Virginia Tech=24, Florida State=3

Virginia Tech football just went 615 miles all the way down to Tallahassee Florida and then just went 616 power punches upside the Seminoles head(s)! Well, maybe more like 600 jabs and a few well timed/well-placed power shots here and there…

The Hokies closed as an eight and a half point underdog (VT-8.5) right before kickoff and yet you have to wonder what a prop line of Virginia Tech-20.5 points would have netted you out on the Vegas big board right at 8:06 pm? Well, in addition to any given bookmaker LHAO in your face and then running for his dear life in disgrace come Labor Day midnight give/take. As please do raise your hand if you called that one? Yah; me neither… and yet that was one helluva a Hokie win men! So in the next couple of days, and as coffee allows, we will dig deeper and see what the Eye in the Sky R.A.T.T. has to say… in the meantime, here are some 3 AM off-the-cuff Tech thought(s) on a seminally upsetting night indeed. (Coach God willing, I’ll be updating this one on the fly in and around some short write-week sleeps as best I can…)

1Q Season remaining:
MEGA props to my peeps on their TSL.com pay MB call of:  Christian Darrisaw; recall they said he was starting nearly a fortnight ago… and I was the one who had to look him up via complexion/hue/skin-tone just to double-check in triplicate. You only get that kinda inside look here, first. …and McCLease sure is darty good to start games and halves when he is 100%, fresh. #29 D.Klean a much better looking H-back edge/seal blocker than this time last season to boot.

***EPIC opening script from Fu’ & Corny***
insert (_____) here… CHECK!

Game Duration:
Thought Ashby (who came up lame in the 3Q) and Rivers tackled and fought well and hard enough respectively. Thrown to the nationally ranked fire on the road at night and all in the 1-hole. Though Ashby is just downright small. LOVED his lack of arm padding as a true 1940’s WWII throwback look went… just hope he can hold up. As he sure plays/leads with the crown of his helmet; and file that one away for future reference(s). Though you could see what Foster compared Ashby to Tuaman, both have a proverbial nose for the ball and/or turnovers. Though Ashby is a more fundamentally crips tackler than Rivers is, as Rivers tackles small/low way too much for being the noticeably larger Lb here.

Khalil Ladler is a lotta rookie things, camera-shy and wanting for confidence or swagg are not however among ’em. Though I kinda find this refreshing, as it was his body-language and meta-communication that crowned all of this… i.e. not his mouth.

ESPN announcers did mention that De, T.Hill’s rumors were VT.edu based.
(Fu’ needs to oversee and not overlook where this is concerned)

Some may be quick to say that Peoples (run-fit) misses W.Teller as much as anyone, they are not ‘rong as the Aussies taught me to say. Nevertheless, let us adjourn that take until October and see how his run-fit(s) enjoy the next three defensive lines they face. As Peoples and his predictable Iso/Wham style plays won’t’ be gear grinding uphill vs. 3 N.f.l. studs, not even combined from O.D.U., E.c.u. and Bill & Mary up next.

2Q 12:52 remaining:
Oooooooo, don’t like this -and I owe F.s.u. a partial (apology) here- as watch as big R.Walker jumps up and his left knee hyperextends or gimps the ‘rong way upon the landing of the attempted pass deflection of Francois. The dreaded no contact injury strikes, again (St.Nikhon bless). #8/#25’ first of no less than three knee dings/dents on the night… can you say W&M, off?

2Q 12:40 remaining:
Big Ben coaching culture and the Grim Reaper inflicting the very same!
LOVE it!!!

9:30 2Q remaining:
Here is the first Hill knee injury (left) and he did take a modest (accidental) roll-up right at the top of your screen on the end of this pass rush attempt. Not super bad looking… though easy fo’ me to say here in the 3o4. Still, it did have a bit of a twisting/wrenching motion to it upon replay… (St.Nikhon bless).

2Q 8:38 remaining:
And then, sportsmanship goes to Tally, to, die… just watch as F.s.u. (illegally/immorally) pea-holes poor Burke on his left-knee and honestly this one does not look good on film. May St.Nikhon (Patron Saint of Tendons), bless.

Just a few plays later (2Q 3:06) watch brave Burke return to the game only to have to frog-hop on the pass rush attempt on yet another no-contact injury… and I gotta ask, why is he still in the game?

2Q 1 & ½ remaining:
Lawsy! Friendly fire and Hokie-on-Hokie crime as Floyd who never met a hit he did not like and big Walker Mountain himself collide head-to-head and double kayo each other silly. Geez and Godspeed (twice), here…

3Q 9:34 remaining:
Watch as Ashby’s right-knee inflects on the attempted plant/cut back towards the F.s.u. flushed Qb keeper. Looks like a simple sprain on film, though quite honestly, Ashby looks almost like an inflated Cb playing a gamey version of Mike-Lb to me. As my peeps told you he was smaller than listed on Will’s pay side and if anything they may have been a scosche generous in their metric estimation. I do like his style of play… though I am wondering how well he 13-14 games physically holds up?

Anyone else thinks Nijman looked a bit unsettled over at right or even side Ot? As his footwork and jab-steps are “slow”, in a word… almost like he is thinking his assignments, as opposed to merely blindside responding. (And my almost boy Hoyt and his Hick-Hop hairstyle do not need any mo’ snap lessons from Chung; not at all).

C.J. Carroll contributing when and as he can as a slot-Wr3 and a PR1, with a nifty squirty good return right up the dippy looking F.s.u. gut. Bravo for being a Together Everyone Achieves More guy in our me 1st, 2nd, 3rd, next, and last society CeeJay!

Game Duration:
I will codicil this little for the too conservative play-calling message board nagging crowd… Fu’ and Corny had at least 5-6 2nd-n-shorts and one dead ball 1st-n-short, in nearly positive or outright positive field-position and they collectively took ZERO shots downfield. None. Nadda. Nil.

Now that’s either some epic calculus/measurements that it would only effectively take 4 points to upset F.s.u., @Tally, at night, or yah; maybe they should have taken at least one HR shot downfield —and if nothing else, at least loosen the Seminoles up a bit for it be that Yin/Yang.

4Q 14:54 remaining:
Dangnation, did NOT enjoy seeing this… the last thing me and Achilles’ wanted to see indeed… as poor Farley is stretching his surgically repaired A.c.l. knee on the same side or right side Achilles tendon throughout… (St.Tikhon bless sum mo’). And yah; if he is this gimpy this does alibi his missed edge stop on the Akers home-run jaunt along our sideline just a few moments later.

Don’t wanna hit this too hard or make the good guys look bad… still yet, we had a lotta Special Teams guy stolen by F.s.u. in kick coverage all night long… gotta clean that up and “protect yourself at all times” as referee and Nevada Circuit Court Judge Miles Lane used to preach.

4Q 11:54 remaining:
Hill hurts his… well, his I don’t know what on this pursuing Akers play? As he looks (relatively) fine… and then he goes down for the injury timeout. I saw nothing in/around the dogpile, and I see nothing lame looking in pursuit. Though all of his gesticulations are upstairs to towards his cranium/neck for what it is worth.

EPIC hustle by my almost boy Watts on a high voltage powerhouse play to never Q-word and run this breakaway sucker down from behind. Saving us 7 full play points and basically gut-punch a jelly-belly Florida State right where it hurts, most.

4Q 8:25 remaining:
Watch POWER to the Peoples with his first ever in-game shoulder dip move to spring his Sherman Tank like body to the outside for a nifty/dodgy looking torn jersey and all 5-yard gain. And here you thought he was all raw steel and no, sugar— as this shoulder-dip move was just too… sweet.

As S.Peoples is just a delightful pile-pusher, pushing-shoving, combative finisher to close out 4Q games as you will find. Football is indeed as easy as A.B.C. gents… (always, be, closing).

4Q 5:11 remaining:
It is early in film-study -albeit in a reverse fashion from finish to start- nevertheless, this was my favorite play of the night. As we finally have an offensive player who plays and/or inflicts a very physically offensive version of the game indeed. As just watch as 6′, 185 lb., one #6, Wr Hezekiah Grimsley, circles back and knocks the absolute piss outta the F.s.u. trailing boundary-Cb on this play. Talk about being an lb. for lb. type of hitter who plays with some salt in his blood and some mud in his eye. As Hezekiah can drink from my canteen any day!

Bonus points are hereby film-study awarded for the Earl “the pearl” Monroe 360° spin-move that the Grim Reaper pulls off midair after such a battleax open-field crackback hit.

Style+substance… who says you can’t have it all?

4Q 0:52 remaining:
This play coming from a guy who is (attempting) to ball out on about 1.3 good knees and maybe just a bit better than that as his good shoulder(s) count goes… as this intercepting play could not possibly happen to a nicer or more deserving guy. As big Vin Diesel himself, one #99, Vinny Mihota finishes a wounded and looking to die Florida State off in ESPN highlight reel style with this pop-up deflection for his first career INT. This to go with 3 forced fumbles, 3 passes broken up, 3 passes defended, along with 5 Qb sacks, 9 Qb hurries and oh what could he do if he only had two full knees and two good shoulders alike?!?

4Q final series:
Nice to see Dax get his whole entire three plays in, Rico Kearney sure arrives with some “pop” in his pads, and poor big Vin’ wearing the largest possible left-knee brace and yet NO more shoulder bracing… so at least there is that #99 bottles of Vin on the wall encouragement.

Time To Throw (TTT)©:

Virginia Tech:
Qb pressured=6
Qb hurried=0
Qb hits=13
Sacked=3

Florida State:
Qb pressured=15
Qb hurried=2
Qb hits=10 (with 1 INT)
Sacked=5

Not real shockingly, Bud Bock and the Fu’fense won this TTT metric; and there are a couple of obvious takeaways here… first up, our pass-protect was >>> our run-fits; mostly. Although our edge blocking in pass-protect was merely so-so. That’s the news, the good news is that our G-c-G interior passing-cup was pretty solid by-the-bye and the better news is that we may not face this good of an opposing defensive line for the rest of this 2018 campaign.

The other news is that our run-fits graded as being nearly the exact opposite of our pass-fits… as we did okay to occasionally rather decent when working the run-game off-Tackle. And yet we only did so-so or less when pounding away inside behind our G-c-G internal ground troop blocking trifecta. However, to our credit, we did out Strength & Condition F.s.u. on those internal plunge plays in the last 8-9 minutes of the 4Q. When we modestly began to finally initially dislodge and eventually move the F.s.u. defensive front-4 backward inch by inch, then culminating on more of a closing foot by foot basis of inflicting of our superior O&M will {sic: power}.

The other blocking news is that our Te’s and Wr’s in very particular blocked as well as I’ve seen on film in many a year. As our Wr’s blocked hard, they blocked physically and they maintained their open-field blocks well downfield per nothing short of a Sunday type of standard. Three cheers for coach Wiggins here!

Ditto the opening ~20 odd plays on coach Corny’s 1st-Q script. That’s the best starting set of play-calls and play-calling-mix I’ve seen since coach Scot wanted to punk his old boss on the road up at “the” Ohio State. As coach Corny and coach Fu’ had, and kept, the F.s.u. defense off-balance and teetering and tottering on the brink of collapse for the first three series of Hokie offensive play.

***

Yes, I do realize/recognize that they went a bit red-state or G.O.P. as play-calling went later on in the game, positively taking a page from the previous regime’s blinking-contest approach. And guess what? Same as the previous regime… it damn well worked like a charm. Now I’m not saying that this best suits this newer/younger staff ideologically in strategic or long-view 2018 social media basketball on grass terms. I am however saying that until we engineer more individual play-makers in the offensive huddle to augment our Rolex quality game-manager at Qb… this blinking contest approach accompanied by all-conference level kicking with Bud Foster still coaching the defense suits me just fine. (READER’s note: another way to say that we got too Coach Nixon or conservative is to say that we/Virginia Tech were not as efficacious in the final 40 odd minutes of play, with numerous pre-snap or dead-ball infractions or miscommunications on pruning our passing-tree whereby we got in our own way as often as  F.s.u.’s D actually did not)

And his (JAX’s) back-shoulder throws have come a long long way, even if we never really got to see if his deep ball can now say the same. As this was not an epic JAX night— so much as it was a decent and a misQ free JAX night; even if he needs to lower his aim point just a scosche on several heighty overthrows. And even if he opened for business better than he closed up his game no.1 commerce. (As I did not see any explanatory dings/dents here, although this being Joshua Jackson… and well, you have to wonder…)

Longfield Management (Lo.FM)©:

Virginia Tech:
positive: |||| ||| (1 TD)
Swiss (neutral): |||| (FSU penalty)
negative: |||| |||| |||| || (2 VT penalties)

Florida State:
positive: |||| ||| (1 VT penalty)
Swiss (neutral): |||| || (1 FSU fumble)
negative: |||| |||| |||| |||| (2 FSU penalties, 1 fumble, 1 INT)

One of my few Fu’ -or should I say Budweiser- nags on the night was our opening 30 minutes of tackling. Which frankly speaking was literally on pace to break/set new records to the suspect.

Though whatever Bud Foster said at halftime?

Well, it damn sure worked… and this off of a never seen before 1Q play whereby we missed no less than five full tackles on the very same Nyqwan Murray cross-field scamper. As for whatever reason or reasons -and yes, being physically smaller in the hind-4 of our secondary and being young nearly all over in our defensive hind-7 do come to mind- for whatever reason or reasons, our leverage was extremely shallow in 1Q and again in 2Q, plus we ankle dove and missed repeatedly to compound fracture all of that. Why I do not know although I do know that it did not look that masculine on an otherwise sterling Y-chromosome kinda night.

Another major defensive thingy that stood out to me was the amount of knee harvesting that the F.s.u. o-Line attempted -and at least partially succeeded at- vs. coach Wiles boys.

Now, and granted, this was a very loquacious game, verbally, and the Ref’s had their sportsmanship -or lack thereof- hands full at times here. As our very own T.Hill experienced diarrhea of the mouth in a pure S talking freak-out harangues/fits on several plays pre-snap along the line-of-scrimmage vs. whomever the ‘Noles had lined-up on their odd or left-side of their offensive-front. This was indeed quite the affront to Fu’s new struck Acta non Verba methodology of… “deeds not words”.

Still yet, no less than five different knee injuries to Tech defensive linemen later and one hobbled Ashby in the 3Q and any casual or neutral observer would be hard pressed to nominate or lexicon, or legos the F.State offensive line’s style of play as being… “clean”. As the Seminoles well-fabled tomahawk “chop” found new meaning down in the trenches where the Hokie d-Linemen were Blessed that nobody was knee ruined or truly leg hurt.

mid-script: please do observe that the Lo.FM prolly painted a more outcome illustrative picture than the TTT metric did… although both accurately posited the eventual winner. As V.Tech was close to +7 mins. in Time of Possession and nearly 25 yards better on starting field position, and that was our more than subttle difference in what was not exactly an eye-candy quality contest as both teams went in the final 35-40 or so minutes of mutually muddled looking play. As the Seminoles actually did outgain the Gobblers by a whopping 18′ on the night. Go fig’ on that one, right?

the takeaway…

US >>> culturally >>> them

That’s the best Hokie coaching/culture/hustle based gridiron win since… half past when men???

Since upsetting corporal harris @wvu in 1989?
(other? namedrop/reply down below please)

I mean WOWOW! Just freakin’ wow!
And how many football calories did we just burn through?

By my mere 36 hours of calc’ and stats @McBryde Hall, and per the legendary Dr. Pete over in the VT.edu Phys Ed Dept… I estimate it at no less than a whopping 30,000 O&M calories! And someone gets this team some H20 to rehydrate/drink, then get them something of the high octane protein variety to eat, and then get the icy cold tubs fired up for when they get home.

Geeeez Louise gentlemen.
#HARDSmartTired lives here!

Then, reup coach Ben Hilgirth to a massive new contract; STAT!!!

---

As those stories from Herbie and Flower regarding Tag’s having them hold-hands to stop them from fighting each other at Seminole work-outs/practices is nothing short of Dr. Ed Falco’s of Williams Hall English department fame… Theater of the Absurd! I mean seriously folks… how (bleeped) up was the F.s.u. campus pigskin culture for that to have to happen in the first place? And yah; I dig a little North Dallas Forty type of scuffle at practice every once in a (medium to long) while. Old schoolers will have me say that this shows that you are actually ready to play. And yet this left me wondering if Willie rinsed them out a bit too much? As F.s.u. seemed to be looking to find an easy way out in the last 10-15 minutes of scrumming. Whereas coach-Fu and Hilgirth’s culture was on them like a buncha wild/rabid dogs 25/8. Dogs that were playing like their very lives depended upon on, like their coats/hair was on fire. Though their softy looking Fla.State counterparts?

Not so much… even though their “burst” and “twitch” advantages were rather apparent here-and-there upon breaking tape. That’s Summa Cum Laude coaching and culturing the verbs; plural people!

Best and most proud I’ve O&M been in a long long while, quite possibly since 2005.

#VTough fights here!!!

Virginia Tech=24, Florida State=3

“LETS GO!”

“Hokies!”

bourbonstreet**