Ask Kyron Drones what his understanding of the Virginia Tech offense was when his spring ended prematurely to have foot surgery and the quarterback gives himself an eight out of 10.
Now? He feels fully versed in Philip Montgomery’s offensive attack, cranking that number all the way up to 10.
“I’ve just been working with him real close about seeing what he sees, him seeing what I see, just us getting on the same page here and there,” Drones said this week. “He’s just been infusing confidence in me and the whole offense.”
It’ll be an intriguing quarterback matchup Sunday in Atlanta with Drones going up against preseason darling and Heisman Trophy hopeful LaNorris Sellers of South Carolina.
If it ends up being a matchup of 2023 Drones vs. 2024 Sellers, that’d be a heck of a show. Those versions accounted for 22 and 25 touchdowns, respectively, blending explosive and occasional rugged running to an efficient passing game.
Virginia Tech’s main aim in 2025 is getting Drones back to his old self, not the 2024 version. Injuries and an early identity crisis contributed to the quarterback underperforming last season, a year when he threw for 1,562 yards and 10 touchdowns but more than doubled his interception rate. Though he found the end zone more often on the ground, his rushing average dropped by over a yard and a half.
Injuries — first a stress fracture, then turf toe and a knee sprain — brought his season to a premature end.
Tech rectified the foot issue with offseason surgery. It hopes it did the same for Drones’ confidence by bringing in Montgomery, a tried-and-true quarterback specialist who’s coached some good ones in his career, including Heisman Trophy winner Robert Griffin III.
Drones spoke with brutal honesty this week about the benefits of having a quarterback guy like Montgomery as his coordinator, drawing a stark contrast from his previous two coordinators, Jeff Grimes at Baylor and Tyler Bowen with the Hokies.
“My last two coordinators were both O-linemen when they played,” Drones said. “It’s definitely a difference from somebody who has been in that backfield and has played the QB position.
“They know probably what you’re thinking after a play. Like, you just got sacked, and then you’ve got a clock in your head now, so they know how to call the play from there. And then they just know if they see you in a rhythm, not to go out there and just keep running the ball for you to get out that rhythm. It’s a huge difference.”
His counterpart, Sellers, has a new coordinator too — long-time NFL assistant Mike Shula moves into the role for Dowell Loggains, who got the head coach job at Appalachian State — though that adjustment hasn’t dampened any preseason buzz about the sophomore.
With good reason. At 6-foot-3, 240 pounds (slightly bigger than Drones), Sellers dons a Superman cape at times for South Carolina, beating teams with sheer will and tools that often make him the most athletic person on the field.
His late scamper for a touchdown lifted the Gamecocks to a thrilling come-from-behind win against rival Clemson last November.
“First of all, I think the hype surrounding LaNorris is accurate,” Hokies coach Brent Pry said. “Whether he’s throwing it and certainly doing it with his legs, very hard to tackle. He’s got great field presence. He’s a great competitor. And he’s got tremendous size. He’s an impressive athlete. …“They’ve done a great job with him. He’s a pretty special guy. Obviously, we have to have a plan for him.”
That ideally involves keeping him in the pocket. An explosive runner, Sellers remains a work in progress as a passer. Though he completed 65 percent of his passes for 2,534 yards and 18 touchdowns last year, NFL scouting reports ding him on his ability to get through progressions.
His legs can sink any defense. He had six games with 50-plus rushing yards last year, including a 166-yard effort against Clemson. Notably, when Illinois limited him to 11 carries for 19 yards in the Cheez-It Bowl, the Illini came away with a 21-17 win.
“He’s the guy that is going to control how we attack him,” Tech defensive tackle Kelvin Gilliam said. “The one thing that we have to do is cage him up front. That’s going to be a big emphasis coming up — caging this guy, not letting him out of the pocket.”
Though he won’t match up directly with Sellers, Drones will likely peek in on what his counterpart does, just out of curiosity as someone who plays the same position.
“I’m interested to see how he is in person, but at the same time, I hope our defense does what they need to do,” Drones said. “It’s going to be an exciting game.”
Work in progress
Among the surprises on Tuesday’s depth chart reveal was an offensive line grouping that had three differences from where the Hokies left off in the spring game, with Tomas Rimac at left guard, Layth Ghannam at right guard and Montavious Cunningham at right tackle.First-year O-line coach Matt Moore said previous work was to get a sense of what those guys could do at spots they didn’t have much of a background with.
“Rimac’s played three years at guard,” he said. “Had to make sure he got enough reps at tackle in case we needed him. It’s constantly moving around who’s going to be where.”
The alignment might not be an endpoint — certainly, development isn’t. Moore faces an additional challenge this week of being a bit light on depth. Auburn transfer Jaden Muskrat, the likely top reserve option at tackle, won’t make the trip to Atlanta because of an unspecified injury.
There’s also an element of the unknown with a new group like this. Moore doesn’t truly know how things will shake out until the Hokies take the field in a real football environment.
“We’re never going to be where I want to be,” he said. “It’s getting better, but we’re still a work in progress. How you do out here on the grass with a little bit of music playing compared to how you do in a Mercedes-Benz with 80,000 people and all the pressure, we just don’t know.
“That’s what we’ve got to figure out. How are we going to respond in those situations from a communication standpoint? We’ve got to make sure that when that happens — it’s going to happen, something like that’s going to happen, give up a sack, tackle for loss — how do you respond?
“Are you going to shut it down with millions of people watching? Or are you going to just say, ‘Hey, dust yourself off and go back and do it again.’ To play O-line on this level, you’ve got to be a warrior, you’ve got to have a short memory and you’ve got to be able to forget mistakes that you make and you’ve got to be able to go try to fix them and go back out there and try to do it again.”
Back to Mercedes-Benz
Few Hokies have probably ever stepped foot in Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium, let alone played in it. Wide receiver transfer Isaiah Spencer has, playing there last year with Jackson State in the Celebration Bowl, the postseason game played between the champions of two prominent HBCU conferences.Spencer’s Tigers upended South Carolina State 28-7, with the wideout reeling in three passes for a game-high 123 yards.
“It’s very big. Especially with us playing in the daytime, the sun is going to be beaming in there,” Spencer said of the stadium. “It’s pretty loud, especially when I was in Jackson, they had the band and stuff. But I feel like our fans are going to bring the juice and we’re going to get a win, for sure.”
Spencer’s in his first year with the Hokies after transferring in the spring when he was looking to move up to the FBS level. It took some adjustment, but the 6-foot-2, 193-pound junior is coming along, working both out wide and in the slot and holding down a reserve spot on the depth chart.
“Pretty raw when he got there, but a good talent,” Pry said. “He’s a worker. He’s coachable. He wasn’t doing a great job in camp finishing. I don’t know if he wasn’t taught to do that. He’d catch a ball and he’d kind of glide, and he wouldn’t turn up, he wouldn’t knife. And we talked to him about it for a day or two, and man, he’s fixed it.
“Now he’s one of the guys finishing the best. He’s coachable, he’s got really good talent, he’s smooth, good ball skills. I like what he’s bringing, and honestly, he’s going to just get better and better.”
Scattered, smothered and covered
Virginia Tech’s uniform reveal had a distinctly Atlanta flavor to it, filmed with Gilliam and Kemari Copeland at a local Waffle House and featuring “B.O.B. (Bombs Over Baghdad)” by one of the city’s famous hip-hop duos, Outkast.
It’s a long way down to ATL and we got a week to go…. had to stop for waffles and a little OJ to get right ??#ThisIsHome | #TeamOverMe pic.twitter.com/0D4WGbFuZE
— Virginia Tech Football (@HokiesFB) August 24, 2025
Gilliam said it was a blast, not only for finding out that the Hokies would wear their all-orange unis — players really like ’em, folks — but for getting to go to Waffle House, though it changed his perspective on the food in front of him.
“When we were taking a video, they were like, ‘Pour all of the syrup you’ve got on it,’ and they were like, ‘You can eat it afterwards,’” Gilliam said. “But we were like, ‘We’re not eating that.’ But it was a good deal all around.”
Consider Gilliam hyped for the opener in Mercedes-Benz Stadium, with the Hokies not relying on the coaches to get them amped for the game.
“It’s up to the leaders, it’s up to the captains to get these guys ready mentally, and that’s something I’m going to make sure I deliver this week, 100 percent,” he said. “We’re really getting ready for a four-quarter fist fight with these guys.
“And I told the guys this: If you’re not ready for the big-time moments, you’re not ready for the big-time games, just stay here because we need 22 guys on that field that are ready to take action on every play.”