Take the Points!!

How many games do we have to lose before we learn to take the points? It's not like our offense is good and we move the ball at will and can "just get 1 yard" when we want. In fact, we all know that is quite the opposite of our "offense". Quotation marks are appropriate in the same regard we put "coach" next to our offensive coordinator, offensive line coach, and quarterbacks coach.

And if we continue to insist on going for it on 4th down, let's learn from our past failures on what play to call. We are really starting to wonder if these guys could coach a highschool team. Who in their right mind lines up a 260 pound TE (moonlighting as our QB) in the shotgun 5 yards behind the line of scrimmage on 4th and goal from the 1 yard line? That is just so mindblowing for so many reasons. How about a QB sneak from under center? Or Tyrod with a designed run/pass option?

The lack of logic and continuity never ceases to amaze us. The repetitive mistakes and not learning from the past borders on lunacy.

We are very proud of the team and Bud for winning the Coastal division. And maybe we can win the ACC championship again, but for all of those accomplishments, it does not make our offense good or any better than it was last year, according to the statistics.

We really thought Frank was a reasonable person, but the continued excuse making for the offensive coaches and pointing to the "wins are what matter" line, we really wonder if he seriously believes that. Because no matter how you slice it, our offensive coaching staff needs a major overhaul because we have just seen another year of ineptitude. At this point, Frank's "wins are what matter" answer/excuse is not an acceptable reason for NOT making changes. The fans deserve better and they should let their voice be heard.

Is Frank really waiting for the bottom to fall out and lose a bunch of games before he makes a change? No one ever said you had to get worse in order to get better or that we can't expect a decent offense to compliment our fantastic defense.

If A Tree Falls in the Woods and Nobody is Around...

to write about it, does it still mean your offense is ranked 109th? Well, you get what we're saying. So, now Frank has resorted to making not only his players, but coaches unavailable to the media! Wow. It must be getting hot in the Merryman Center.

We're not really going to harp on the Duke game. It was awful and just made the "change train" gain more steam. No team is going to win many games with 5 turnovers (although BC beat us with 5 or 6 giveaways).

Anyway, this is really becoming a circus. Not only are fans continuing to throw high-n-tight fastballs on Hokie Hotline, our favorite sports bloggers and writers continue to hammer away with questions about the offense each week, and of course our new favorite player Purnell Sturdivant weighing in on the offense, but now Frank has put the muzzle on his players and coaches.

We don't know how to translate what this all means. Maybe Frank is just tired of it all himself? Maybe he thinks that winning the ACC championship will silence the critics? Bottom line is, the gig is up and everyone who wears Orange or Maroon knows it. At this point, we don't see how this can continue into the offseason as it would not be good for the health of the program if Frank let this linger into the spring and next season.

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?

Take a knee

We had a great time in Tallhassee. Not the prettiest of college towns, but we had a good time. Good fans and treated the Hokie fans well. Pretty cool to experience that Florida State atmosphere and tradition.

Anyway, on to the game. Our guys played so hard and we take off our hat to Cory Holt for his inspired performance. Obviously, the roughing the kicker penalty was huge and for all intents and purposes handed the win to Florida State. Not sure it was the best decision to be trying to block a punt when you have the lead and you're about to get the ball back in good field position...especially with our offense. It felt like the 2005 ACC championship game with the repeatedly deep jump balls that FSU pulled down (seemingly) every time. And the punt with a couple minutes left was embarrassing. What was that?

The coaches will blame the injuries, but it is what it is and we come in at 113th in total offense after yesterday's 240 yard performance. Somehow we still control our own destiny to win the Coastal, thanks to the overall suckiness of our conference. We still think the Coastal winner will have 3 losses. Anyway, different week, same problem...Bryan Stinespring is still our offensive coordinator. Keep the heat up and the phones ringing. We hate losing, but maybe, just maybe that means we're 1 loss closer to a new offensive coordinator in 2009.

The Florida State boosters we were tailgating with were commiserating about their similar situation with Jeff Bowden. If Bobby can fire his own son after 7 years of crappy offense, then maybe one of his good friends, Frank will get some advice on how to go about helping Stinespring find another position. The Noles fans said it took about 2 or 3 years of complaining to get a new offensive coordinator. VT fans have been grumbling since 2006, so at least this concept isn't totally foreign and as we all know this thing got much stronger legs in 2008. The players and fans deserve better.

We are starting to think that Frank's personal loyalties may be intefering with his job duties. That is, putting this stubborness AHEAD of what is best (big picture) for the Virginia Tech football PROGRAM. We shall see what happens, but as it stands with Stinespring as our offensive coordinator, Frank doesn't have VT football heading in the proper direction. He's gotta come up with a plan soon because when Bud leaves he's gonna need that offense more than he's ever needed it.

Last Straw meet Camel's Back

Utterly disgusting.

240 yards? Are you kidding me? Plus 4 turnover margin? What's the excuse now Frank? Things got "outta whack" huh? Just like your boy Jason from Arlington. No Frank, Bryan Stinespring has been unqualified ever since the day he was promoted to offensive coordinator.

Apparently, even the most opportunistic defense cannot overcome your joke of a coach Bryan Stinespring's inept and baffling game plan. What's funny is, this offense is no different than the one that beat GT and UNC, it just happened to get exposed this week with a pitiful loss to Boston College. What more do you want or possibly ask for from a defense that allowed less than 300 yards, forced 5 turnovers, allowed 0 points in the 2nd half, and scored 17 points on its own?!!!!!!

It pains us to say this, but if Frank doesn't make a change after this season, then we have lost faith in Frank Beamer as head coach of Virginia Tech. This train is headed nowhere fast and we are in danger of seeing Frank putting his loyalties to Bryan Stinespring AHEAD of what is best for our beloved football program. It's sad and none of us want to see that happen.

This needs to stop and stop real soon. Don't look for a change before the end of the season, but we challenge all Hokie fans out there to call into Hokie Hotline, write in to Jim Weaver and Frank Beamer and Steger. Make your voice heard, it counts!! We know first hand that it does, it can make a difference, so don't leave it up to the next Hokie fan, make your opinion heard. It's not just about big donors, it's about volume. The little guy counts too, especially when a bunch get together to do so.

This is absolutely unacceptable and this is also nothing new to what has been said all along. This is embarrassing and fans can make a difference. We must look at the big picture and from that perspective VT football is not moving forward. And we all know how that saying goes. It pains us to say it, but VT football may have hit the ceiling. It's up to the fans to let Frank know that this is not acceptable and we won't stand for it and that we and the players deserve better.

GO HOKIES!!

Numbers Crunch

Below is a display of statistics that compare the past 9 BCS champions to Virginia Tech's past 9 seasons. We took total offense (yards), scoring offense (points), total defense (yards allowed), and scoring defense (points allowed).

[If you're wondering...we used the past 9 seasons because that was the data readily available by way of some quick internet searches. Also, the 2 VT averages are for 9 years and 7 years (under our current offensive coordinator's tenure).]

As you could have imagined, the 1999 Virginia Tech team stats are very much in line with the BCS champion averages. Which should only support the discussion and numbers below.

Also, you can see that our total defense and scoring defense average for the past 9 and 7 years are very much in line with BCS champion averages. See "Difference" row, below.

Total scoring offense is "somewhat" in the same ballpark (average 17 spots or about 14% deficient) as BCS champion averages and it should be noted that this is an important statistic that deserves a lot of attention. As you can see, every BCS champion's scoring offense was ranked higher than its total offense (Florida was exception in 2006).

However, all of the past 9 BCS champions have averaged around 22nd in total offense. Clearly Ohio State was a statistical outlier in 2002, but most are in top 20. Even with Ohio State's 70th ranking in 2002, you can see that it took a total offense that ranked in the top 25 (approximately) for 8 of the past 9 BCS champions.

What does this tell us? That our defense is what we thought, consistently good enough to compete and win BCS championships.

Our offense? Also tells us what we thought, that it is a WORLD away...as in that over 50% of other Division 1A teams have averaged better total offense stats for the past 7 years.

It is clear that total offense does matter (coupled with scoring offense of course) in winning BCS championships. We are 50 spots away (on 7 year average) from that championship average.

We hear our offensive coaches say that "statistics don't mean much around here". As you can see by the stats, that statement has been pretty accurate for the past 7 years.

But, if we want to win BCS championships then these statistics cannot be ignored.

False Alarm

Awful, awful, awful. Just when we thought the offense was "improving", here come the Hilltoppers to put an end to that rumor. What? This is getting ridiculous. 287 yards against a team that is one year removed from Division 1-AA? This game was supposed to be a scrimmage for all intents and purposes. A chance to improve on offense and get some things "straightened out". Instead we got treated to another helping of Bryan Stinespring's brilliance. And then we got to hear (in Stinespring's post-game interview) about how much the offense has "greatly improved" since the first game. We've all heard the "coachspeak" before, but now we're starting to worry Stinespring and Beamer actually believe the nonsense that is coming out of their mouths, with regard to our offense.

108th folks. No more Western Kentuckys on the schedule (by the way, their mascot is awesome), so don't look for our offense to finish any higher than 100th in total offense. Wow.

Is Frank waiting to lose a handful of games before he gets pissed and heads roll? Don't let the wins fool you, our offensive coaches are still not good.

On a related note, our hero Nick Saban got a nice shout out in an article (on another VT website) this week. If you haven't read it, please do yourself a favor and read it. Talk about on the mark, it hits the bullseye with regard to Frank's reactionary attitude and perceived complacency.