Virginia Tech football head coach Brent Pry was back on the postseason coaching clinic circuit this year, and he again talked about the role of his five fundamentals:
We looked at them all a few years back. If you’d like a refresher, click here.
Of the five fundamentals, Pry’s top target since arriving has been competition, which means teaching the team to hate losing. His approach has been pitting players in one-on-one drills, then keeping track of the results ESPN-style, with TV screens displaying daily results in the locker room. Though he doesn’t say it outright, the approach aims to force and shame the roster into competing more, and the constant exposure of habit instills a hungrier mindset — especially so in the guys on the more passive/listless side of things.
He thinks it’s working. He sees it in the players’ attitudes and in all of the close games the Hokies have endured.
Today, we’re taking a deeper look at Pry’s approach to ensuring accountability. Why? Because in the coach’s own words, last season he was doing “a piss-poor job” with this fundamental.
The decisions that led to the release of defensive coordinator Chris Marve, offensive line coach Ron Crook and strength & conditioning coach Dwight Galt seemed to originate with Pry. He saw poor recruiting, sloppy play, bad calls and late-game fatigue, and he canned the guys in charge of those areas.
Accountability issues, though, only became apparent at the end of the season: “When I had the player meetings at the end of the season, the feedback I got, they wanted more accountability.”
Yup, accountability. Doing all of the things you’re supposed to be doing to maintain eligibility, stay out of jail, play your best on the field and make the team and the school look good.
When top-dollar leaders volunteer their big failures to the public, the cynic in me figures they’re covering for something worse. But I don’t think that’s the case with Pry. He doesn’t seem like that kind of guy. When discussing this during the coaching clinic, he was in a more relaxed setting than the press conference podium, and I don’t think he’d make up something like that and then admit it to high school coaches he was trying to build relationships with.
Now, in the coaching ranks, “accountability” is a buzzword in a tier just below “toughness” and “aggression.” Bill Belichick was talking about restoring accountability at North Carolina (insert girlfriend joke here). One of Justin Fuente’s first orders of business was holding players accountable for poor classroom attendance. Shoot, Pry was talking about it himself back at Penn State a few years ago. The context then was more about assignment responsibility — taking the right gap, playing within the scheme, that kind of stuff; I didn’t get that impression when he was talking about this year.
Though he didn’t outright say “our accountability problems were all off-field things” in his clinic this spring, every example of an accountability breach he named was an off-field issue.
Things that he mentioned included failing to turn in papers, “showing your ass downtown,” falling asleep in class, being late to class and being late to strength & conditioning sessions. Things that were mentioned twice included parking violations (not too surprising) and sock violations, i.e., wearing the wrong-colored socks to practice. (I didn’t see that one coming.) He went into detail about the punishment for speeding violations. He also noted that about twenty players were on strict diets, with progress monitored every Monday.
Playing the correct gap never came up. Maintaining proper leverage in zone never came up. Taking the right length step on a reach block never came up. It was all off-field stuff.
He didn’t get into details about who did what, only noting that the cornerbacks (a squad that seemed to underperform on the field) had the worst score on the 2024 squad, while the quarterbacks did the best. Pry probably has a good grip on those numbers because the Hokies are diligent in tracking them; he has a sixty-person group chat with the entire football staff devoted to accountability issues. The Hokies are also diligent in disseminating infraction data via a weekly full-team meeting where the position coaches name and shame the violators.
Here’s what the results could look like:
You’ll notice that some of those numbers go over 100 percent. That’s because players get credits for exemplary efforts in class and the weight room and for being model citizens. The “red X” is the demerit, and if you listen to Pry talk about his accountability program, you’ll hear “red X” quite a bit. One earns you a 5:30 a.m. punishment workout. Two means your position group shows up and watches a second punishment workout. Three means your position group participates with you in the punishments. And four means suspension.
Position coaches are also required to be at the sessions when one of their players screws up, which adds to the dog-house factor. (Part of me wonders if this made giving up the linebackers an easier pill for Pry to swallow, assuming Pry isn’t there himself.)
That’s a pretty robust system, and it makes me wonder just what the players wanted more of. Pry would know about school issues and run-ins with the police, so if that was an issue, it says something that players had less tolerance for infractions than Pry. My hunch is that the problems were areas Pry might not be as aware of, though.
Were guys routinely partying late? Were the older players and team leaders getting preferential treatment? There have been comments about players slacking, sand-bagging and otherwise going off-script in the weight room — did those come home to roost? There have also been comments about underperforming and unremarkable players getting de facto “pay raises” when they complain or remove themselves from team activities. I could see that raising hackles.
When Penn State’s defense struggled, he simplified things for his players and spent more time preaching the importance of correct assignments. The result was headlines like, “Accountability is fueling Penn State’s defensive resurgence.” I’m not sure how much that informs what he’ll do with the Hokies.
Pry didn’t comment about how he planned to fix things, though if his supervision was indeed “piss-poor,” then his first thoughts are probably going to carrots and sticks, which is where most coaches’ minds go. Punishment is always tricky because too much drops morale and can put the coaches in tough positions when star players have a slip-up. On the other hand, the NCAA is certainly hobbled in the wake of NIL, but it might still require some creativity to find ways of rewarding players beyond the apparel items the top position group receives.
Beyond that is sport psychology, which might give him some insight into “why,” though at the end of the day, rule-breakers are generally just apathetic or rebellious. In either case, he failed in screening transfers and recruits, his culture system needs retooling, there are external factors he’s not accounting for or the coaches are failing as motivators. Taking into account the coaches he canned, there’s reason to think he might’ve inadvertently solved some of the issues.
In an era where players are far more empowered than they’ve ever been, it’s tough balancing morale and discipline. I imagine most readers have worked somewhere where the work was demanding and the pay wasn’t always conducive to retention. Pry is in a similar spot.
I keep thinking about Fuente and turkey bacon. Not the post-2018 season turmoil that got Fuente to soften things, e.g., by adding turkey bacon to the team menu. I’m thinking about him realizing a few years later that sticking with more of a hard-ass approach might have been better.
I don’t think Pry has had a moment as stunning as the portal exodus that had Fuente easing back on his regimen, but compared to Fuente’s years, the Hokies are struggling in the win/loss column, and that’ll make a man reevaluate things.
Last year, the Hokies had the players to make the ACC title game; I’d have a hard time saying the same thing about this year’s team, which looks like it’ll succeed by way of “moneyball” roster efficiency and smart planning. If the Hokies are in this spot, where they’ll be leaning more on out-scheming and out-executing opponents, doubling down on discipline might be an attractive option.