stats in this game, which will serve us well down the road once we quit self-destructing...
1st downs: VT 21 UT 15
Total yards: VT 400 UT 330
Passing yds: VT 214 UT 91
2) Evans, in his 2nd career start...20 for 28, 214 yds and a TD...and 0 turnovers.
3) McMIllian...14 carries for 127 yds (9.1 per) and a TD.

The bad:

1) Tragically stupid penalties in the worst possible times continue on unabated.
2) WAAAAY to many unforced errors...bad snaps. Dropped passes. Missed tackles. Late hits on the QB. Etc.
3) The oline. Still.
4) Some curiously bad play calling at times, considering how little success our oline was having getting anyone blocked during the middle part of the game.
5) Stroman at corner trying to cover big receivers. I just don't get this one, when there's a much bigger guy available that supposedly was the starter on that side tonight. That one looked like a huge Bud brain fart to me.
6) Stroman returning kickoffs. If VT's coaches told Stroman to never touch them again, we would instantly double our average starting field position.

The really ugly:

1) Good heavens with the steady stream of turnovers. I'll be shocked if VT is not leading the nation in turnovers after tonight. And this was supposed to be a point of emphasis for the new coach? I don't think he emphasized it quite enough if we're the dead worst in the country at taking care of the ball.
2) Special teams are horrid across the board. The FG kicker has sucked for years, and now the rest of special teams have apparently decided to follow suit.

The reality:

We all know it's going to take a while to get to where I think we'll end up, but in the meantime, we could at least quit freely giving games away that were otherwise winnable. I hate dominating stats and then looking up at the scoreboard and seeing that you were blown out. That shows how far there still is to go.

Congrats to UTenn for showing some poise and expertly taking advantage of VT mistakes. Good teams do that. Hell, VT used to be the masters of winning games that we lost the stats in badly (we called it BeamerBall), but that, unfortunately, was a long, long time ago.

 

[RB4]

I came away with a lot of positives as well..

1. It is safe to say we do not have a playoff caliber team anyway. So in the grand scheme of things a loss to an out of conference SEC team does not hurt our achievable goals. I think if the turnovers are cleaned up we have a team that can win our side of the ACC.

2. I liked our offense. We ran the ball well, nice pass plays and execution the one problem we have is fumbles.. and those are 100% fixable.. After another week of them and this time the stage was bigger I can imagine that it will be addressed all week .
NO COACH should get blame for anything this week.. this is on the players, this is not high school. these are grown men. Holding on the the ball is something you learn in sandlot.. I also see why Wyatt Teller has been benched.

3. Defense was great.. I seen a freshman make few mistakes but he will learn from it. same with the fumbles and the penalties.. I hope they use this game as a teaching tool and grow from it and get conference play off to a good start next week.

 

[Hokiepoke]

Speaking of really ugly, the uni's were really ugly. We should stick with maroons.

 

[phillipsfootball78]

I came away with a lot of positives as well..

1. It is safe to say we do not have a playoff caliber team anyway. So in the grand scheme of things a loss to an out of conference SEC team does not hurt our achievable goals. I think if the turnovers are cleaned up we have a team that can win our side of the ACC.

2. I liked our offense. We ran the ball well, nice pass plays and execution the one problem we have is fumbles.. and those are 100% fixable.. After another week of them and this time the stage was bigger I can imagine that it will be addressed all week .
NO COACH should get blame for anything this week.. this is on the players, this is not high school. these are grown men. Holding on the the ball is something you learn in sandlot.. I also see why Wyatt Teller has been benched.

3. Defense was great.. I seen a freshman make few mistakes but he will learn from it. same with the fumbles and the penalties.. I hope they use this game as a teaching tool and grow from it and get conference play off to a good start next week.

The coaches SHOULD get the blame for some poor in game calls.

4th and 1 or 47 yd FG early in the game. The odds say go for it! At that point it sets the tone early no. 1. No 2. if we don't convert it's no different that a missed 47 yd. FG and UT still gets good field position.

Almost zero (i counted 2) throws down the field which is what I thought JF liked to do.

Alot of bad 1st down calls in 2nd half, almost wasted downs and left us in a lot of 3rd and longs.

Constantly rotating in and out O lineman hurt us. There were a couple guys who got blew up and pushed back everytime they were in the game. Who is that on if not the coaches?

How many times did we target our 6'7" receiver on 3rd and longs? He wasn't even on the field in many plays that he would have had obvious mismatches.

I agree some of the stupid penalties, and fumbles are out of the coaches hands when they take place. But thats when a coach grabs somebody by the facemask and rips them a new one and lets the team no that they are not going to tolerate 15 yd personal foul penalties all night long. I didn't see that happen and we sure did keep making those penalties!

When the coaches theme is play smart and we played like that....he takes some of the responsibility to....it comes with the title of HC.

We did alot of good things as well but not nearly enough to overcome the stupid things we did!

 

[BigDaddyHokie]

A few penalties while being aggressive is OK but we had too many stupid mistakes.

 

[RB4]

I did not think the play calls were that bad.. It is hard to get in a play calling rythym and establish trust when you dont know who can hold on to the ball. The situations dictated some of the calls and I did not find myself thinking the calls were horrible for the first time in a long time with the hokies. you can chuck it deep if it is not there. VT did have over 400 yards of Offense though.

The opening field goal call is an individual preference call. If you feel you have the kicker to get the points then go for the points. I actually agreed with the call, It just would have been nice to come away with something. He has had the leg, even the 52 yarder he booted last week had plenty of leg. We still got it to 14-0 after that, so that call did nothing to hurt the hokies.

Our Line seems to be trying to find the right pieced in the right places. I first questioned why Wyatt Teller was moved to 2nd string.. I see now he made some really bad decisions. They also said that Chung has looked better at center and wanted to give him some snaps. But we are coming up on conference play its time to find the most consistent 5 and stick with it.

I do agree with you about the Coaching lighting their a$$ up when they make mistakes.. That's what Bud Foster does and he gets the most out of his players, and Frank/Offensive coaches previous years were not like that and it makes the mistakes excusable, or without repercussion and then they become repetitive. I hope maybe he gets his frustration out in practice tomorrow... In the end I think that most of the things that went wrong are easily fixable.

 

[mrjolly01]

Obviously nobody's going to be happy with this result but I can envision a pretty good team under that stack up of miscues we saw last night. We weren't beaten as much as we self destructed. Last night reminds me of a game we had once against UVA when we took the field in all orange and then just turned the ball over all day with every bounce going against us. That wasn't a bad team but it was a very bad day. I'm more concerned about the penalties (especially the personal fouls) but this is only Fuente's second game at Tech. I think our fans might need to be patient as this team grows - its not going to happen overnight with the amount of change we are making in the offense. The team is still learning to execute this offense. The good news is all the bad we saw last night are all correctable things. Execution on offense and ST's must improve for sure. At least we know we can run and pass and move the ball when we don't stop ourselves. The defense had its moments too, but played well enough that I think should be okay when our offense and ST's aren't continuously setting up our opponent with short fields.

My biggest complaint from last night is kicking the 47 yard field goal on fourth and short when we were driving deep and moving the ball so well. Other than that I'm taking this as growing pains. We can win this kind of game once we start executing better.

 

[Hampton Roads 6]

We have had a season's worth of lost fumbles in only 2 games.

We should never attempt a 47 yard FG on 4th and 1, unless time is a factor.

 

[B1dee]

The good:

1) VT handily won some key stats in this game, which will serve us well down the road once we quit self-destructing...
1st downs: VT 21 UT 15
Total yards: VT 400 UT 330
Passing yds: VT 214 UT 91
2) Evans, in his 2nd career start...20 for 28, 214 yds and a TD...and 0 turnovers.
3) McMIllian...14 carries for 127 yds (9.1 per) and a TD.

The bad:

1) Tragically stupid penalties in the worst possible times continue on unabated.
2) WAAAAY to many unforced errors...bad snaps. Dropped passes. Missed tackles. Late hits on the QB. Etc.
3) The oline. Still.
4) Some curiously bad play calling at times, considering how little success our oline was having getting anyone blocked during the middle part of the game.
5) Stroman at corner trying to cover big receivers. I just don't get this one, when there's a much bigger guy available that supposedly was the starter on that side tonight. That one looked like a huge Bud brain fart to me.
6) Stroman returning kickoffs. If VT's coaches told Stroman to never touch them again, we would instantly double our average starting field position.

The really ugly:

1) Good heavens with the steady stream of turnovers. I'll be shocked if VT is not leading the nation in turnovers after tonight. And this was supposed to be a point of emphasis for the new coach? I don't think he emphasized it quite enough if we're the dead worst in the country at taking care of the ball.
2) Special teams are horrid across the board. The FG kicker has sucked for years, and now the rest of special teams have apparently decided to follow suit.

The reality:

We all know it's going to take a while to get to where I think we'll end up, but in the meantime, we could at least quit freely giving games away that were otherwise winnable. I hate dominating stats and then looking up at the scoreboard and seeing that you were blown out. That shows how far there still is to go.

Congrats to UTenn for showing some poise and expertly taking advantage of VT mistakes. Good teams do that. Hell, VT used to be the masters of winning games that we lost the stats in badly (we called it BeamerBall), but that, unfortunately, was a long, long time ago.

We have lost 9 fumbles in 2 games - 2 more than we lost last year in 12 games. We should clean it up or maybe set an all-time NCAA record.

 

[BigDaddyHokie]

Lots of practice will be needed to run a fluent O like we need.

Now we have round pegs in square holes. We have left-over players for a new O. Yes they are buying the new offense but they need time and experience you can get only in game situations.

We will eventually see whole games like the first quarter of the TN game, but who knows when.

Picture a Fuentes O when he's had time to recruit players that in in similar systems in high school.

 

[Tennessee Jones]

Speaking of really ugly, the uni's were really ugly. We should stick with maroons.

I thought they looked great. The helmets were awesome. I wish we'd do something similar with our helmets when we wear our alternate uniforms.

 

[Hampton Roads 6]

Only one word pertaining to the VT uniforms:

UGLY

 

[hokiemtc]

I would've liked the unis a lot better if they had splotches of orange and maroon in them somewhere. Just going with grey and black when those aren't your school colors doesn't do it for me.

 

[Tennessee Jones]

I would've liked the unis a lot better if they had splotches of orange and maroon in them somewhere. Just going with grey and black when those aren't your school colors doesn't do it for me.

Weren't the numbers outlined in maroon? I thought they looked pretty sharp.