Virginia Tech Hokies vs. Pittsburgh Panthers: What Worked, What Didn’t, and Dun Busted

So, It’s the start of Cal (Berkeley) week, and we close out the Pitt game heart crusher with a sideways review. There were really good things that happened, and the rest will pull together into a lament in transition to something better. Tech still faces a few issues that it must solve, though.

If you wanted to see a livelier crowd, you’d likely not get a better one. Lane Stadium was packed, and loud for this game, and the crowd stayed. The only people leaving by halftime seemed to be folks with little ones who needed to get tucked into bed. No one rational predicted a dominating performance by either team. The see-saw contest kept people in their seats.

The one thing that nearly put a huge and literal damper on things was the weather. There was nothing special predicted as early as noon on Friday, but Mother Nature had her own opinions, and by 6:30 the skies over the stadium were looking ominous. The picture shows the Northeast corner of the stadium at just around 6:00. They continued to build until about 10 minutes before kickoff and it started to rain.

The rain came down pretty hard for about 20 minutes and caused yours truly to take some shelter in the Southeast tunnel. (I was not about to drown two expensive cameras, lenses, and with no rain predicted I wasn’t wearing my rain gear, either.) Eventually the weather let up, and the drizzle came to a close. Things resumed and stayed reasonably rain free for the remainder of the game, but it was brutally humid. It was cool, but really damp.

For the first 13 minutes of the game that cool dampness didn’t dampen Virginia Tech’s football game style, though. And that’s the head-scratching part of this Tech just decimated the Panthers on offense for the first quarter, and trashed Pitt on defense.

We always start with the “What Worked” section, but for this game it might have been a good idea to end the article with it, instead. We’ll do it this way, and start off with some good feelings on what can already be noted as a brutally down event, because Pitt is ranked as of Sunday, and Tech’s disappeared.

We’ll visit the interceptions a bit later, for different reasons, but and are completing a WR corner of the X, Y, and Z of an all-flanker game roster. We know that Aden Greene has earned the X, but the Y was up for grabs, and suddenly the Hokies have a Z that isn’t a Tight End or Running Back. Which given the fact that both Running Backs have proven to be excellent receivers out of the backfield, and the two starting Tight Ends are A grade receivers, too, Ethan Grunkemeyer has the potential of five game breaking receivers on the field at any one time. That is not something that Hokie Nation is used to seeing.

Those connections lit up the Panthers for serious yardage and critical ball movement when the running game had bogged down. We won’t drop into the major stats warfare notes, because on paper Virginia Tech dominated the football game…

There was heavy pressure to open the game fast and get the ball in the end zone to start. It’s especially true because in complete defiance of the laws of probability, Tech keeps losing coin tosses and the opposition choosing to defer to receiving the 2nd half kickoff. The opening two drives for the Hokies were absolute masterpieces in fast execution, passing first, downfield, and then using the pass to open opportunistic runs. Both touchdowns were complemented by a hopped-up defense, and roaring crowd, but the Hokie offense was in control of the ball, the pace of the game, and the score. (That’s where we’ll pick up this theme in the next section.) Then, at the end of the game, with Tech playing from two scores down and the clock burning up, the offense again started moving the ball downfield, after a massive defensive stand and a safety. Getting the ball down the field and across the goal line with enough time on the clock to get a defensive stop, and then give John Love a chance, or get the ball into the endzone… was all made possible by that quick strike drive in the 4th quarter. Hokie Nation is just not used to having a capable 2-minute offense.

The single really disastrous and probably game winning interception, Grunkemeyer will be kicking himself over for quite a while.

I love to rain on the naysayers’ beef parties, but the Virginia Tech defense played an amazing game. They were repeatedly put in the position of defending a short field on 3 of the 4 turnovers. (One of which was not a turnover and an illustration of the third section of this article.) The defense, even with some of the frustrating decisions coming from the sideline, stood up, stood in, and kept the team in the game. The 4th quarter stands were absolutely critical, and their two points for the safety put John Love’s kick attempt in play for the potential win.

Sure, there are some issues to clean up, and we’ll talk about it in the next section, but when it absolutely needed to, the Hokie Defense put the team in a position to win.

There are always things that need to be fixed, but when the big L pops up at the end of the contest, sometimes the list becomes exhausting, and can get bogged into details. Let’s talk higher altitude stuff, but we’ll dip down a couple of times for illustration.

The first sign of some sticking problems came just short of halfway through the first quarter, when the Hokies opened their possession with two balanced plays for a total of 11 yards (A 5-yard pass to Reynolds and a 6-yard burst from Hawkins.) to get the ball to the Tech 39, where suddenly Howle started calling bubble screens behind and at the line of scrimmage on 1st and 2nd downs. It’s difficult to find any reliable statistics for the percentage of success of the play. The big stat sheets provide the percentage of completed passes, but not the percentage of the success of achieving the line to gain, or significant yardage (above 4 yards). Anecdotally that percentage just keeps coming up to be very low. It looks great on the QB stat sheets for completion percentage, but the yards after catch just never seem to amount to what is/was desired in the play call.

Pitt had to punt on the next series because Totten dropped the ball on the Pitt 9 yard-line with a lucky assist on a Pitt holding penalty. The problem wasn’t the defense. Tech stopped Pitt on their next series attempt, and at 14-0 was handed the ball back in good field position. Again, Howle chose to dinky-dunk at the line of scrimmage and behind… losing 4 yards, gaining only 7 back, and then gaining only the 4 that were lost on the opening play. Totten had to punt after a 3-and-0ut. Pitt passed the ball down the field as fast an aggressively as Tech opened the game, and scored without the defense looking like it had done more than wave at Panthers.

Tech’s ensuing drive into the 2nd quarter stalled out on some shaky play calling inside the Pitt 15 and had to settle for a field goal, instead of what looked like a sure touchdown. The two running plays were never going to work, and Howle should have digested that after calling two failed attempts at executing a shorter ball control game.

This staff, on both sides of the line of scrimmage, has a crippling impulse to try to “burn clock” after getting ahead two scores, early. On offense, Pitt’s run defense is typically Nardo at work. It’s tough, fast, and innovative. Pitt didn’t bite on the counter plays. He always had a linebacker and a defensive end paying attention to the backside of the flow, and more often than not shut down the counter plays for very short yardage.

It’s time for both coaches to rethink that failing strategy. The two rules of modern football that they need to remember: 1) Prevent Defense (in any form) more often than not prevents winning. 2) Points equal time. No matter how fast they are scored, points are always more powerful than time off the clock.

Tech turned the ball over, and it resulted in short field situations that put points on the board. Three of those situations were going to be film room and practice situations. If you understand what I mean. A Center to Quarterback exchange on a snap is a practice and concentration thing, especially when the game conditions become heavy pressure situations, and the defense is running up the pressure that sequence was called as Grunk never really having the ball through the exchange. Grunkemeyer was strip sacked once, thankfully the defense forced a Pitt turnover on downs in the next series. The Grunkemeyer to Overton fumble happened 5 yards deep in the backfield on a slow developing run play as Pitt sold out to beat the run. That fumble resulted in a touchdown for the Panthers as the Hokie defense seemed to melt with the receiver got behind the secondary.

The atrocious turnover that resulted in an ultra-short field for Pitt was probably as bad a call and replay series as you will see on the field at any time. Fatrat Brown caught the ball, and the Pitt defender grabbed it after Brown was both making a football move, and then down resulting in “simultaneous” possession. The rule is that the possession goes to the receiver (it was still short of the line to gain) but the turnover should never have been called.

Regardless of the pressure situation, the impulse for OCs to call short passes that are at or short of the line of scrimmage continued to create poor schedule situations for Tech. We talked about the problem in general with the urge to burn clock, but in and of themselves these sorts of passes are not high on the list of yardage gainers. They are a substitute for a pitch play in an option offense. They take too long to develop, and if a team uses them too much become obvious to dope out and stop. The completion looks great on the QB passing statistics, but the yards after catch rarely seem to glue up a desirable result; especially when the other team is tackling well.

Which brings up the last problem that is about to get pushed into the dun busted column. Tech’s tackling both in traffic, allowing for yardage after solid contact, and in the open field was just really problematic on both defense and special teams. Even sure handed tacklers were having difficulty getting ball carriers wrapped up allowing for too many secondary yards. At some point, those missed tackles are going to mean losses when wins were possible.

Everyone knows that the Hokie Offensive line is getting seriously banged up and currently operating with critical #2s in positions that starters needed to be. The first thing that one notices in looking at the plays as they break down is that the blockers are having real consistency problems. Some plays they block well, and some they just can’t manage to find contact with anyone.

Their drive blocking was painful for the Pitt game. There were a few times that they managed to get Pitt to move, but in general they were having serious problems driving Pittsburgh defenders out of contact range with the runners.

On stretch plays and counters, the reach blocks weren’t connecting and the critical audibles that needed to account for Pitt’s anti-counter play scheme just never seemed to develop. The backside covering Linebacker and/or Defensive End wasn’t getting blocked – either with a miss in the assignment or a clean miss of the block on the field.

This is both an execution and a play design issue that Coach Howle really needs to get with Coach Moore and fix, and that might include using a lead blocker in the backfield.

Both Offensive and Defensive coaching staffs have some real soul and playbook searching to do over the next few games.

The Offense is having a difficult time dealing with a rapidly adjusting defensive situation, whether that’s a purposeful stack of changes that the opponent’s defense is showing, or the fact that certain types of plays are doped out and not working, and others are working well so the “not working” stuff is shoved into the “maybe later” folder. The biggest problem for the offense is taking their foot off the gas and trying to run the ball and burn clock. This offense does not have the consistently high level of play from the line and blocking schemes to execute plodding 4- to 6- yard runs on every play. Right now, it’s struggling to maintain yardage in excess of 3 yards a play when you take away bursts. They only managed 2 yards average per rush attempt in this one.

The downfield passing game has been stellar, and once it is consistently applied, the shorter passing game, and the run game begins to open up. The problem is in the on-field series to series recognition and change in scheme. It’s standard practice for OCs to get creeped out by passing the ball more than running it, and even more, passing the ball over the line of scrimmage more than behind it. This offense needs to remember the governing rule of offensive momentum; “running and passing most plays AT the line of scrimmage is most likely going to attain the line of scrimmage.”

Howle tried to slow down his offense to burn clock starting late in the 1st quarter. That move messed up the timing of an offense that came out firing and gave the Panther defense time and breathing space to execute its game plan which was to stop Hawkins and Overton from going anywhere significant.

It’s time to pitch the conventional way of doing things and “stand on it”.

The Defense took three touchdowns and nearly two quarters to adjust to Pitt’s original offensive situation, and then completely collapsed against both the run and the pass for that period when Pitt lost its starting QB. That situation, especially in high emotion games, can often cause a defense serious problems. Tech was all in on stopping . The new guy flummoxed them when it shouldn’t have.

Tech’s defensive line didn’t stop the Pittsburgh run offense when it was obvious that the Panthers were going to need to lean on it. It took until the 4th quarter for the Tech defense to wake up and get serious pressure on Pitt, and get stops, and a Safety to go with that. That’s on both the coaching staff and the players. The guys on the field are football smart enough to begin to make changes in their techniques without having to be told what to do by the coaching staff.

Cal is going to present an opportunity to get these adjustment issues out of the chronic cycle and back into a more positive light, because overall minus the turnovers, the Hokies did enough to win the game, by too narrow a margin, but the breakdown after the fumble on the Tech 45 was the margin of victory.

The calls in this game were terrible. Yes, Tech got hit with 8 penalties for 82 yards… but the first interception call was totally blown. Bryan outlined the worst of it, but there were lots of penalties happening that were never called, and completely inadvertent football moves that got called and those changed drive characteristics. The final problem was the end of the game field goal attempt. It’s the talk of the sports weekend, and the reality is that it was called wide left. Registered as a miss, with no review, no camera angle possible to even see where the ball went, and some unofficial views and replays showing evidence of a miss and evidence of a hit. The fact remains that no personal opinion counts, only the personal opinion of the official standing roughly under the left upright, and frankly with the poor visibility up in the lights on the field in that very humid evening, I don’t know how he saw it, either. It was too close to call for everyone, and it’s only practical that we all live with the situation and move on.

The upshot is that it might be time to employ some technology that will help with close calls above the uprights, and that’s where the ACC and NCAA are falling down on the job in relation to replay and officiating. The technology exists to answer more questions faster and more accurately. It’s time to cast away the fraternal secrecy of the officiating part of the game. The conferences and the NCAA need to have public, open review boards, and the old-fashioned referee retribution dished out for daring to complain needs to be snuffed out. It’s time to professionalize the collegiate officiating situation. We see it in basketball as well as football.

Someone needs to step up and fix it, but as of yet, no one is willing.

We’re doing this the simple way this time.

Quarterback: B+ (a bad throw pick foiling a game winning TD subtracts what would otherwise have been an A)

Offensive Line:C (for the run game, 2 yards per carry is really disappointing) B (for the passing game, but Grunk was sacked twice for 17 yards in critical situations)

Running Backs:C (Neither of the Juniors got anywhere and 2 yards a carry average is bordering on a D) B for receiving though which saved them.

Receivers:A- (Q and D Brown and Greene were this team’s main offensive weapons for the game)

Line:B-/C+ (very inconsistent)

Linebackers:B-/C+ (again, very inconsistent)

Secondary: B-/C- (consistency is becoming an issue. The complete coverage breakdown in the 3rd/4th period gave up the winning TD)

Special Teams: B (a shanked punt and missed winning FG have their effects)

Overall team grade is really hard to give for this game. It’s about a B range, but some team performances were so inconsistent that the grade isn’t level across the entire game.

This is a very winnable game, and a good opportunity for the Hokies to reach down and fix some things that really need to be addressed. Kickoff is at 3:30 Eastern.

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