‘24 Virginia Tech=???

Virginia Tech football is the greatest .5oo team in all the land!

The Hokies are playing some bad-arse Popeye football. They yam what they yam! They be who they be. And yet that did not stop the fools on TSL from nominating them as: “…a darkhorse Play-Off team.” “An All-Championship Caliber contender!” Whereas little ole me and Lucy V.Pelt you ask? Well, we be R.A.T.T. ROTF and LO(ur)AO, again. Every single year we (kicking) tee it up and every single year yah’ll come a butt-fumble runnin’. LOL some mo’… in the meantime; however, and back here on Planet Earth you ask? Well, here we see things for what they really are {sic: .5oo}. That, and on the way to being .667. Though… not what we want them to 1.oo be. We also see -as you will emphatically see down below- that this club has a ways to goes. All fingers point to that. We are “‘available” to reality. R U?

1Q 6:o1 remaining:
STOLEN! Only took ~65 minutes this year— which is better than last year(s)… plural… As #26 (Ayden Greene, Eye think) totally throwdown stole #7 of MU. This is how you leave your self-proclaimed: ‘bad-boyz’ Wr-coach O&M green with P.T. awarding envy. Nice to see someone this young with some salt in their veins.

2Q 8:o4 remaining:
Kinda the same drill here… as Felton totally earholes these 3o4 necktucky hic-hoppers good-n-hard on the crack (back) hit. Bra-vo bro’! As you can play Tackle or tuba and yah; you can prolly play tuba for longer than Eye can play, tackle. Mea culpa. Tho’ this Terminal Contact sport is non-compulsory; even when you get played and this play ‘blows’ if you are #11 of the t.Herd. A tuff kid to get back up from a blindside steal like this. Give the man his money.

2Q 2:27 remaining:
We warned you all re: all of this, this past summer… as penalties went Hokiebird BULL market after Cobra-Ky’ took the reins to the tune of +1,ooo% increase in the same last year. This year there are signs… as we are already below average in yellow-laundry or C— in behavior at best… at, most. As this sideline mini-me steal and dust up wins you nuttin’ honey. Nothing less than 15 yards in reverse. (Meaning: vs. Marshall this may not mean that much, vs. the #4 team we face in ’24 and this could mean everything).

3Q 3o remaining:
One of my Intermission notes read: “…looks like two middleocore teams ham-hocking each other up.” That would seem pretty dang 3o4 “BARN USE” license plate and Ag.School savvy alike. ’cause when a winny of a 22-point underdog is holding you to a ½-play lead for the initial 37 minutes? You and Igor just ain’t da… poo.

3Q ~2o:oo remaining:
Again… this was back to being a mere ½-play game at this juncture and nothing really seemed not much certain at this moment, huh?

…do you see any one divided by two trends, here?

3Q 9:47 remaining:
This bent my Eye several times… as our Te1a (Benji Gosnell) either has a Jerry Kramer nearly 1-of-a-kind play snap anticipation Knack with a capital “K; or, he is leaving just a pinch early at times. (When he does this laterally or parallel to the Line-of-Scrummage -and behind the same- this is not technically illegal. And it is actually C.F.L. Bob and Doug a-okay, ‘eh’. As it could be viewed as an oddball/preliminary version of motion… although a letter-of-the-law stickler will say he is not set if/when he is on the ‘ball itself)… watch this one as the year (Line Judge) develops…

3Q 3:52 remaining:
Fuga -St.Christopher help- looking every bit the beat-up though still leading from the front, part. As his left shoulder does not look all right here. Not at all; even for an ‘ace’ efforting day from the not less than willing six.

4Q 15 remaining:
Very 1st play of the top of the 9th coulda been the final play all year for King Tut’!

As the Will-OLb1 of Marshall red-dogs and truly torpedos the 3-way-dance of a triune mesh-point and helplessly submarines Tuten’s left knee right as it caught in the Worsham Field Turf. Tuten’s whole upper-body buggy-whiped with the shock of this jus’ nasty-looking impact. How #33 got up from this one Eye too have no idea. Not one.

4Q 14:33 remaining:
Here you can see #33 himself come up a bit gimpy after the hard-griding sideline jaunt. As both #1 and #33 are dingy of late and have been dingy since about 1 to 1.5 weeks remaining in August camp. Be real nice if we could stand to sit them both @Norfolk, Va.

…though, nonetheless, and segueing effortlessly to what Eye really wanna hit upon down below…
do we R.A.T.T. enjoy that much outcome, cushion?

🤔🏈🤔

Time To Throw (TTT)©:

Virginia Tech:
Qb pressured=14
Qb hurried=2
Qb hits=19
Sacked=5❗️

Marshall:
Qb pressured=6
Qb hurried=
Qb hits=9
Sacked=1

TTT Analysis:
Admidlty, Eye almost punted here— however, there are jus’ a couple of thingys to glean… k.Drones is taking fewer shots this season than he did last year. That, and he is slower to start. To get going. To accelerate. His leg ding is making it hard for him to shift into full and be (again): ‘rumblin’, bumblin’, stumblin’, and ultimately bludgeoning. 

As the next hapless (prolly: undersized) defender he physically punks in ’24 will be his first.
And his first since ’23 itself.

That is not a good sign folks.

🐍

And his being harassed or harried a mind-numbing p=.84 or eighty-four percent of the time when dropping back is gonna get him smashed. That’s pretty much code for ‘when’ not IF. Not even for a human mastodon Cobra-Ky’.

(o) (o)
V

Blocking:
➕: 44%
swiss: 2o%
➖: 36%

Tutorial: (recall: we want mo’ positives than negatives, and we want positives to nearly double neutrals as a rule of… we know the play call and the ‘snap’ count (and they do, not), thumb).

Honestly, it did improve a bit as the afternoon grew longer and Marshall grew less stronger. We did swap G’s (Schick went in at odd-G1, left). That seemed to help engineer just a scosche mo’ physicality at the point of attack. So, there is that. Our Rbs (all three) ran fairly hard if not downhill at times. There is that too.

Though there is also our lack of chunking or bursting yardage against two seemingly ‘available’ defenses that nobody thought to be *that* dang defensive just a fortnight ago.

After that and… “meh”.

Cobra-Ky’ is down to 3′ (that’s:three-feet)/carry and that will not carry us far enuff.
His pitful -worst ever as a Qb1- QBR of: 27.4 v. Marshall could be taken as a clue.

Additionally, this is NOT a downfield big-O; ‘size matters’. jus’ as any member of the wimminz species. Coming from behind will be very difficult for them here… (doh).

That, and to call pass-pro’ a: ‘sieve’ is to be unfair to sieves, everywhere.

You do the early campaigning maths…

FREE!!!

Longfield Management (Lo.FM)©:

Virginia Tech:
positive: |||| | (1 Tut’ TD! 1 Tech penalty)
Swiss (neutral): |||| ||
negative: |||| |||| (1 Tech penalty)

Marshall:
positive: |||| |
Swiss (neutral): |||| ||
negative: |||| ||||  |||| | (1 INT! 1 Herd flag, 1 Tech penalty)

Lo.FM Analysis:
Not sure Eye’ve only seen one, that’s (1) positive Lo.FM tallied from BOTH teams to begin the initial nearly 17 minutes of a scrum.

As neither of these G/F’s was dolphin skinned and thigh-gapped to begin. Nothing ‘beautiful’ or ‘pretty’ about. They stank the place up. Fishy… in a word.

As neither team was super-duper off-schedule; as much as neither team could make a: (positive) play. Not with several O.G. lantern batteries in tow.

Short-circuit-hers 1o1.

(o) (o)
V

Then a Tuten, Bhayshul thing happened along the way to the O&M candy store… with a little Droning 3Q aerial help.

…as King-Tut’ crowed the Marshall D to the Ot-edge and beyond over and over again. He made ’em miss and he beat them downcourt to his pet spot to mix my sporting metaphor.

’cause if not for Tuten making things right?
We mighta been the one left putin.

Or, n.yahooing.

Tackling:
Better this week. As last week was kinda close to being back to the .22 to .23 mean, median, mode. (It was rather just a couple of critical/untimely misses that crushed).

This week and p=.19 is pretty dang clean, actually. Only missed a couple before and after halftime. Our incoming Mike1 was less noticeable (as in absentia); and our L.c. Greenwood human eraser (Lawson) is just inch worming along and just getting a pinch better and better here-n-there. Look out if it ever proverbially slows down for him. As he does a lotta good things in space where he is mo’ parts erase and less parts no.2 pencil lead.

βeta Analysis:

• O: this side showed precisely what Eye am seeing upon breaking tape. Run-shapes are a little better than pass-pro’. Tho’ both are kinda sorry and really sorry respectively. Tho’ the run-side did show a pulse in both second-halves and that could be a good S&C sign. The O caveat is… the lack of Explosive plays.
• D: on the flip side… the Marveolous one has shored up his BIG play allowances a bit. His run-fills are still worse than his passing-sets; (which are flirting with being pretty damn good in contesting/congesting the airwaves). Drive efficiency -getting off the chain-gang-field and Lo.FM- needs a bit of attention… though the D is ahead of the O vis-à-vis.
• (Βonus): the o.D.u. D is ahead of us! (Their O is flimsy, won’t take mo’ than 17, maybe not mo’ than 14 to beat ’em).

the takeaway…

…the takeaway is that it is hard to be taken; or, much less smitten with much of anything here.

As this Marshall Qb1 was the Duke of Earle, NOT. He sure made our good enuff defensive backfield look epic indeed.

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He was an easy one to scheme against.
An uno-dimensional in a term.
Simpleton 1-o-(n)one.

And frankly… and accordingly, you’d have to think we shoulda -or, at least coulda- won by mo’ here.

As the ESPN CPU (computer) seems to agry… as they (nearly) never had us ≤a fiddy (fifty-percent) probability to win— even as Marshall twice pulled to within half-a-play.

Go fig’, right?

A strange game; this oblong spheroid.

🏈 👁️.Q. Award Winners:

Big Lick:
see below: Felton. Best Hokie hit in maybe a year+?

Bad Cat:
Felton with a more than commiserate nod to Green. Both copped and brought the ‘tude on Saturday. Just stay within the fairy-tale modern basketball on grass-era lines while doing so.

Sky Hawk:
That Marshall wideout on the very catchy 1-paw sideline snag over some pretty fair-to-middling much maligned Mansoor lineal routing coverage to boot. WoW. Helluva a reception. When it Mansoor’s it… pours.

King Hokie:
Not sure Eye truly R.A.T.T. saw one?
Though if Eye did? It would be King-Tut’.
He ran as hard as he ’bout 1.7 to 1.8 good wheels, could.

All dat… and, and, and, he is our leading Reciever by +2o%!

xxx’s & ooo’s
Did not really see much to comment on here… we did open with a bit more of an East-West stretch… tho’ that reverted to a gound-n-pound look that did (eventually) begin to wear upon seemingly smaller and seemingly G5 ‘available’ Marshall as the day wore along…

…and frankly Jerry West and I are not against NOT showing any mo’ than you have to…
IF, you can get that calc’ correct in the 1st-place.

We shall see how that goes over in the Tidewater… after duking it Duck Pond out for longer than most
self-included) hoped or thought…

⏳=tell

 

Here in the “Hisssssssing” booth:

…we know the following…

We know that one of Coach Sigmund Freud’s most famously misquoted sayings is: ‘Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar‘…

Where’s the τau Σigma λambda I used to know?

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Or, as Counselor (Ménage à) Troi once taught us… a cigar just being a cigar means it doesn’t need to be a big phallic symbol or have a huge academic penal colony thesi’ of thought written about it. Nor did it have anything for all the D’heads that emerged early and often as the Hokie-“boo“-birds took in-stadium and TSL.com message board flight. And then, well then VeeTee actually; won, and yet again… the Hokie-“boo”-birds had Owens Dining Hall egg all over their face.

That’s the good news… shew(s)… we did win my fellow Techmen.

Vape ’em if you got ’em…

The R.A.T.T. news-news is what follows…

💯

“The Rest of the Story...“

The rest of the story is that Bowl '23 beats today's '24 by 2 (or more) scores.

Think about that one a little minute or three folks…

We are not better.
We are not on the level, either.
We are, however, either…

• regressed/reversed…
• …too dinged-up to show full-out,
• Or, just plain worse. Take thy R.A.T.T. pick.

Eye says that ’cause of the following now objectifying themselves as Eye types Coach Spock science-fact(s) say thus…

• After what everyone less this one here and Mr. French thought to be two soft opening touches we are now 1 up against 1 down and we are also the following things…
• We are now –32 spots worse in ∑ Total O!
• We are now –42 spots worse in Run D!
• We are now –43 spots worse in Pass D!
• We are now –47 spots worse in 3rd-down D!!
• We are now –51 spots worse in zone-D!!
• We are now –55 spots worse in ∑ Total D!!
• We are now –64 spots worse in Rushing O!!
• We are now virtually a centennial or –1oo spots worse in Punting!!!

That, and, although Passing O is slightly better in total yardage terms; it does not pass the Eye-test as Passing Efficiency is nearly down –1o-spots thus far. Wild, ain’t it?!?

Meaning, meaning, meaning… we are worse vs. worse competition itself!

That, and we are a worser team on longer fields or in worse field position itself less one punt return saving the Hokiebirds bacon.

Do you see any trends here, ‘men?!?

formulae football

So, right now this equates to a worser defense and the only thing worst than that is our Crooked, oLine… check it out…

• We are eleventeen, that’s (11th) from last-place in all of D-1 in T.F.L. (tackles for a loss) allowed!!! (A worsening of a fugly –64 spots in reverse since the Soggy Bottom bowl game ended if you are keeping score @home).
• We are six, that’s (6th) from last-place in Qb Sacks allowed!!! (A worsening of an even fuglier –77 spots in reverse since the precipitous bowl game ended if you are keeping score @home).
• Defensive sacking is down a shocking –46 spots and Team T.F.L inflicted is nearly down a mind-boggling –7o, (that’s minus seventy), spots!

Yet again… are you seeing any trend(s) here people?!?

***

This is a noticeably worse squadron of griders vs. two teams who ranked: S&P+ 91st Vandy and S&P+ 1ooth Marshall. That’s us going 1 W and 1 L as a cumulative 36-point favorite if you are (still)  keeping score @home.

Do you see(s) what Eye… means???

The sportlight...

…here in the sportlight me and Deanna counsel you to do the following…

🎼”Hey (hey) what’s the matter with your head, yeah
Hey (hey) what’s the matter with your mind and your sign and oh
Hey (hey) nothin’ the matter with your head
Baby, find it, come on and find it…“🎵

“Don’t (next 4Q’s) worry… be… Hokie!”

-oOo-

Now, and after that?
In particular when we oppose a serious defensive front-IV or 7?

And unless Ty.Bow’ knows mo’ than he shows?

We will be officially R.A.T.T. “available” to anything and everything…

#JustSayKnow

#wimps!

Virginia Tech=31, Marshall=14

“LETS GO!”

“Hokies!”

bourbonstreet**