Saturday’s game brought forth no great revelations, no profound movement forward in the state of 2024 Hokie football. It did bring great weather and a victory that was eventually comfortable, but questions linger about how the rest of the season will go.
For the second week in a row, the Virginia Tech offense struggled in the first half and found its footing in the second half. Unlike Vanderbilt, Marshall was unable to muster enough scoring to take advantage of the Hokies’ struggles.
More precisely put, the Marshall offense, especially quarterback Stone Earle, was pretty bad. A.J. Turner is a pretty good tailback, and Christian Fitzpatrick’s catch over Mansoor Delane is the stuff of legend, but otherwise, Marshall’s O was lacking.
Drones Still Looking for His Groove
I’m going to spend most of today’s MT talking about Kyron Drones, poking and prodding him from all angles in an effort to get a handle on how he’s playing.There’s a lot of discussion about the struggles of the passing game. Is it the blocking? Is it Drones? Are the receivers struggling to get open? All of those short passes — are they the play calls or is Drones checking down?
I can’t answer all those questions, but I can point out a few things and provide some context.
Passing Stats: I think everyone agrees that Drones needed to raise his completion percentage this season, having completed just 58.2 percent of his passes in 2023. So far, so good in 2024: Drones is 36-of-54 (66.7 percent) through two games, a significant increase. That’s tied for No. 41 in the country, after finishing No. 85 last year.
Drones’ passing yards per game, yards per attempt, yards per completion and pass efficiency are all up or unchanged:
- Yards per game: 226.0 (up from 160.4 in 2023)
- Yards per attempt: 8.37 (up from 7.32)
- Yards per completion: 12.6 (unchanged)
- Pass efficiency: 151.6 (up from 137.3)
Those stats all describe a QB who is fair-to-middling nationally in the passing game:
- YPG: No. 56 in the nation
- YPA: No. 45
- YPC: No. 49
- Pass Efficiency: No. 52
Admitting (for the 10,000th time) that PFF grades from the Marshall game are still preliminary, PFF tells us that so far in 2024 Drones has improved his Big Time Throw Rate from 4.3 percent to 7.0 percent and has lowered his Turnover Worthy Play rate from 3.8 percent to 2.9 percent.
His PFF Adjusted Completion Percentage is up to 76.5 percent from 72.7 percent in 2023. His Drop Percentage has fallen from 11.3 percent to 7.7 percent. (To me, that indicates that he’s putting better touch on the ball and positioning it better.)
Yes, we’re just two games in, and yes, Drones hasn’t yet played a defense the caliber of 2023 Louisville, NC State, or FSU. Vanderbilt’s defense played well, and Marshall wasn’t a pushover in the passing game, so it’s not like VT is playing bad FCS teams.
Drones’ numbers are up across the board. But he doesn’t look comfortable back there, does he? And he’s still not seeing all the receivers or playing with confidence, is he? No, he doesn’t look comfortable, and he doesn’t look confident. Yet.
Pass Blocking: How much is the blocking, or lack thereof, affecting him? That’s almost impossible for me to analyze, because, most importantly, I’m not an analyst like Brandon Patterson, Phil Martin or Raleigh Hokie.
But I can throw out PFF grades like anyone else who pays for a subscription, and here’s where it gets interesting.
According to PFF, Drones has 65 dropbacks so far this year. (He has been sacked seven times and has scrambled four times, hence only 54 passing attempts.)
In 65 dropbacks (DB), he has been pressured by the defense (DPR) 24 times, or 36.9 percent.
Comparing to 2023:
- 2024: 65 DB, 24 DPR, 36.9 percent
- 2023: 344 DB, 123 DPR, 35.8 percent
The pressure hasn’t gone up. None of us is happy with the pass blocking, but it’s not significantly worse.
The sack rate has gone up, though:
- 2024: 65 DB, 7 sacks, 10.8 percent
- 2023: 344 DB, 24 sacks, 7.0 percent
The Percentage of Pressures Turned into Sacks (P2S%) has gone up as well:
- 2024: 29.2 percent
- 2023: 19.5 percent
Drones is also throwing it away (TA) much less often:
- 2024: 54 attempts, 2 TA, 3.7 percent
- 2023: 286 attempts, 24 TA, 8.4 percent
Is he holding onto the ball too long? This isn’t measured in the PFF stats, as far as I can tell. There’s a Time to Throw (TTT) stat, and it’s 3.11 seconds in 2024 versus 2.88 seconds in 2023. So yes — he’s either holding it a smidge longer or the line is blocking a smidge better. Either way, it’s negligible and not significant.
Shorter Throws, Sort Of: The passes this year sure seem a lot shorter, don’t they? Yes, they are. Here’s average Depth of Target (ADOT), per PFF:
- 2024: 6.2 yards
- 2023: 8.8 yards
If you think he’s been dumping it off — or Tyler Bowen has been calling shorter passes — your eyes aren’t deceiving you.
In a weird twist, Drones is doing well completing passes downfield. From cfbstats.com:
- 10+ yard completions: 14, No. 76 in the nation
- 20+ yards: 9, No. 12
- 30+ yards: 3, No. 40
- 40+ yards: 3, No. 10
- 50+ yards: 1, No. 26
- 60+ yards: 1, No. 9
So... he’s either dumping it off behind the line or slinging it downfield? Sure, if you say so.
Summing It Up: How do we interpret all these stats? What picture do they paint?
The increased sack rate and decreased throwaway percentage seem to be telling us that he’s holding the ball too long and not getting rid of it. Here’s another nugget that supports that theory: Drones’ scramble (SCR) percentage has dropped:
- 2024: 65 DB, 4 SCR, 6.2 percent
- 2023: 344 DB, 30 SCR, 8.7 percent
If it looks to you like Kyron Drones is trying hard to become a better pocket passer, a guy who progresses through his reads and is less willing to throw it away or scramble, the numbers support that.
Your eyes tell that you it’s not going well, but the stats tell you it’s not a disaster. As Chris Coleman has noted, Drones’ downfield completion is way up. He’s now 4-of-5 on throws of 20+ yards (thank you, Stephen Gosnell, for this week’s entry) after going 9-of-42 (21.4 percent) last season.
He’s continuing to not see open receivers, though. On Tech’s first possession alone, I have the following notes from watching the game:
-- On first-and-10 with 13:28 to go, Drones had Lane running a slant wide open and just didn’t throw it to him, dumping it off instead to Tuten.
-- On fourth-and-5, Drones had Benji Gosnell running down the middle and wouldn’t pull the trigger. Incomplete to Da’Quan Felton instead.