Virginia Tech football head coach Brent Pry joined Zach Mackey and Mike Burnop on Tech Talk Live on Thursday night at McClain’s at First and Main. Hokies co-quarterbacks coach Brian Crist also appeared on the show.
Tech opens its season on Aug. 31 in Nashville against Vanderbilt (12 p.m. ET, ESPN).
Brent Pry
How’s camp been? How are things?
It’s good. It was a good camp. We’re kind of in a bonus week right now, so we’ve got some camp elements to practice, but we’ve [also] got some Vanderbilt elements. Honestly, everyone’s ready to get to Sunday when it’s truly game week and we get into our game-week mode.
How important was it for you to not lose any coaches in the offseason?
I think everything starts with the coaches, to be honest. They’re the leaders of their sides of the ball or their phase, their position groups. They’re the relationship-builders with their players. They spearhead it and they’ve done a great job. Hiring the right people for me, for Virginia Tech and for our players was the most important thing I could do. So we’re very fortunate to have the staff we have, and then to have them decide to stay, pass on other opportunities — which some of them had — makes me very proud, and we’re very fortunate and we’ll all benefit.
What’s it like going into camp with a team returning so much production? Does it change the way you handle camp?
There are certain elements that are non-negotiable. We’re fundamental-based, technique, but these guys know how to practice. They know what our expectations are. The last message I told them all in the retention meetings was, ‘If you decide to come back, don’t come back to be the same guy. Come back to work harder, invest more, sacrifice more and be better.’ And for the most part, they’ve all done that. So they came back to work and improve, but again, the experience allows you to branch out a little bit more and do some other things. It also allows you to have the opportunity for the old guys to coach the heck out of the young guys, and for the young guys to get a lot of reps. You want quality reps for these returners, especially these veterans — they need the quality work, but they don’t need the quantity like some of these other guys.
Three-day mini-camps are a lot different now than when you were here as a GA.
Camp’s such a grind. We felt like you hit this spot after the third practice on the fourth or fifth day where it was pulling teeth, and I don’t know much better you really got, coaches or players, because you’re exhausted. So we decided to go to a model with five three-day mini-camps. And in each mini-camp was kind of a lighter practice, a medium practice as far as length and physicality, and then a really kick-butt practice. Then you take a day on Day 4 and there’s two or three hours of meetings, there’s massages, you’re getting these guys back, rolling things out, stretching, flexibility. Everybody can kind of download a little bit, make corrections, and then you get ready for this next mini-camp. And you have goals for that mini-camp, you talk to the guys, ‘Here we go, mini-camp No. 2, this is what we’ve got to get done.’ So it’s worked out well I think for the players and the coaches.
You named seven captains this week. How do you select those?
Everybody in the organization gets a vote. The players, the coaches, the support staff. We’re such a hands-on group, everybody knows these guys, and the captain vote isn’t just about what they do on the field, so it’s everybody having at least an opinion and being able to evaluate guys and say, ‘Hey, this is captain material to me.’ But it was a tough call. There were a lot of guys on our football team that got quality votes to be a captain, which I thought was a really good sign.
So who gets to walk out there for the coin toss on a gameday?
We decide four each week. We kind of roll through them and rotate them, who gets a chance to speak and talk. Some of them don’t want to, but we make them do it.How much do you spend beforehand telling them, ‘We want the ball, we want to defend, etc.?’
It’s all talked about. That’s the day of. It depends on weather and injuries and different things. We talk about it day-of. The wind in the stadium, where’s the student section, all of those things have a factor in what we do as far as taking the ball, not taking the ball and what end zone we want to defend.You guys went to the lake Monday. That had to be fun.
It was a good time. I wish the weather was a little better, but the folks out at Claytor Lake, Mike at Rockhouse Marina, does just a super hospitable job for our team. You take on 120 guys and you’ve got 20 boats and tubes and feed them and life jackets. Xavier Chaplin is in one of those little orange life jackets. He’s 6-foot-6, 325. But it’s a great time. They appreciate it. They’re looking for it. They know we’re going to do something fun in camp, so they’re calling around, saying, ‘Is the country club pool closed today? What’s going on? Are we still having the training table upstairs?’ They’re looking for all kinds of clues. But it was good. It was much needed.There’s a lot of hype going into this season. How much do you spend talking about it, if at all?
We put a lot of thought into it because it is different. Different than when we were 1-3 and the noise was pretty bad, pretty crappy. And you ask the guys to ignore it, it doesn’t mean anything. So the message was kind of similar. ‘Hey, look: I love the pats on the back, and you deserve it — the things you accomplished as a team down the stretch are worthy of confidence, and some folks are feeling good about you — but it has no bearing on the team we’re going to be when we go to Nashville. It’s just noise. Preseason honors, it doesn’t really mean anything. Where are you at the end of the season? What’s the postseason honor? They kind of get upset with me a little bit because I’ll put up a real nice article about Kyron [Drones] and then I’ll ghostbust it, ‘It doesn’t mean nothin’!’ I’ll put up a bad article about it, ghostbust it. ‘It doesn’t mean nothin’!’ We do that, I threw some stuff up about myself, the team. We know what matters is in that room.How do you feel right now about the next eight or nine days?
We still have some things to polish up. We still have some decisions to make in the next two days about a couple of personnel issues. And then deciding what the gameplan is going to look like vs. Vanderbilt. It’s further down the road than what your normal in-season game would be, so we’ve got some things to tidy up, to polish up, a couple decisions to make. We’ve just got to keep getting better. We’re still a team that situational football, we do a good deal. We walked through overtime today, explained every facet of overtime, from the coin toss on. If there’s one overtime, two overtimes, three overtimes, four, five, six, seven. And then if the offense takes the field first, if the defense takes the field first. Just trying to prepare these guys for the situations that occur in game. If we can get them kind of up to speed when that situation shows its face, whether it’s Week 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5, we should be better prepared to play it well.With the new NCAA rule, people previously in analyst roles can be coaching.
Yeah, there’s a bunch of programs around the country that had analysts or quality control coaches that were pretty much handcuffed to what they could do. They could do a lot of office work and have relationships with the guys, but as far as out at practice, they were very limited. We worked hard as head coaches across college football to get this rule changed. It’s better for our players. You have all of these quality guys on staff that can’t coach and can’t mentor, and it’s good for those guys. Some of them are trying to get back into full-time jobs, some of them are young guys trying to grow in the profession, and so giving them an opportunity to coach and learn and help our program, it’s great for us. And we have some good ones. I think we benefit, for sure.What are the new rule changes this year? You’ll be able to have some helmet communication, too.
Right now, there are certain players on each side of the football that can have the communication with the coach. They don’t have a voice piece, they can’t talk back to the coach, but they have an ear piece that they can listen, and it’s only up until 15 seconds. Once the play clock hits 15 seconds, it shuts off. You can tell your quarterback the play, rather than him looking to the side to get the signal. So he’s able to keep his eyes out front on the defense while the call’s coming in. The rest of our group’s going to look to the side, but this gives the quarterback a chance to see the defense start to show its face without coming off the sideline. And really the same thing for our mike linebackers and what we’ll do defensively. They’ve been doing it in the NFL for a long time. Some teams really find value in it, some teams could take it or leave it I think. But I asked our coordinators to just kind of grow into it organically, what makes sense for us. Don’t force anything. So we’ve used them a couple times here through the preseason camp and it’s been good. We’re going to use them again Saturday and get to a comfortable place with it.How about the two-minute warning?
Yeah, the two-minute warning, that’s taken some work, some exercises in our situational football. If there’s 2:39 left, do you call a timeout or let it run all the way down if you’re behind at the end of the game? But just like the NFL, that last play, it can get under two minutes, but as soon as the play’s blown dead, the two-minute warning timeout occurs. It’s a full timeout if there’s a TV timeout left, which there should be. If not, it’s 30 seconds. But it’s certainly another step in situation football and time management that we need to do a good job with, so we’ve spent some time there and put our staff and players in a situation where the two-minute timeout’s going to be a factor.
How has quarterback Kyron Drones improved over the spring and fall?
I would say the biggest thing is he’s more confident. He’s always been a confident player, but he’s more confident in leading us, in playing well, in running the offense. He’s stronger, believe it or not. He’s an imposing guy out there. He’s got everybody’s respect. He’s got really good arm strength. He’s improved his accuracy in throwing into tight coverage, which we felt like he needed to do. He’s improved in sitting in that pocket as a guy like that who can easily spin out and run and make some hay. He really worked this camp at hanging in there, and our defense was bringing a bunch of stuff at him. He’d sit in there and throw the ball and set his feet, so he’s done a nice job. Coach Crist and Coach [Tyler] Bowen, there’s been a lot of progress there.Collin Schlee won the backup quarterback job. He’s looked impressive this fall.
He’s a veteran guy that’s from Baltimore. We weren’t really sure that we could get him, to be quite honest. He was looking for a starting job, and obviously, we weren’t going to blow smoke at him. He knew he wasn’t going to come in here and win the job without some type of situation occurring. He wanted to be in this type of offense, he loved what we’re doing, saw himself a lot like Kyron, as did we. He’s a pretty big guy, he can run, he’s got a strong arm, he’s smart, he’s experienced. He’s been in a couple of good offenses. He learns well. He's impressed everybody and he’s a really good young man. Good family, he fits us, fits Tech, so I feel very fortunate that he’s with us.How is Pop Watson coming along?
He’s gotten better. We’re excited about Pop, and there was a lot of improvement, spring, summer, camp. He had a minor injury in camp that set him back a little bit. But he’s done a nice job. It’s just you’ve got a guy like Collin that’s experienced and a little bit further down the road, but Pop has to keep preparing to be ready. We all know you’re one play away from moving up a spot on the depth chart.What’s Sam Brumfield’s story at linebacker?
Sam is put together. He kind of reminds you of a middle linebacker. He’s muscled up, he’s tenacious, great pad level, he runs really well, sideline to sideline. He knows nothing but 110 miles per hour. He’s one of those guys that just by his demeanor and the way he plays is a great leader for us, and it’s a testament to him — in a short amount of time, he’s named a captain on our football team when there’s a lot of great candidates. I think he gives us a real chance to be special, and we’ve got great competition at the linebacker spot, so for him to come out on top and be that mike linebacker, that speaks volumes as well.Bhayshul Tuten was a load last year. What have you seen out of him this camp?
He’s worked really hard in improving his pass pro, his ball skills, his route running. To me, he’s a really well-rounded back, and to be honest, I think he’s one of the more underrated players in our league. I think he’s a problem. He can run around you, he can outrun you and he can run through you.You had 39 sacks last year, and while a lot of those guys are gone, you hit the jackpot in the portal on the defensive line.
It’s hard for offenses and offensive linemen, especially when you’ve got two-deep on the D-line and can just keep coming at them for four quarters. Most of those O-line, they don’t rotate — they play the same guys. We’ve got a group that plays with a lot of energy, a lot of motor, lot of hustle and we do have a true two-deep, which I’m excited about. And we go to the transfer portal when we need to. We lost three pretty good defensive tackles so we needed to go get a couple. Not just Aeneas [Peebles] but Kemari Copeland, and a guy who’s kind of been a pleasant surprise is Kelvin Gilliam. A young man from Richmond, Highland Springs, was out at Oklahoma, comes home. I’ve got a feeling he’s got a chance to be like APR [Antwaun Powell-Ryland], somebody that thought the grass was greener, leaves the state and they don’t have success, come back home and do it up big.What do the next couple of days look like for you?
We had a true Thursday today, which if you remember, our Thursdays are no sweat. Guys are in sneakers, it’s a lot of situational work. As I mentioned, we covered overtime. We actually went down to the stadium, how we would come out for the ballgame, the group’s that would come, we’d go through pass skeleton, we’d go through pass rush, kick period, just like we would do pregame. We put everyone on the sideline, talked through sideline management, how everybody sits, where we’re at, what’s the communication, what everything looks like. How do we sub for special teams? What do the sub boxes look like? All of those things. We took them into the weight room, where we go at halftime now. Told them, explained where we’ll be at halftime, what that will look like, and then we do all of that on Saturday. We do it for real, we have a situational scrimmage. Eight-minute quarters, true game-like. We put the scout team or developmental squad on the away side and all the coaches are in the box and it’s kind of a dry run and a rehearsal.How about running back P.J. Prioleau? He’s making some noise at the third spot.
P.J.’s done a nice job. He’s been a pleasant surprise. He was one of those guys that kept showing up on the scout team that you’re like, ‘Man, he made another play today,’ so you give him opportunities on the varsity field. I think he was a DB, I think they recruited him to play defensive back when we first got here. And we moved him over to offense, he’s played running back, he’s played receiver and he can still do both. He’s a guy who can line up in the slot and motion into the backfield, so he’s an interesting guy. I think people, as we get into the season, will start to say, ‘Who’s 20?’
Brian Crist
You come from a big family of football people. Your father coached at Blacksburg High School forever and ever, he’s coaching your young one right now. What’s that like?
It’s pretty cool. My youngest is in the seventh grade, and dad’s been coaching middle school football, been calling the plays now for five or six years. Now Logan is in the seventh grade and getting a chance to play for him. I just watched the first half, it was pretty cool. Surreal.Back in 2012, you were the offensive coordinator for your dad. What was that like?
I was terrible. It was probably the worst coaching job I’ve ever done in my life. I just wanted Blacksburg to be so good, and I was so bad. I decided I better go back to college and call plays.Tell us about your story. You played at Blacksburg High School, went to Hampden-Sydney, but you started your career here in 1994 as a GA. You’ve been with Ricky Bustle. Touch on some of the spots you’ve been.
We’ve kind of bounced around. Early in our career, it was nice. We spent two years here as GAs, and obviously, you don’t make any money as a GA. They make more now than they did back then, but we got to spend two years here with my mom, my dad. My wife, Amy, is from Blacksburg, so the in-laws were here, so that was nice. We went to UMass for six years. Had a chance to go there, win the national championship. That was obviously a really big milestone. Then we went with Ricky to Louisiana Lafayette, which was a great experience. Coach Pry was down there. Coach [Shawn] Quinn was down there. Met Derek Jones when we were down there. We spent five years there and then what happened happened, and we went back to UMass for another five years. … After that, we went to Bridgewater, we were at Nebraska for a year with Bo Pelini and I went to be the offensive coordinator at Youngstown State, and we were there for five years.I’m just thinking back to ’94 and ’95 when you’re in the GA room grinding, if you would’ve told you and Pry that he would’ve been the head coach of Virginia Tech, you’d be the co-quarterbacks coach, that would probably shock your mind.
It would definitely shock my mind. He’s probably not listening on the radio — I hope he’s driving, I’ll make him wreck — but if were sitting there, I’d have said I’d be the head coach and he’d be working for me.Justin Fuente brought you back here in 2021. How’d that happen?
Bo Pelini, whatever it was, 10 days before COVID, decided he could go make millions of dollars being the defensive coordinator at LSU, and that kind of put the rest of us out of a job, and COVID hit. Nobody was hiring really. When I had come back on Christmas break or spring break, I’d come over to spring practice and have a chance to meet Coach [Brad] Cornelsen and Fu and I just called them and said, ‘Look, I’ve got two choices. I can go sell insurance or you can let me come volunteer for you.’ Luckily enough, they accepted me with open arms and said, ‘Come on down, help us.’ So I got the chance to do that. I can’t thank them enough because I think Coach Pry touched on it earlier, the analyst role and not coaching and what not. It gave me a chance — you’re in the profession for 25 years and all of a sudden now you’re out, it’s not easy to stick around. There’s not many people hiring ex-football coaches, I can tell you that.What have you seen about the quarterback room in camp? Kyron Drones obviously gets a lot of hype.
The room in general, they’re all great kids, but they range from 18 years old to however old Collin is, 23 or something like that. It’s a wide range of guys, they’re different backgrounds, but they have different personalities, they all get along. They’re funny, they like to compete. They compete over everything in the room, which is what you want. They study the game, they know the game, they each have their own strengths, they each have their own weaknesses. They each want to be developed, and I think that’s the key to want to be a quarterback. If you’re going to go somewhere, go somewhere that’s going to develop you as a player and a person. I said the other day, ‘You’re either a quarterback 24/7 or you’re not a quarterback at all.’ That’s how I feel, and those guys kind of get that, they’re emblematic of that, and I love the room and all of the guys in there.