What To Watch For: Virginia Tech Hokies

CAN VIRGINIA TECH STAY HOT?

A few weeks back Virginia Tech was 1-3 with their lone win against a G5 school. A couple of weeks after that they were 2-4 with an additional win against a bad Pitt team. Yet somehow, they are tied for second place in the ACC with Louisville. I watched this VT team early this season and felt confident in my prediction that Brent Pry was a year away from being where he needed to be.

Well, Pry has his team on a nice run of three wins in four games. While they aren’t beating great teams, they are beating good teams convincingly. This is the same team who lost to a 2-win Purdue team at home. Pry seems to have found an unlock on defense with his group playing better than they have all season. On offense, they have started to take more shots in the passing game while also improving their run game.

BHAYSHUL TUTEN COULD TEST LOUISVILLE’S RUN DEFENSE

One of the key aspects of the Tech’s improvement is Bhayshul Tuten coming into his own. Tuten ran for 118 yards against Syracuse and also had a 100-yard game against Pitt. Tuten isn’t the best running back Louisville has seen this year but I think the intentional way that VT is using him is important.

Tech started the year being conservative in the pass game with them only taking a few shots down the field per game. That has changed over the last few games. The Hokies are running the ball well with Kyron Drones being an effective rushing option and a real threat to put up big plays with his legs. But his ability to throw the ball down the field and the willingness of those calls to be made have opened up running lanes for Tuten who plays like he hates to be tackled. He is a real threat to break through against UofL’s stingy rushing defense.

LOUISVILLE HAS A NEW OFFENSIVE PLAN

It’s running the ball and being patient with the passing game. That’s it.

JEFF BROHM COULD AVOID THE LETDOWN GAME CURSE

I’m not a believer in random trends and theories in college football. Luck isn’t really a thing to me and teams, programs, and coaches don’t have these things where things “always happen”. But Brohm’s tendency to have a letdown game after a big win is hard to ignore.

One of the reasons that I think that these trends aren’t all that real is that Brohm has to win the big game in the first place. It’s not a slight to his coaching ability that they lose games that happen to be after a big game. He’s lost plenty of games in general. To me, the big factor is that Jeff Brohm has never had a complete team. Either his defense has struggled or his offense has been one-dimensional. That isn’t the case this year and I truly think the Pitt game was a clunker. I expect Brohm and his team to prove me right this weekend.