Friday, November 14, 2008

Bait and Switch

We all got our hopes up last week after a breakout performance against the Terps. But, a closer look would have told us not to get so excited. Afterall, the Maryland defense ranked 70th at the time and 11th in the ACC. Everyone had been pointing to the Terp defensive line as its weakness. That certainly proved to be the case. Kudos for exposing the other team's weakness, something that is not always attacked on a regular basis as it should be by any decent coordinator.

However, if that hadn't dawned on us, what should have is that after 9 games into a season, with a coordinator who hadn't shown us anything for the better part of the past 3-7 years (however you would like to view the situation), that something was fishy about our offense being hastily labelled as dominant after the Maryland game.

Never to let us down, Frank and his offensive coaching flunkies only needed 7 days for reality to set back in. And it set in real quick and real hard.

What's most troubling as we continue to stumble through season after season of the same old song, is that Frank/Stinespring don't seem to learn from past mistakes. You can look back to the '99 and '04 Sugar Bowls, any number of regular season games, etc. and you can find that not only have we failed on 4th down attempts in lieu of taking the points, we continue to run the same inept and unsuccessful play that has withstood the test of time!

It's truly becoming disheartening and we wonder if anything will change. With Bud's departure on the horizon (good luck and only the best for Bud!!), we wonder if this will add even more incentive for Frank to make a change or make him dig his heels in even harder. If the latter, then get ready for some rough years ahead for VT football.

The "what ifs" are already creeping in and it's too bad that Frank hasn't aligned his vision to win national championships with a solid plan instead of depending on Bud and HOPING that Bryan Stinespring could be something that he isn't. It could be a shame considering how far VT football has come and what we have built, but will we rise past this plateau? We have the talent and fans to do such great things at Virginia Tech football. How will Frank answer the challenge?

13 comments:

MadJay said...

Couldn't agree more about your assessment of the 4th and 1 call. It reminds me of my favorite definition.

Insanity - the act of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

~MadJay
www.techsuperfans.com

hokiej88 said...

Jason, are you going to ever call back into the Hokie Hotline?? I also think we need to upgrade our assistant coaches on offense from a recruiting standpoint. O'Cain, Hite and Sherman are pretty much dead weight in recruiting....

Anonymous said...

I think its about time for another call to Frank tonight for his update of that "out of whack" offense and for Frank to tell us when "we're going to get better"

Anand Trivedi said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anand Trivedi said...

I tell you we never should have built that trophy case. It'll haunt us forever if the coaching situation doesn't improve.

-EhhTee
TechSuperFans

HokieFan said...

So Frank said "We're going to get better" but we've gotten worse. If extensive changes aren't made to our offensive coaching staff in the near future, it will only expose the absolute complaceny of our head coach.

There's a reason that the term "good ol boy system" has a negative connotation to it.

HokieFan said...

One more comment... The fact that our fanbase was ecstatic with the 23 points we scored against Maryland also shows a huge problem. While fans should be happy with a win, 23 points is still not much at all.

mainaman said...

@ hokiefan, when Beamer said "We're going to get better" , I am sure he meant defense not offense...

hokiej88 said...

Hey Jason, we need your reaction to Purnell Sturdivant's comments in public about Stiney and the offense!

mainaman said...

I think Purnell did the right thing, the team suffers because of poor offense, those guys on defense leave their harts out just to leave the field with a disappointing loss. Sometimes it takes a mutiny for a change.

Unknown said...

Jason,

If you have time, I'd like to see the scoring offense (points & ranking) after removing special team scores and defensive scores. Keep up the good work.

Unknown said...

great link to compare the offense and defense ranks over the last 10 years

http://www.techsideline.com/message_board/football/2008/November/24/3091063.php

hokiej88 said...

Reggie,
I have seen the special teams and defense scores removed from our scoring offense statistic and they are not pretty at all. They take us from the 30-50 range in scoring offense all the way down into the bottom of college football rankings around the rankings of where our total offense is ranked currently... You just need to know that the scoring offense statistic that the coaches quote to counter fans' arguments about how bad the offense is shows just how much our defense and special teams have hidden our offense's ineptitude. I wrote an essay about that and other things over on the Fire Bryan Stinespring website. Read my essay! It's towards the top of the page...
http://firebryanstinespring.blogspot.com/