I woke up this morning thinking of a time early last season when I was having a conversation with my oldest friend, as we do after every Virginia Tech football game.
“I hate to say it,” I told my fellow Hokie, “but my gut feel is Brent Pry is not the guy.”
My old friend protested, saying we needed to give him more time, and then reminded me of a time in 1992 when the Hokies went 2-8-1 and I had opined Frank Beamer had been given enough time and that maybe a change was in order.
“How did that turn out?” he in his typical wise acre fashion asked.
“Look, I want it to work out,” was my reply. “In fact, I think we all NEED this to work out because if it doesn’t, it could be the domino that causes the whole athletic program to implode and we will have to start rebuilding from scratch. You miss on two straight football coaches, the pressure then turns to the athletic director. Fire an AD and your football coach and your good coaches in other sports may decide to move on to something a little more stable. And then we’re back to being that redheaded stepchild of an athletic program out in the country in Southwest Virginia.”
You can see that want in stories I’ve written in the past two years. Every time the football team has done anything right, I’ve written things saying maybe this is finally the point where they’ve turned the corner and Pry has got the hang of being a head coach.
But he’s ended up like that guy many of us have worked with in corporate life: He’s been around for a while as a No. 2, then when he gets promoted to the head job he knows all the right words to say, adheres as closely as possible to the path the previous guy charted, but at year end he’s only hit 83 percent of quota. Good enough to not get fired, but nowhere near good enough to make bonus and inspire anyone into thinking he can take the company to the next level.
The good ones I’ve worked with took chances. They saw people with potential and started developing them well before a need arose so they had a good bench. They made mistakes, but bounced back with other ideas that worked and left their skeptics thinking “whoa, I didn’t see that coming.” They had the kind of skills that some may learn over time, but generally is already in the fabric of a person’s makeup, and only needs to be given the light of day to excel.
Last night was just one more game where you didn’t see those traits, and you can start with the big one of the game, the play of Pop Watson. In losing the last three games in a row, it’s been obvious the starting and backup quarterbacks for Virginia Tech have been dinged. It wasn’t a matter of if they would need to one day reach down further on the depth chart, it was a matter of when. And Watson was going to be that guy.
So when you look back at the game at Syracuse, when Kyron Drones didn’t play and Colin Schlee got hurt, they put Watson in for only one play before bringing sixth-year senior Schlee back in. What if they had left him in for a couple of series? What if he got some experience, made some mistakes, then learned from them in practice the next week so he’d be better prepared if called on later in the year? I mean, the Hokies lost the game any way.
Same with the Clemson game. There’s no substitute for a quarterback being on the field in live action. And the Hokies lost that one too. These are moves indicative of a person only thinking about today, not playing chess five moves ahead and incorporating that into his strategy.
Last night when Pop got his opportunity, he was shining at first. Some of it was his talent, and some of it was the play calling that involved throwing the ball down the field and seeing what he could do. There was a surge of energy you could see on the field, some players like Ali Jennings stepped up, and the Hokies went from a 14-0 deficit and an almost certain drubbing to leading 17-14.
Momentum was wearing orange and maroon.
But then came a situation in the final minutes of the half. The ball was on the Duke 14, and with 1:24 left, it seemed to be a sure field goal if the offense didn’t move the ball. Duke knew that and changed its defensive scheme to heavy pressure, sending more defenders rushing than Virginia Tech had blockers. It’s a common decision defenses make that close to their own end zone, and offenses usually compensate by either running a screen, draw, or simply a quick hitting run to negate that. If they throw, they go to max protect and keep more people in to block and send out fewer receivers.
Otherwise it becomes a numbers game where the quarterback will likely be sacked.
Virginia Tech didn’t seem to make such adjustments to match Duke’s. Watson was hit for a two-yard loss on first down, sacked for a 9-yard loss on second down, then sacked for a 13-yard loss on third down, with Watson fumbling under a Blue Devil wave of tacklers at the Duke 38. The line looked like a jailbreak where a screen pass has been called intentionally letting the defense in. Only no screen had been called.
That easy field goal attempt never happened, which is kind of important when you eventually lose by 3.
When the Hokies came out to start the third quarter, the energy and momentum were gone. The defense that had intercepted two first half passes seemed to revert to the first few minutes of the game when Duke scored 14 quick points, and in the blink if an eye, the 21-17 Duke lead was now 31-17.
The game wasn’t over, as Bhayshul Tuten ripped off a 29-yard scoring run and Watson made it into the end zone for a two-point conversion to draw within 3 at 31-28 with nine minutes to go. But earlier in the fourth period facing a 4th and 7 with the ball at the Duke 23, Pry had elected to kick a field goal that gave the Hokies their 20th point. It was the final quarter, and Virginia Tech trailed by two scores with not a lot of time left, and by deciding not to go for it and kick the field goal it left them trailing…still by two scores.
I mean, it doesn’t take tremendous football experience to see that. Just sixth grade math. And when you lose by one score, you have to wonder why you didn’t go for the touchdown and make it a one-score game.
But they didn’t, and for the 13th time in 14 tries, Virginia Tech lost a one-score game under Brent Pry. To the optimists in the crowd, they came so close and perhaps it’s just bad luck and with more time that will change. To the pessimists in the crowd, it was like Groundhog Day, watching another winnable game filled with mistakes where several players stepped up and played some of their best football of the season, only to find their coaches didn’t put them in the best position to win.
I still want desperately for Brent Pry to succeed. And if it were 3 or 4 games like this, it would be easy to chalk it all up to bad luck. I saw one person, in fact, on social media say this team would be 10-1 if they had just won those 5 one-score games and possibly be in the playoff hunt.
But when you’ve had your 13th one-score loss in 3 years, all filled with many of the same mistakes, it’s not bad luck.
It’s a blueprint to what the road to your future looks like.
A road, I might add, people are getting very tired of traveling.
