I should have known better than to predict the Hokies would win this one 41-10. Even while I was making that prediction in last week's podcast and last week's game preview, I was uncomfortable with it, thinking that the Hokies wouldn't win by that much. In the wake of that hard-fought, emotional win over West Virginia, on a six-day week, it would be perfectly normal for a young team to let down and not be at peak efficiency.
But where do you cut the prediction? I predicted Delaware to score 10 points. Should I predict them to score 13? 17? West Virginia only scored 24. How is Delaware going to score 17?
What about Tech's point total? Forty-one is a high total. But I could see the Hokies making one or two big special teams plays, and/or tacking on an extra touchdown late, making a ho-hum effort look better than it was.
So I went with 41-10, and as far as the spread (31 points) goes, I wasn't that far off the final score of 27-0.
Still, it broke my two-game streak of picking the exact score. Oh, well.
Pre-game Bravado Falls Flat
We wanted those backup wide receivers to get a lot of work and targets. We wanted those backup defensive linemen to get a lot of playing time and get better. We wanted the backup linebackers to get into the game and see what they looked like.
Little to none of that happened. Guys not named Cam Phillips, C.J. Carroll, and Sean Savoy caught one pass (James Clark, for eight yards). Tim Settle and Ricky Walker once again played almost the entire game, well into the fourth quarter and even after they were replaced, they were brought back in off the bench to end Delaware's last possession. Andrew Motuapuaka and Tremaine Edmunds were in the game until the bitter end, and speaking of the bitter end, Virginia Tech's entire starting offensive line was in the game when the Hokies took their final kneeldown in the victory formation.
The blowout never happened, so all those other things never happened. So the Hokies ran in place and treaded water, and the work in progress continues to be in progress. I think we get in a hurry sometimes, but the truth is that despite last year's 10-4 record and last week's big win over an established program, this is a long-term project going on here.
Big Plays Missed
The coaches didn't seem bothered by what they saw. Justin Fuente noted that Delaware has a good defensive scheme predicated on stopping the run, so that's why you saw a lot of passing in this one, especially early on, and no real attempt to establish a running game.
Fuente also correctly noted that the Hokies missed some opportunities for big plays in the passing game that would have blown this one open (my phrasing, not his).
- James Clark failed to haul in a long pass deep in Delaware territory, showing very little ability to establish position and go get the ball in the process.
- Josh Jackson had Dalton Keene pop open for what could have been a long gain, and Jackson overthrew him by a large margin.
- Sean Savoy failed to catch what would have been a touchdown pass on a post route, when a defender flashed in front of him at the very last moment.
Those three plays were back-to-back-to-back, by the way.
Later, Jackson had Travon McMillian down the middle on a jump pass, and Jackson got the yips and overthrew him by a huge amount. That was another potential touchdown missed.
Lastly, with 9:22 left in the second quarter, McMillian ran a wheel route, blew by the defender, and was wide open for a touchdown, and Jackson underthrew him a mile, resulting in a weak incompletion on the sidelines. The ball was so poorly thrown that McMillian came to a dead stop and still couldn't catch it. In all, McMillian was probably robbed of two touchdowns, though he did get one later.
The missed throws by Jackson are a good lesson. They were all wide open throws that should have been made. I think there's an art to properly throwing a wide open pass that is going to go for a touchdown, and it's a harder throw than most people think. Last week against West Virginia, Cam Phillips broke wide open, and though Jackson hit him well enough for Phillips to score, Jackson's pass caused Phillips to slow down, and Phillips had to put on some Ricky Bobby shake-n-bake to score. It will all teach Jackson to focus, set his feet, and make a proper throw. Let's hope he gets it down soon.
The one exceptional play I remember a Hokie wide receiver making was Sean Savoy's 38-yard reception that led to Virginia Tech's second touchdown and a 17-0 lead late in the second quarter. Savoy went up over the defender and high-pointed the ball in what was a difficult catch. One play later, the Hokies scored. (McMillian got his touchdown.)
Make a couple of those other plays earlier in the game, and not only do the Hokies get the 41 points I predicted, they probably still combine it with a shutout, and we all feel better.
Delaware's Defense, and Controlling the Pace
It will be interesting to see where Delaware finishes in the FBS defensive rankings this year. They only gave up 224 yards to Delaware State in their opener and only 303 yards to the Hokies, so it looks like they have a good defense. Fuente seemed to feel so, and it wasn't the usual coach-speak, I don't think.
The Virginia Tech coaches said they felt Delaware was going to come in and try to control the clock, and the stats bear that out. Last week, West Virginia ran 89 plays in 29 minutes, a play every 19.6 seconds. Delaware ran just 63 plays in 36:47, a play every 35 seconds.
Last week the Hokies ran 72 plays in 31 minutes, 25.8 seconds per play. This week, it was just 57 plays in 23:13, 24.4 seconds per play. So the Hokies went at a faster pace this week, but got fewer plays out of it, thanks to Delaware's game plan and a lack of execution on Virginia Tech's part.
Hokies Discipline Continues to be Strong
In early September 2016, I published a (way too) exhaustive analysis of penalties committed by the Memphis Tigers under Justin Fuente, and I found that the Tigers had been penalty-prone in the four years Fuente coached them. Here's the infographic I had OXVT put together for it...
Sadly, I never followed up on that, so let's do that now. (Fire up the OXVT infographics machine!)
In 2016, the Hokies committed just 71 penalties in 14 games, an average of 5.07 penalties per game, good for 27th in the nation. Yowza, I guess it really was the Memphis players and not the coaches who were responsible for that terrible penalty performance in Fuente's years there.
So far this season, after a two-penalty, 10-yard performance against Delaware, the Hokies are committing just 3.5 penalties per game, good for a tie for 8th in the nation.
Here's a look at how Virginia Tech was trending before Fuente arrived, and the quick turnaround.
Even more stunning, the Hokies are No. 4 in the nation in penalty yards per game, with just 22.
(By the way, in doing my research, I discovered that Bronco Mendenhall's Virginia Cavaliers are in the same neighborhood, at just four penalties per game and just 20.5 penalty yards per game. So they're good at something.)
Continuing the discipline topic, it's early enough in the season that turnover stats are meaningless, but on the special teams front, ESPN's college football stats page shows the Hokies as #11 in the nation in special teams efficiency through games of Sept. 9, 2017.
When your team is young and isn't loaded with talent up and down the roster like some top-line clubs, you can win games with stout special teams and discipline (win the turnover and penalty battles). So far, so good.
Vanilla
Some of the discussion after the game centered around whether Virginia Tech's offense was "vanilla" against the Blue Hens.
I think coaches rarely, if ever, "go vanilla." Football coaches are a paranoid lot, deathly afraid of losing games, especially against perceived inferior competition. It's a sign of disrespect to not properly prepare for an opponent, or to hold back part of the playbook or the roster. A list of the biggest upsets in the history of college football and Virginia Tech football is fair warning against doing that — Temple over Virginia Tech, Appalachian State over Michigan, James Madison over Virginia Tech, Liberty over Baylor, Howard over UNLV, and on and on. Slack off, and you can lose.
I also don't think coaches hold back certain players, waiting to unveil them. The reason Dalton Keene hasn't caught a pass yet isn't because the coaches are going to roll him out as some sort of secret weapon against Clemson, it's because they're not ready to throw it to him yet, for whatever reason, and because Josh Jackson badly overthrew him the one time he did have him open.
But on Saturday, we only saw one jet sweep and from what I can tell, no option of any kind, either read option or speed option. I also didn't see many linemen pulling. I don't read many articles after games, other than ours, because I don't want to bias my mind or focus before I write this column, so I don't know if Fuente said it was because he wanted to limit Josh Jackson's contact. Maybe, but they did call some designed runs for Jackson, and he had eight rushes (one sack), versus 11 rushes (one sack) against West Virginia, so his contact numbers weren't that different. Fortunately, West Virginia's Hakeem Bailey wasn't around to try to take out Josh's knees in the open field. Sorry, was that out loud?
I do think the Hokies kept it simple and focused on taking what the defense was giving, as well as developing the guys who are going to be their bread and butter this season, barring injury. Some of us wanted to see A.J. Bush and some young receivers, running backs, and offensive linemen, but it's too imperative that the front line young guys develop, because the ACC games are right around the corner.
Virginia Tech's lack of misdirection and flash, and Delaware's game pace and conservative defense, playing zone with their DBs deep, all added up to the second-lowest yardage total of Fuente's time at Virginia Tech. The Hokies gained just 303 yards, second-worst only to the 264 yards gained in Chapel Hill last year in the Hurricane game.
Sometimes football coaching is drudgery, slugging it out in boring fashion with a team that's pretty good and is intent on slowing the game down, keeping it close, and keeping you in front of them, like Delaware did. I don't think we'll talk about this game at all in the coming years, filing it away is a workmanlike win after a short layoff.
Mihota Down Inside
We finally saw the slide of Vinny Mihota down to defensive tackle in this game, but only briefly.
You probably didn't notice it, because it occurred during Delaware's implosion of four false starts in the span of five plays.
Congrats, Delaware, you matched the one-man meltdown by Liberty's Sam Isaacson last season.
But let's get to the point — Virginia Tech slid Mihota down to the middle for that possession and brought in Houshun Gaines to replace him at defensive end. Tim Settle was the lucky man who got to sit for a few plays.
General Thoughts After Two Games
I don't know about you, but mentally, I'm at a similar place I was last year after two games. Last year's win over Liberty was a 36-13 affair that was a little sluggish and featured a lot of Hokie turnovers. Then the Hokies showed promise against Tennessee, but collapsed in a flurry of fumbles.This year, the Delaware game was as similarly sluggish as the Liberty game, minus the turnovers. The Hokies again showed promise in their ABC primetime game against WVU, but this time, they won.
It all leaves me knowing they can be good, but there are warning signs there, and I'm not sure what to expect next, just like last year.
Last year, the two-game start was followed by three butt-kicking weeks:
- Virginia Tech 49, Boston College 0
- Virginia Tech 54, East Carolina 17
- Virginia Tech 34, North Carolina 3
- Total: Virginia Tech 137, Opponents 20
The Hokies are clearly going to have to make huge strides in the next couple of weeks to put up much of a fight against Clemson on Sept. 30. The Virginia Tech team I see right now can keep it close by playing disciplined football, but will struggle to make plays against Clemson and will get fatigued and smoked in the second half.
But we'll see what the next two weeks bring. East Carolina is in turmoil after losing 34-14 against James Madison in week one, and then being crushed 56-20 by a West Virginia team that led 49-3 in the first half and called off the dogs. East Carolina then proceeded to fire their defensive coordinator. The Hokies need to crank it up a notch against the Pirates and continue it against Old Dominion before I'll feel good at all about Tech's chances against a Clemson program that is in full stride.
In Conclusion ...
Yes, this week's edition of Monday Thoughts is already over. There just isn't a whole lot else to say about this game, at least not from my viewpoint. It has been a long time since I've been this bored and uninspired reviewing game film, and that's not a shot at anything or anybody. It just wasn't much of a game.
Oh, you're wanting me to comment on the new "Let's Go Hokies" ... cheer? (It is a cheer, right?)
To bring you up to speed, Virginia Tech announced the following in an August 23rd release on hokiesports.com:
"Following the conclusion of the third quarter this season, the Marching Virginians will play VPI Victory March followed by a blast from Skipper and an honorary guest leading the “Let’s Go, Hokies!” cheer alternating between the east and west stands. Tech Triumph will then set the stage for the fourth quarter with additional music if time permits."
The victim, uh, honorary guest for game one was Virginia Tech president Timothy Sands. (I've got $20 that says, in addition to Frank Beamer and the usual former athletes and current NFL players, Nikki Giovanni will show up on the field one game. Any takers?)
It wasn't smooth, was a little awkward, and didn't have full audience participation. I'll leave it at that.
I'm sure the university is committed to this, so it's going to continue. But if it was me, I'd pull the plug on it and start showing longer versions of those Will Ferrell-introduced "Shout" videos that they show during football and basketball games. Those things are hilarious and always too short, and a good, long one would fit nicely between the third and fourth quarters and get the fans fired up. It's a uniquely Virginia Tech thing, and quirky, and no one else in the country does anything like it, to my knowledge.
In this day and age of everything being on the Internet, I can't find a single version of those videos to show you. Weird.
We'll see you later on this week, and I'll do my best to figure out what the score of this week's Virginia Tech-East Carolina game is going to be. But I'll just be throwing darts. So don't use it for any Vegas betting, it's for entertainment purposes only.