I remember it like it happened yesterday.
I was working in the furniture industry, and in October there is always an international furniture market in High Point, NC. I was in the hallway taking a break and ran into the president of a competing company who I also knew as a huge Hokie fan and pretty good-sized donor. When our paths would cross on the road or at markets, the conversation was never business, always Hokie football.
On this day, the football program wasn’t doing well. For six years, the conversations were always how likable Frank Beamer was, and how much we were all pulling for him, and how given the mess Bill Dooley had left, you had to give Frank more time. But this day, the tone was different.
“I think I’ve finally realized,” he said, “that Frank Beamer isn’t the guy.”
I needled him about that over the next 20 years because we all know how after a dreadful 2-8-1 season, athletic director Dave Braine sat down with Beamer and told him of his biggest weakness: He’d hired assistant coaches he was comfortable with and liked, but many of them were not good enough at this level. He had to clean house and replace those friends with the kind of hard-ass, take no prisoners, hold players accountable coaches winning programs had. If he did, those skills balanced against Frank’s endearing demeanor would create a good cop/bad cop situation that could produce a winner in Blacksburg. If he didn’t, Braine would replace everyone and start all over again the next season.
Frank did as suggested. And the next season the rocket ship took off for Virginia Tech football.
I tell that story because midway through today’s game with Rutgers with the Hokies trailing 23-7, I found myself wondering “Is Brent Pry the guy?”
It’s the third year and they still can’t get off to a good start. I’d argue Kyron Drones has regressed as a quarterback since last year. The offensive line components have been together for three years now and they’re not noticeably better. Either the OL has had some terrible luck, they’re not building linemen in the weight room and teaching them the position, or the staff has put its emphasis on skill positions with no regard to the simple fact if nobody blocks, those skill players never see the football.
There are far too many incidents of players jumping offsides in key situations as if it’s an NFL exhibition game, and they seem to run a vanilla offense to start games with no level of sophistication like Rutgers showed with it’s RPO plays. They also seem to forget they have certain playmakers on the roster until playing a bad first half, then turn them loose in the second half. They can play stifling defense for several plays in a row, then inexplicably give up a big gain on plays that are far from complicated.
Yet when this team has its back against the wall, they seem to throw caution to the wind, make plays, and make everyone forget how bad they were in the first half. At one point today, the Hokies were dead in the water with seemingly no chance to win, yet made several big plays in the 4th quarter and erased a 16-point deficit to tie the game.
They proved they have the ability. They also proved they have no idea how to use it for four consecutive quarters. Consistency has been elusive from day one, and they are prone to play entire quarters where their brand appears to be “sloppy play.”
By losing today, the team some thought would be much improved over last year is now 2-2 with a road game at Miami Friday night. There’s a very good chance the team drops to 2-3, which to many will be unacceptable after a summer of hearing the Hokies could be a dark horse contender to make the college football playoffs.
More people, I fear, will be asking “is Pry the guy?”
This doesn’t mean I think they should replace Pry. Quite the opposite. He’s everything I want in a coach in that he’s personable, honest, makes people feel comfortable and he’s a great ambassador of the school. There are coaches in the hall of fame who weren’t great with X’s and O’s but got there because they excelled at handling people. Those coaches did what they were good at and hired people to do what they weren’t.
Brent is good at handling people, but he doesn’t appear to be comfortable being that hard-ass, do it right or you’ll do it somewhere else coach. Frank wasn’t either. But Frank was blessed in having an AD in Braine who was a football guy. Braine played football at UNC and was an assistant coach at VMI, Richmond, Georgia Tech and UVA before going into administration. He saw the weakness, saw the potential, and understood the sport. Frank is now a hall of famer because of that.
Pry needs to do the same as Frank did, and if he does, I believe there could be a wonderful result. But someone is going to have to help him, and he works for an athletic director who has a baseball background, not football.
Great football teams need a lot of things, not the least of which is money. But they also need a staff of coaches with specific expertise and complementary skills where they cover each other’s weaknesses and come together to produce a winning TEAM. This current staff doesn’t appear to have that yet, reducing Pry in some fans’ eyes as just as nice guy instead of a potential winning football coach.
Today’s loss to Rutgers didn’t help that.
A loss next week to Miami will make it even worse.
