Everyone thought Pry did a great job building bridges back into the high school feeders. He did a good job building relationshipd with donors and alumni. He seems to be a personable guy with good energy, a good public persona and is all in on VT. His career as a DC is considered by most as very solid, very experienced, very effective. The real knock on Pry is the failure of the 2024 team. They underperformed their talent level. The 2025 team lacked the quality of personnel to succeed, attributable to multiple factors. No question the buck stops with the big whistle, and he paid the price. In hindsight, Pry had his personal learning curve, but he and the program were undone mostly by staff ineffectiveness, in ways (now) widely acknowledged. He caused that with his personnel decisions and then took too long to figure that out. His second problem was NIL. Football is now pro-lite, and VT was slow to respond. The 2025 team lost a number of quality players on both defense and the OL to other schools. Those lost were demonstrably better than those who were forced to step up. If VT had retained those players, I suspect the W-L would have looked better. His third problem was the lack of a reliable passing game. People can debate whether it was the QB, the protection or the receivers or the route design. My view is all of the above. But wherever you come down on it, the passing game was mediocre. And you can't succeed without a passing game. Watching VT this year, the players were just not as good as their counterparts in too many cases. More individual battles were lost than won. Yes, maybe there were bad angles, or blown coverages, or players out of position, but it is a competive game. A better player makes you look bad at times; other coaches scheme up confusion. I saw many of Bud Foster's championship defenses made to look foolish on occasion. Everybody loses some battles. The key determinant is player quality. Point being, Pry as DC gets to play to his strengths. I am sure he has learned much in the last four years, particularly from his mistakes. Hindsight isn't always 20/20 but for intelligent people it is usually a great teacher. Franklin can take responsibility for the big hat responsibilities, revamping the coaching. Coupled with more NIL money and staff to evaluate, the positive PR from the Franklin hire and early recruiting, VT can very possibly pull off an Indiana type overhaul. Working with and under Franklin, my guess is Pry can be a valuable part of that.