Shithole vs. Virginia Tech Preview
Miami is one of those places people think they like until they actually visit. When people get to Miami they look around like they just reached the exit to Ripley’s Believe or Not! Museum and then say to themselves “Thats it?”. Yes asshole, you paid 20 bucks for a piece of dogshit because the brochure looked nice. Miami is a sweaty armpit of Florida, and twisted up like a ball of lint in the scratchy underarm hairs of the city is the University of Miami.
Virginia Tech’s rivalry with Miami is young but bitter with each school going back and forth crushing one another’s bowl hopes with alternating defeats at their opponent’s fields. But, perhaps unlike most other times the two teams meet, this Thursday is a must-win for both teams. This year we don’t have the usual: one good team and one scrappy underdog; we have two teams that are walking the razor’s edge to get in to the ACC championship game. Looking at Miami’s performance so far this year, they lost a couple games early on before settling in to scrape together some good wins in the ACC, most recently an overtime win over UVA. Though their consistency can be applauded, they haven’t necessarily been dominating in any one game and look nothing like the fierce and explosive teams of Miami’s past. They’re offense is similar to the Hokies in performance when comparing points scored and yards gained but (as has been pointed out by some analysts) Miami really struggles against tough defenses - which is one thing we can (kind of) hang our hats on this season as we are the #19 ranked defense in the nation. Unfortunately Miami’s defense is just as good.
Other Factors: Miami’s offense isn’t much more potent than ours, though the Hokies did have a nice shot to their system with last week’s offensive breakout in the form of a 400+ yard game thanks to Rookie Evans, a.k.a. Jeff Butt’s Best Man and we shall see if it carries over to this week. Finally, we can look to history as a factor which is on our sides as Virginia Tech generally puts on a strong performance for Thursday Night Football.
The key here is that we maintain a solid attack on offense and don’t flip flop strategies going through the game. Miami doesn’t appear to be very dynamic and if we play Foster Ball we should be able to hold down scoring from the Hurricanes to a manageable number. Miami’s will isn’t what it used to be so I don’t think we will see an all out slug match like we would expect four or five years ago - but both teams know that this game is the crucial link to get to Tampa (yes, I know, no more Jacksonville) for the ACC Championship and a hopeful chance to make it to a BCS bowl.
Score Prediction: Virginia Tech 31, Miami 17
• When it’s 4th and short on your probable last offensive position and your quarterback is named Tyrod Taylor you DO NOT have him drop back like a pocket passer. If it was Sean “I love to throw picks and act like I can run the ball” Glennon then I’d have no problem dropping him back (hopefully keeping him from trying to run). HOWEVER, when you have a mobile QB like Tyrod you need to roll him out where he can hit the RB coming out of the back field, the TE on a slant or make a play with his feet and run for the first down.
• When you’re down two scores with 6 minutes left in the game ffrunning a fake reverse is a horrible horrible horrible idea. The objective of the play is to confuse the defense as to whether you’re handing it to the RB or WR or passing the ball. This is all good when the defense cares if you run. At this point in the game Miami would have been happy to let us run a reverse and pick up 6 yards. A play like that is meant to freeze the DBs and Safeties and force them to decide between covering someone coming out of the backfield or staying with their assignment. In a situation like this you aren’t going to fool anyone. The Miami secondary knows to stay with their man no matter what kind of trickery is going on in the backfield. Let “them” run as many reverses as they want just don’t let them go deep.
• Another well known fact is that the Miami defense hadn’t given up a point in the 2nd half in the past two games. What does that tell you? It tells you that their players and coaching staff do an excellent job of making halftime adjustments to take away anything you have going in the first half. How do you beat this? You come out with a totally different scheme in the 2nd half. What kind of scheme you say? Well see the next bullet. (or run Glennon for a half and Tyrod for a half)
• With the return of Tyrod, and Glennon deciding not to suck big time in the past few weeks we have a very potent weapon that is being under utilized. 3 very different QBs. How do you confuse the defense? Put Glennon at QB, Tyrod at RB and Boone at FB. Formations like this aka wildcat formation has started showing up more frequently even in the NFL due its difficulty to defend (esp when you’ve never seen a team do it before). With this formation you can direct snap to Tyrod who can throw or run. Snap it to Glennon who pitches it in the flat to Tyrod who proceeds to throw it to Boone coming out of the backfield (coverage on FBs typically suck). Lots of wheel routes and flea flickers could serve as a short yardage game at times when the running game can’t get anything going. You can run an option and have Glennon pitch to Tyrod (who can still throw). Put Tyrod at QB and Glennon at WR then run the reverse and have Glennon throw. The list of possibilities goes on and on.
• Dyrell Roberts. I know you’re a Freshmen and like the rest of the recieving core you’re young but you have to catch that ball. Quit thinking about the fact none of your peers have caught a TD this year and just catch the damn ball. Drops like that can’t be blamed on a lack of knowledge in the system. As a Freshmen still learning your place on the team you should be progressing every week. Getting a little better day by day. At this point the season is 80+% over and you need to start acting like an up and coming Sophmore and not a stone hand butterfingers. Another thing that pissed me off was after the play a guy who I would guess was the wide recievers coach was doing the old, “It’s ok, you’ll get them next time”. No. It’s not OK. You won’t get them next time. Tell him to man up and do job he’s being give a grade A education for free to do. I’m tired of babying these guys. It’s time for some tough love.
As to the game: we made our first mistake by not kicking the FG on the first possession – we were in an opponent’s house, where momentum can be ripped from you on one play. We statistically do far better when scoring first, and when even your fans know it’s a bad choice to go for it on 4th down you really should second guess the decision. Perhaps the most damning thing last night was the first TD drive for Miami. That was the worst roughing the passer call I have seen all year, that’s not hokie-tainted either, it was a hit which was lead solely with the player’s chest and the collision was less than a few tenths of a second after the ball was released. On that same drive we had plenty of later hits on Marve and no flag – it was an absurd call that caused an addition of 4 decisive points (at best) to be added to the Hurricanes score. On that same drive the hokies forced a fumble which bounced directly back to a Miami receiver attempting to make a block – that was our usual “major defensive turnover” that just happened to bounce in the worst possible way, which would again have kept that first 7 off the board for Miami. The rest of the night was littered with missed tackles, odd penalties and calls by refs, as well as one of the best catches I have seen in a long time. But overall, I don’t think we played much different than we usually did, we just had some bad breaks. Stinespring however is still inexcusable and I can’t believe we rely on that shitbag with an offense that “fails to click”, “never is consistent”, “sputters at times”, “moves backwards out of nowhere” – the commentators and sport writers are having a hard time keeping a straight face with that asshole up there calling plays. Hopefully this game will be a catalyst for change in a season that really hasn’t given us one consistent offense all year.
As for Foster: why are we all freaking out over the Clemson ordeal? Sometimes there needs to be a forest fire to clear things out and grow anew. If he gets an offer from Clemson and then comes back to Beamer and VT and says he is thinking about leaving we will have to give him a reason why he should stay (i.e. a timeframe for him to take over for Uncle Frank). Even if he doesn’t go to Clemson it still lights a fire under our program to plan and possibly make changes that are forward looking which may cause a shift in how we are doing things now and hopefully plans for a removal of Stinespring. I don’t share the same disgust for Beamer as Jeff and I actually think he’s actually a very important asset to the team for recruitment purposes and he’s amazing at keeping the team together despite bad losses or tough breaks and he keeps the image of the Hokies clean in the face of a lot of on and off field embarrassments. However we do need to have a future for Foster if we can keep him any longer. Bud has been with the team for 22 years and hasn’t been pulled away yet even though he has been identified for years as one of the best defensive coordinators in the country. Beamer is getting older but has never hinted at stepping down so I would think 4 years is the likely timeframe for us to start hearing legitimate conversations about his retirement. The major question is will we be able to keep Foster on for those years and does Foster intend to take over the Hokies one day because if his ultimate goal isn’t to coach VT, were losing him anyway.