2006.12.31
Meltdown
A meltdown like this hasn’t been seen out of the Hokies in quite a while. Oh, there have been meltdowns, but usually they start early and snowball throughout the game. You could have gotten long odds on the nation’s best defense not being able to protect an 18-point halftime lead, but it happened. Georgia outscored the Hokies 28-3 in the second half, the Bulldogs won 31-24, and and Tech’s streak without back-to-back bowl wins continues.
It’s obviously not fair to hang this on the defense. Quarterback Sean Glennon threw three interceptions and lost a fumble in the second half, and the special teams allowed Georgia to recover a critical onside kick. In an indication of the way this one went, the offensive player of the game was Georgia quarterback Matt Stafford, who was 9-for-21 passing for 129 yards, one TD and one interception. Not exactly head-turning numbers. The Hokies were also hurt by the loss of defensive end Noland Burchette, who broke his left arm in the first half, and cornerback Brandon Flowers, who left the game in the third quarter with a sprained ankle.
What was lost here tonight? A fourth 11-win season, including back-to-back years of reaching that milestone. A shot at a top-10 finish in the AP poll for the third straight season, which the Hokies have never done.
This was Tech’s biggest blown lead since 1998, when the Hokies led Virginia 29-7 only to fall 36-32.
A few stats of note: Tailback Branden Ore: 20 carries for 42 yards and two touchdowns.
Glennon: 13-for-26 passing for 94 yards and three interceptions.
Receiver Eddie Royal: 4 catches for 45 yards, plus 1-for-1 passing for 53 yards and a touchdown.
That’s all for tonight. Check out Sunday’s and Monday’s editions for plenty more on this one.mb
GO DAWGS!!
Comment by jack7son — December 31, 2006 @ 1:23 am
Lots of hopping around and loudmouthing by some silly-looking VaTech defenders stopped pretty abruptly in that third quarter…
Save that for Duke and UVa, I guess.
What does it say about you Gobblin Turkeys that the ACC #2 got their butts kicked by the SEC #5?
Comment by gastr1 — December 31, 2006 @ 1:24 am
Every season we get built up, but always come to earth. We beat up one to little guys and never compete the grown ups. Bud Foster carries
VA TECH as far as he can, but the rest of the coaching staff needs to showup.
Comment by elijah dawson — December 31, 2006 @ 1:42 am
Good year for the Hokies. 10-3 would have been taken by most fans at the beginning of the year.
Glennon is a great kid, hard worker, a lot of positive attributes. But he is no Randall type project. Took Bryan a few years.
Seems like next year is setup to make a legit run at the ACC title, and possibly more. Glennon may have improved some during the course of the year, but the growth between the ears is on a learning curve that is too flat.
New QB coach the issue?
Comment by Tom Anderson — December 31, 2006 @ 10:55 am
I can only say as a Tech graduate that this team and Frank Beamer are a disgrace to Va Tech.
NOt because they blew the game but for the behaviot, language and arrogance they protray. Ga Tech makes us look lowly as a university. But I guess Steger is no better than Beamer. Get real Steger this crew is disgraceful and the longer Beamer is Beaming his jugjaw it will be the same. Russ
Comment by Russ James — December 31, 2006 @ 5:09 pm
This loss is on the coaches; except Bud Foster. Richt out-beamered Beamer. Oh, by the way, except for one play, the half-back option, Steinspring’s play calling was horrendous!! He needs to be replaced. Straight up the middle twice then 3rd and ten with Glennon standing there like a statue. He’s got to go also.
Comment by Chris Richgels — December 31, 2006 @ 5:31 pm
As the game began, my 8 year old son said that he was for the Hokies all the way. After they received their 2nd personal foul penalty early in the game, he remarked that “he just can’t be for them as much as he would like to.” That’s a pretty accurate statement. I think people want to like them, but they don’t let you based upon their play.
Comment by utvoljer — December 31, 2006 @ 5:58 pm
It might be worthwhile for Tech to consider upgrading their competition. Maybe a spot in the SEC would help them step up to where they need to be from a competition perspective.
You have a classy staff in Coaches Beamer and Foster. Better luck next year!
Comment by Dan — December 31, 2006 @ 7:23 pm
Once again Frank Beamer has
thrilled us with an absolutely
disgraceful post-season performance. The team, and the coaching staff were beat
by one play, the on-side kick. This is an ongoing problem for Tech. One play
takes them completely out of the game. Beamer’s inability to motivate his team to move on to the next play is his downfall. A coach of his
caliber should be able to rally the troops and create focus. His face after that one play reflected doom and defeat, this is transmitted to the team who also feel the same sense that hope is lost. Beamer’s panic attacks are his undoing. As Beamer goes, so goes Tech.
Comment by James Salenger — December 31, 2006 @ 8:39 pm
Why is it that whenever there is a “meltdown”, all the criticism by VA Tech alumni, fans, and press, is always directed strictly at the players. Experienced, and trained athletic coaches will agree that some coaches are very good at making a “game plan”. Some coaches are very good at making adjustments for their players during games. Some coaches are very good at keeping their players focused during games. When the opposing teams make positive adjustments during games, and Tech’s players start to wonder what is happening – Frank Beamer and his defensive coach look like they are in a daze. Truly great coaches pull their teams together, and make intelligent adjustments for their players. Every time the Tech players “meltdown” during a game, so does Beamer and his defensive coach. Please do not tell me they are great coaches. Everyone in athletics knows that teams reflect their coaches.
Comment by Don — December 31, 2006 @ 10:19 pm
It is time for Frank Beamer to go. He has proved once and for all that he cannot win big games. Beating up on second tier teams out of conference teams like Cincy and Southern Miss do not get VT ready. Beamer has proved ineffective and needs to go.
Comment by Perry Jones — December 31, 2006 @ 10:50 pm
This is all to familiar. Each year the Hokies qualify for a bowl by feasting on weak cupcakes and scheduling 8 games at home this year. Unfortunately, any of the second level bowls bring stronger competetion (though 8-4 Georgia was a weak # 4 in the SEC)to the bowl and the HOKIES “wilt” like butter. Although Beamer’s HOKIES have been in 14 bowls, their record is a measly 6 wins compared to 9 losses. Frank needs to toughen up his schedule and prepare his teams for the “Biger” games.
Comment by Jim Morrie — January 1, 2007 @ 1:34 am
I am not sure you will accept a second comment from me. My first was under the name Don. Did everyone notice that the University of Minnesota’s football team was leading Texas Tech by 31 points going into the 2nd half of the Insight Bowl? Texas Tech won the game 44-41. Two days later Minnesota’s athletic director Joel Maturi and President Robert Bruininks had the guts to fired the Gophers head coach Glen Mason. One year ago Mason signed a four-year contract extension, for $1.65 million annually. It is past time for the same thing to happen to Frank Beamer and his staff. May I suggest the coach that all of you Tech alumni, and fans deserve? It is Navy’s coach, Paul Johnson. Notice that he calls of the offensive plays from the sidelines, and he does not have any written material in his hands. WOW! He is calm, and in control of himself and his players. Another WOW! All you Tech people should start making yourselves heard loud and clear. Your force will be much more powerful and effective, if you band together. By the way, I am not associated with any college or university in the state of Virginia. Good Luck, to all of you fantastic Tech fans.
Comment by Don Newbery — January 1, 2007 @ 11:19 am
It is pretty clear that the combination of Sean Glennon, Mike O’Cain and Bryan Steinspring is not working. All year every coach made excuses for Glennon and said he was doing all that they asked of him. They surely are not preparing him well enough or we just need another quarterback. Our defense is great but four turnovers(five if you count an onside kick) is just too much for any defense. We could not even get to a three and out for a great Nick punt. Our coaching deserves much of this responsibility. Where is Mike O and Bryan hiding in taking responsibility?
Comment by Jim — January 1, 2007 @ 11:58 am
praise Foster all you want, but who made the decision to totally ignore the UGA tight end as he continued to catch passes? the face mask personal foul on c.powell on UGA’s first drive of the 2nd half changed the game enormously. personal foul penalties and stupidity seem to be the tech trademarks the last few years.
Comment by joe parker — January 1, 2007 @ 11:05 pm
Did the defense play lights out? No. Did they play pretty well? Yes, they gave up 200 yards of total offense to UGA.
The offense, on the other hand, managed to be ineffective, and, they gift wrapped scoring opportunities for UGA.
The play calling is so unimaginative (sans the Royal pass). There’s no mis-direction to speak of and Glennon looks just as harried as he did in game one (not stepping up in the pocket, happy feet, staring down the receiver, throwing late, no pocket presence etc..).
As for the whole team, I was again disappointed in the number of PF’s. While they would mostly in retaliation, they were PF’s nonetheless.
Coach Beamer needs to take a good long look at his program and decide what it’s going to take to eliminate the behavior issues, and, go to the next level with a top flight offense.
Comment by Mark — January 2, 2007 @ 6:39 am
A defense, even the nations best defense, cannot win all the games. The offense has to help it. I do agree that the personal fouls need to stop. I think 2007 will be the hot seat year for Stinespring. Either have an offense that performs or get out of town. I have never been sold on Stinespring. I wasn’t particularly impressed with Ricky Bustle either. Frank Beamer’s largest strength that also sometimes cuts him is his belief in his players and in his staff. He remembers that these are kids to some extent. Sean Glennon hurt us badly, but he did not do it alone. If he had a stronger line, then he would be a better QB. Our best QB of the last few years has been Randall, not Mike Vick. Mike was a great profile raiser for the program. But I digress. Glennon will compete for the QB spot next year. Unless someone performs better in practice, he will be the QB. He has done better for us than many QBs have done for their teams. We are winning 9+ games per year. That is much better than the AlGrohrean sect over near I64. I do think that firing Frank Beamer would be a very foolish thing to do. This man could have bolted to UNC and chose to remain in Blacksburg. He has shown loyalty, show him some. He is the third winningest active Div 1-A coach. We KNEW this year was going to be rough. We KNEW we were weak on offense. To go as far as we did is a victory. We have a whole lot of talent pouring in over the next couple of years. If coach Foster can keep his defense operating well, I believe our offense is going to improve dramatically. That improvement will likely be more pronounced in 2008, but it may be quite noticeable in 2007. As far as Coach Foster goes, what do some of you want? The man has churned out awesome defenses with the regularity of a fine swiss timepiece!! This year his defense often turned out to be our best offense!!! There is no pleasing some people. God keep us from becoming like Alabama!!!!
Comment by David — January 2, 2007 @ 7:01 am
Great job Aaron. Enjoyed the blog this season.
Just got back from Atlanta last night and find much of the “advice” from faux hokies and other “neutrals” to be hilarious. Worth every peeny I paid for it. Suggest none of them hold their breath until we replace Beamer with Navy’s coach though.
Go Hokies.
Comment by Jim — January 2, 2007 @ 11:20 am
Tech chokes once again
Comment by Jimmy Mountie — January 2, 2007 @ 1:43 pm
Why is everyone tap dancing around the obvious. Sean Glennon does not have the toughness, ability and leadership needed to guide Tech to an ACC championship let alone a national title.
Comment by Willis Oakes — January 2, 2007 @ 6:37 pm
I certainly feel as frustrated as anyone about the outcome of the game. I can’t say much of anything positive about the offense, but I thought the defense was pretty good. I have to take extreme exception to any comment on firing Beamer. The 3rd winningest active coach leaves when he wants to. He’s showed us loyalty beyond what almost any team in the country gets out of their coaches. Name 1 coach out there that you know beyond the shadow of a doubt is better than Beamer for us. Now go pay him, fire the best coach we’ve ever had and guarantee me a national championship – then when that doesn’t happen fast enough fire him and become the Alabama of the ACC – I’ll take loyalty to Beamer any day over that all-to-certain chain of events.
Beamer’s record in bowl games isn’t what I’d like it to be, but I’m extremely proud to have come out of the ACC 1 or 2 in each of our first three years, that’s pretty good. And, if we beat Georgia, most of us talk positively about great performances against Clemson (one of the best turnaround games of the year in college football, a big game for sure!), another double digit win season and the solid potential we have next year.
Offensively, we look vanilla almost all the time, that or slightly below average. I’m not convinced that Stinespring or our QB coach are doing good enough work for us, but no informed Tech fan walked into this year with high offensive hopes – besides wide receivers we didn’t bring much experience back. And we had to play a new brand of non-option, non athletic QB football, one running back, razor thin O-line – that’s a challenge for anyone. I think you put offensive coaching on alert that it needs to improve next year and give em’ a chance to show progress, reconsider next year.
About negative Foster comments, you’re an idiot. That settles that.
To end my rant, I’ve pulled for Tech all 29 years of my life. I’ve seen Tech teams that were terrible, not televised, not ranked, not in bowls. Those days are over, and consistently good teams are a big part of VT football today. If I could have any three wishes, I’d eliminate off field incidents and 90% of personal fouls – some will happen, like facemasks. I’d do what coaches can’t easily control, because I trust our coaches ability to fix what they can. Third, I’d like to see a little more positivity in our blogs, as hard as it is, after all it took me a few days to speak up.
Comment by Dave in Atlanta — January 2, 2007 @ 8:12 pm
These Roanoke Times quotes sum it up:
“The Hokies got the ball back with 1:25 left, but Glennon completed only one of three passes for minus-1 yard”
“189 total yards, including a paltry 59 in the second half.”
aveage of 7.2 yards per catch, not counting Eddie’s pass.
Maybe we could have played the second half to win, not to try not to lose. “”We just didn’t run the ball well enough to try to eat some clock when we needed to,” Tech offensive coordinator Bryan Stinespring said.”
Stinespring blew another VT win with play calling that borders on insane. 3rd & 10 and you run 3 yard pass routes? Any high school coach knows better than that.
Beamer, as HEAD COACH it all comes back on you. Ricky Bustle could’t do it, Stinespring can’t. Will the fans paying your salaries wait for him to leave on his own?
Comment by Mike in NC — January 2, 2007 @ 10:15 pm
I am impressed with the blogs insight. I agree that the players need to develop some team support, not self agrandizement, jumping around and saying look at me. I also think Beamer needs to show better leadership and stop all the player show boating and personal fouls. Beamer should set an example of self control on the field. As for the offensive coaching, he needs to be put on notice, get better, or hit the road.
Comment by Dave-Atl — January 3, 2007 @ 6:50 pm
To me the biggests disappointments are the offensive play calling, the defensive lack of attention to what is beating us, the failure to learn from our first half errors, the total lack of focus and the growing bad reputation of the team through various on and off the field behaviors.
One of the contributors above mentioned a lack of imagination on offense. I second that and would further venture that the Offensive Coordinator is an extremely slow learner. If what you are trying is not working, go to something else!! The thought that we may be able to power over or through some d-line when they are kicking our butts is shear idiocy. Why oh why can we not have some counter plays or some misdirection?! Why do we stick to our “power” game when it’s getting locked down? Let’s hire the recently fired coach of Ariz. St., Dirk Koetter, as our O-Coordinator! He will put some kick into our moribound, predicatable play calling.
On the defensive side, the cheap shots and our inability to recognize how the opposing offense is beating us is shameful! Either the coaches don’t see it or if they do, they cannot recognize it for what it is and put an end to it.
Our lack of focus is exhibited many ways. A contributor above noted how the coaches’ react to situations, plays or calls and how that is reflected by our team’s behavior. If you saw the Boise State game and the shots of their Coach Peterson, he looked like he knew what he was going to do next regardless of the situation, he never paniced and he looked like he knew they would win. Those qualities are not exhibited by our coaching staff!
We lose too many big or important games after everybody has consumed the Kool-Aid and voted us far beyond our capabilities. I attribute this to the coaches,
their lack of preparing our players and a total lack of FOCUS on the situation at hand!
Last, we have to stop the idiots who are ruining our reputation with their on and off the field behaviors. Get Beamer to step up and kick people off the team if they violate NEW rules.
Can I throw out one more thing–why are we just a small geographic area regional recruiter? Why can we not get more big time players to come to Blacksburg? Why not come when everything is first class?
Comment by Tom in Tennessee — January 4, 2007 @ 3:47 am
WAKE UP HOKIE NATION
We are underachieving.
We cant say it was a good year …look at who we lost to.
We have too much talent and need more offensive play calling. Look at the teams in the BCS and how they attack- USC- makes adjustments and comes out mixing it up. Boise St same thing –all over the place–the defense cant tell what is going on. Watch Florida on Monday—same thing.
We dont have Vick and we will never have him back- nor Randall- quit relying on the QB to improvise and call some plays. Biggest WR’s class in school history–look at the numbers. Morgan is unreal–we cant get him nor Royal the ball– Harper and Clowney as well.
No TE ..no passing across the middle or in the middle–too easy to coach against–if you play against us- leave the middle open and cover the flat—we throw every stinking ball in the flat -WHY ? Im not going to listen to inexperience- Frank has had draft pick after draft pick and talent galore—do you think Pete Carroll is blaming his losses on inexperience? Put Morgan in the slot–the guy is 6’3″ and have him curl up.
We made no adjustments all year..ALL YEAR. No new plays and nothing …Ore off tackle Ore off tackle—funning thing is — it worked from time to time–but so predictable—that was talent opening the hole—not play calling.
Frank- make a decision- Peach and Gator year after year —or are we going to take the step and get us back into top 5 year after.
All for now.
Comment by VT — January 6, 2007 @ 10:02 am
VT is right! We have the talent but we saddle them with what has got to be the most unimaginative offensive scheme in college football. Hey Steinspring, did you see the Bosie State game – the Florida game? Wake up and join the 21st century. Break the mold, challenge the paradigm, DO something different – please.
Comment by Chris in California — January 9, 2007 @ 11:32 pm
I think Frank needs to put together a forum. Pull together a group of people from x-players to x-coaches. These can be people from all across the spectrum of football. Have them come in and sit down and tell Frank what they think the offense needs. I would guarantee that not one memeber of the panel would say–”everything is in place, you just had a rough year due to inexperience.”
Frank is getting $2.2 million a year—and I have to continue to watch it—its not adding up and its killing me as a true VT fan.
Hokie Nation will be patient but try that offense at Texas or Florida ? Thank you for all you have done Frank …but lets get better and better and not go in the other direction.
Comment by VT — January 15, 2007 @ 9:02 pm
I cant believe they are standing behind Vick.
I remember the trouble Druckenmiller was in and we wasnt convicted and they shunned him.
Very hypocritical.
Druck brought the fame –Vick didnt.
Comment by VT — August 29, 2007 @ 8:40 pm
I agree with VT. Cut the ties, take down the number, rename the building and take what ever was donated and give it to the Humane Society. How would you like to go to each home game and be reminded of the embarrassment that Vick has brought to the University?
Comment by GR — August 30, 2007 @ 9:45 pm