Before we go on, we should look at some of the issues in the Wofford game and see if there is any sort of rational hope for any more wins from Hokie football this season.

In general, the reality of the level of the opposition for the contest has to be admitted to. Wofford is a mid-level FCS Division I program and had been doing a fair amount of struggling with their schedule, too. So, most of everything positive needs to be evaluated with that caveat in mind.

The Stuff that Did Actually Work

Overall, the impression of the team, now bereft of an actual head coach (Philip Montgomery still has the “Interim” label before the title) is that the team actually seemed relieved and the player decidedly more positive at the very abbreviated warmup session before the game. It wasn’t raucous and energy stoked, but it wasn’t the down-in-the-dumps lack of energy displayed for both prior home games. That with an emphasis on the seeming pall of impending doom going on for the ODU matchup. As noted before, the lack of energy and perceived desire to even be on the field was a reminder of the 2019 Duke fiasco. It made you wonder if, like that season, the head coach had lost the locker room. That negative emotion was not present at 11:15 on Saturday morning. (It was interesting to note that the head coach did not lead the team on to the field for the entrance.)

The offense actually worked and adjusted. What this would have to do with the absence of Brent Pry is still up for debate. However, although the first drive didn’t get the job done at the end Philip Montgomery, calling plays from the sideline, adjusted the flow of the game to get the offense countering, and running off the edge instead of bulling its way up the middle. Wofford might be struggling but it’s run defense was pretty highly rated coming into the contest. Getting the run moving and making decent schedule yardage was encouraging. Kyron Drones was much better with his passing game. The coach admitted after the game that they gave him plays to get him settled in, and gain confidence. He was dealing with patterns and distances that he is decently good at hitting and played 3 solid quarters before being pulled for Pop Watson in Garbage Time. The results were excellent and need to be repeated in the future.

The defensive line seemed to get its Game 1 chops back. If this team is going to win anything, the front 8 players on the defensive line need to do exactly what they did on Saturday. They needed to contain the quarterback in an R/O offense and be disruptive in the passing game. They needed to control and close the ‘A’ gap and not get tied up dancing with offensive linemen as the quarterback or halfback blow through the crease in the ‘A/B’ boundary of the zone blocking scheme. Though a few times Wofford made some headway it was mostly with their passing game (more about that later).

Special Teams made no mistakes. Nick Veltsistas kept the ball away from any good punt returns and flipped the field neatly on his punts with little pressure put on him from the rush. The return game was consistent with no muffs, no bad decisions in fielding, and even a few return yards made. Tucker Holloway only had 2 returns but one was for 9 yards. P.J. Prioleau had a kickoff return for 32 yards which netted 7 over a fair catch. John Love did miss a field goal, but it was from nearly 60 yards but the ball, though on target, was short of the uprights by a bit. Something happened with Kyle Lowe (could have been the heat or just giving Love a chance to do it) and John Love kicked off once. All 7 balls sailed out of reach of any returns for touchbacks.

Overall, the Offense ended up with a solid B+ which could have been an A if they hadn’t blown their first drive into the red zone.

What Didn’t Work So Well

You’d like to say that everything worked, but there were issues that will still need working out.

The run game is still not developing fast enough to get through the first level. The offensive line was still having difficulty shoving bodies out of the way for the backs to get through the A and A/B boundary on a straight dive or slant. The backs, slowed down by the shotgun, were just not getting to the interior creases (the term ‘hole’ doesn’t work for zone blocking schemes) fast enough for the patch work offensive line to get anyone moved.

The Offensive Line was and is a serious problem. This is nothing personal. This line is only really one deep with a few extras who can “make do” in some situation. The interior of the line is still not moving anyone out of the way. The Redshirt Freshmen are doing their best, but dominant offensive lines are not populated with fresh faces of little or no experience. The problem is that with a regime change coming will they lose another coach who is arguably the best coach that they have had in a while? They did perform measurably better at pass blocking, which is sort of an old saw for Tech. B- grade pass blocking, and C- run blocking. Against Wofford the line did B- to C+ work, and as the plays began to counter and run off the edge, they became more cohesive and complete, but that level of performance won’t survive most ACC competition.

What sort of mess is the quarterback room? We didn’t see Pop Watson until well into the 4th quarter, and Garrett Rangel didn’t even need to suit up. With Drones as fragile as he is, and facing a much longer run as the ACC season with bigger, faster, and better defenses show up, wouldn’t getting the two co-#2 quarterbacks some snap counts and pressure situations be a good idea? Is there something that wrong with the backups that there is nowhere else to go in lower pressure situations? This isn’t a good sign.

The downfield passing game was not there. Receiver drops were not pervasive but were definitely a problem with some of the passes, but the reality in the stats was that Kyron Drones’s longest pass was 24 yards. There were more than a few short-range check-downs to the running backs, in particular P.J. Prioleau – who had an excellent game, BTW. Drones was still prone to missing open reads, and more sophisticated deliveries between that critical 10-25 yards. With a bit of a confidence builder and a nice 90+ grade for the effort, hopefully Drones gains a bit of confidence and can smooth out his delivery and pick up the pace on his reads and release.

Stuff that We have to Accept Will Probably Never Get Fixed in 2025

The “Dun Busted” header hasn’t moved all that much, but the biggest broken item is the firing of Brent Pry. There are some serious arguments to be made that canning a coach 3 games into a season, with no warning, and certainly no plan of action after the deed was done wasn’t the best choice. There are also serious arguments that as the ODU game halftime whistle blew, and the reality that the team had essentially bailed on the coach necessitated a change, immediately. It was a “Hobson’s Choice” because it was obvious that Pry had lost the locker room, and the team was just not responding, but removing him so early in the season leaves no room for real program improvement in 2025.

Meaning what? The entire season is a write off from now on. No one should expect anything approaching a winning record or even a par record. The reality is that the coaching staff is going to be rapidly lining up interviews with other programs. That will be accompanied by either a gusher at the end of the 30-day Coach Dismissal Portal or the post season portal is likely to be a stampede for the exists. We’ll cover the risk analysis of the situation and the remainder of the season in the next article, but for now we can pretty much count on a sadly diminishing return.

There will be changes coming, really big ones, and the future is hazy at best. There are no two ways about it, firing a coach at this juncture of the season is essentially leaving the program, staff, assistants, and the locker room out on a limb that’s about to be sawed off. Getting another coach and staff that is of a desired quality by the heavy weight fans will be another troop through the weeds of failed head coaches, assistants, and head coaches from lower levels of college football. That then gets added to the pile of dough necessary to recruit enough 4-star players to compliment the 3-stars that the program can currently afford.

There is supposedly something in the works to rescue things, BUT…

The New Competitive Money Hype is Likely Just More Hype than Cash Flow.

The entire financing scheme of almost all of FBS college sports has gone off the rails. The fact that Tech had to scramble to scrape up the funds to fire Pry with a minor payout and now has to go hat in hand to the Board of Visitors for additional money to fund the athletic program is probably the last most broken thing about this team and department. There is a whole lot of hype going on about the grand “plan” (which, frankly, would never pass as a formal business plan). Any old graybeard with lots of business experience is going to look at that and ask the question; “so, where is this additional money coming from when you didn’t have it yesterday? ”

The two major line items in the so-called “plan” are to charge the students more money to attend Tech in “Student Fees” (borrowed money that might not pass muster in the Legislature) and more fundraising. “Well, isn’t that special… Hmmm?…” the Church Lady used to say. Tech hasn’t met its fundraising goals enough to do the ugly glass cage enclosure around Cassell, and where’d the Fuente Era money guaranteed for coaching improvements, staff, and facilities beyond the athlete cafeteria (Named a Performance Center to get around the NCAA rules about special dining halls and athletes, no doubt.) The fact is that the team is spending all of what it gets on NIL, stipends, and non-revenue sport scholarships to cover Title IX requirements and the fact that there are lots of folks who don’t give a fig about football or even men’s basketball.

We shall see if that new Promissory Note will fly as cash flow, but a real market analysis and business plan has neither been publicly announced, nor produced. The current brag of meeting some level of spending in the ACC ignores the reality that the ACC is barely a power conference and its top programs are itching to move to the rapidly forming P2 Professional Championship League.

What’s Dun Busted about the Virginia Tech Athletic Program is that it wants to be something that it might be beyond its monetary and structural reach. The BoV still must answer the question, before voting on this phantom IOU… Is Virginia Tech a university with some sports to improve image and morale or a professional football program attached to a school with a built-in fan base?

That’s why college sports are “Dun Busted” because too many programs can’t or won’t answer that question, either.

We shall see how they answer on September 30th, but then throughout the season and into 2026-2030. The proposal is more of a wish, and the folks that will be charged the cold hard cash to grant that wish are the parents, students, and alumni.

Be on the Alert the updated risk analysis is on the way. The chart is done, and the analysis is being worked on.

As we said at the beginning of the season, if this team is 1-3 after the first four games the season will be a very long one, indeed.

GO HOKIES!!!