Know the Enemy: Marshall

0:45 And welcome back to the Boundary Corner Podcast along with my partners Brian Siegler, Jonathan Talley, and Shelton Moss. I am Curtis Wilson in this episode is brought to you by Doctor Jeremy Cats down at the Main Street Pharmacy in Blacksburg. Your friendly neighborhood pharmacy located at 301 S Main St. in Blacksburg. We all throwing all off here. Last week we were Wednesday night. We ain't done Tuesday in two weeks. Shelters back. It's Monday, boys, and it's been a long, long weekend. We have not done a Monday night episode and I cannot remember how long, man. Monday Night Raw, baby. Monday Night Raw. It's going to be RAW. We got a little double feature on the screen back here.

1:26 Got a little double feature? Prayers up to Nick Chub. Man, I went in. Oh God, yeah. I went in, looked. I did. That's not good. And that stinks for him. Yeah, not great at all. Yeah. Prayers up to him. Prayers up for the fantasy owners that have him because I know some of y'all in big dollar leagues and y'all took him in the first round, so you know you'll lose your money now. But y'all, we got a ton to unload obviously. We're going to talk about the Rutgers game, we're going to talk about knowing the enemy and Marshall and everything in between real quick as usual, I kick off the episode, hashtag rally for Robbie. Again, it's another away game, so go down to the pharmacy then most 7 bucks get this in support of a great call.

2:10 Shout out Grayson out on the West Coast real quick before we get into discussing the Rutgers game. There was a decommitment that anybody that knew anything. When the kid got the offer, he was going to be gone. And that's Eric Mensa flipping to Ohio State. Everybody that looked into that, anybody that knew any committed, basically it was said right. I know we talked about it. All four of us were on conversations about it. If he gets Ohio State, he's gone. The whole hope is they land one of their bigger DT's, you know, some top 100 player and they leave him alone, but unfortunately they didn't. Right. Yeah, that was the concern at the gate.

2:50 Like, we knew, all right, we knew that Virginia Tech was probably a settle selection because he had his eyes on Ohio State. He hadn't gotten a committable offer at that time. He wanted to make sure that he had a spot somewhere and a boat that that that was of his choosing and not having to go with slim pickings at the end of the cycle. We were that choice, Ohio State said. Come on in the boat and here's where we are guys. Yeah, definitely. Big time, you know, big time loss because I feel like the trenches is what we need both sides of the ball. So to lose a defensive lineman, I don't know what they're going to put him at, but big guy like that, definitely not a easy pill to swallow, but like you said, Curtis, kind of.

3:40 Expected from the beginning because it's just what we are as a program right now. We've got some building to do so we can hold on to kids like that and fight off those big program, but at this point we are who we are. Yep. Anything additional to add on this Shelton or you know? Nope. I'll have to get to the once. That's how it goes. So. Gotta keep. Gotta keep moving on and just keep finding a way to develop them. Yes, it is. All right. Well boys, that's all we got. In sort of the news and notes section, I pulled something out of there because we're going to talk about it later, but let's talk about it. It's to tell the truth. Tuesday, Monday Night Edition Hokies Fall 2, Rutgers, 3516.

4:22 One of those I told CIGLA watching this game. Then Cigla got up with the families, grilled some burgers out, had a good time. Smash burgers. Wrong point. Burgers were on point Y'all y'all don't know that that's man can cook smash burgers on his griddle. We we partaked in two me and him did grubbed down to yeah but I told Brian my first thought on this game was pit last year. Similar vibes of they got out on us. We clawed back. We're right there. We need one good thing to happen and then the wheels fell off and we're going to talk about the wheels falling off, but we're going to talk about that.

5:06 Some things did go well. That's what we start with. We start with the positives, What went well? And Brian, I'll let you, I'll let you kick it off on the offensive side of the ball. What is the one thing that we know went well? Well, it's been a hot fucking topic on the timeline, but drones proved he's quarterback one. That's what happened. If you're looking at what Tyler Bowen wants to do from a schematic standpoint on offense, Drones gives us the most complete version of that. Of the quarterbacks that we have on the roster right now that are ready to play, Drones gives us the most complete version of that, and we saw it.

5:47 We saw it come to fruition with the way we were able to generate a somewhat competent rushing attack against the best rush defense we've we've played so far this season and a very good rush defense. And I didn't other than maybe some and then we'll talk about this. Some of the explosive plays, I didn't really see a drop off in terms of passing efficiency, very. Wells edged game, you know, like it was like it wasn't, you know, didn't blow me away with numbers as far as what he did. And I think 1 touchdown, 1 interception, 19 for 30 or 19 for 31, something like that, 190 yards.

6:29 Like you said, no, no drop off. You carry the ball 22 times though for like 75 yards. We haven't seen that in a while and and it just to me looked like plays were different when he was in there, you know, and I can say the kid was trying, he's got a lot of stuff to work on. But I can say the kid was in there giving it his all. He left it on the field and I think that the more that he gets comfortable. Playing with his guys and and running that offense, I think you can only get better. You know, that's just me. That's what I see. That's what I seen watching the game. I didn't see somebody who was, you know, kind of timid and scared to, you know, make a play. Now we had some excuse.

7:14 Of course I know everybody know that. We got to tell the truth. Tell the truth to stay Monday night raw, whatever you want to call it. Yeah, we can't. We can't turn the ball over first play of the game, but. I think you got to go with him the rest of the year. Yeah, Sean, what you get, you get anything from a data point that kind of said, OK, here's where we were. I don't even want to say the first two weeks. To me ODU is G5. We played two Power Five teams back-to-back. Yes, they are different, but what? What sort of data points are we seeing that might say where we're feeling in our eyes saying leaving QB One is drones? Yeah, I mean, well, it definitely got better. I mean, the Purdue game from a rushing perspective, in terms of EPA expected points added was literally the worst rushing performance by any team, any FPS team, any game this year.

8:03 So it got better. It did get better. I thought the Russian game was a lot better. They had some success running those QB draws. Sometimes there is miscommunication between, you know, the quarterback and the halfback as far as you know what they were trying to do, kind of, you know, not sure where where each guy was in the backfield. But those things kind of are expected with with the first time KV starter, but I thought it was good. I mean I think his legs provide a lot, a lot for the team. He's much more comfortable as a runner obviously than Wells is. And I think he fits the the vision for Bowen in terms of just that that RPO you know, zone running schema offense in terms of just the ability to create plays with his legs. So you know, stats wise, nothing really jumps off the board a ton. But if you're talking about just a relative to what we've seen from Tech the past couple of games, it was a lot better.

8:47 Yeah, if you say that and I'll throw up because you said Purdue was the worst game, first two games this year, net brushing of 120 yards, that is the 60 yards of the game. We were at 129. That brushing for the game versus Rutgers, which is a significantly better brush defense and significantly better defense in general. So I see that and I see 100% improvement. The only thing that changed was Conran drones. He didn't have his top 2 outer speakers. Jalen Lane was out. We know that Ali's going to be out for a while, if not the whole season.

9:30 If the reason what he did without those two guys on the field and and the way I loved it he locked on one guy all day that we didn't Holloway X, GB Gosnell even that is Aiden Green. The freshman Aquan Wright had catched Awon Lofton had catched. It wasn't like he locked on one guy and that's all he found all day. There were some tremble drills we made. Good place. But the guy that jumped out as far as I I'm concerned, Daquan Felton proved he is for real. 6 catches, 84 yards and if he doesn't miss that one I think it would have been that was a 50 plus yard default, 130 plus and an extra touchdown. Belden's for real.

10:15 When did you say stat tally? Oh yeah, man, he looked good. I've been screaming to get him involved in just the game, period. You know, they tried to go long to get him involved, but I seen him, you know, one of my favorite players that I seen them close to the red zone or close to the goal line. They hit him with a screen, you know, and then they just let him work. It's kind of extension of the running game. Just pop up, throw them the ball. Kudos to the blocking man. Kudos to the blocking when you when you get your wide receivers out there blocking for a big time. Receiver like that. But we needed him to to get some confidence because he looked so deflated against Purdue. You know to keep running routes and the players are just not going your way.

11:01 You're just not getting the looks you're just not getting. You're just not getting the stats, you know? And you can see him on the sideline. I got a video of him on the sideline kind of pacing. He's just, he's just frustrated, you know, he's transferred in and he wants to be involved. Of course he is. Of course he does. So to see him get started, I'm hoping it can, you know, give us some kind of spark moving forward because we're going to need it, man. We're going to need all hands on deck. Tucker Holloway is gimpy. He looked gimpy. I said it when he returned the kick. He looked gimpy. We don't know when Lane's coming back. Jennings is is is out for the foreseeable future like right was still banged up.

11:43 We are banged up, man. You know what I'm saying? So anybody that we can see flash, let's let let's let him meet. Please let him meet. What about you, Brian? What did you see from him, other than some of the stuff Tally pointed out? So when I looked at this team, it almost was like. We had a similar wide receiver makeup as we had most of last year, just with a little bit of an extra bump, right? Because I feel like Felton skill set is kind of similar to what Caleb Smith brought to the table. I feel like Felton is a little bit more physical than Caleb was, but I think that in terms of their overall skill set, good combination of speed and size, right?

12:29 And then you got most of the cast of characters that we had last year with with XTB and and Benji Gosnell kind of thrown in there. But it kind of kind of reset the the level of the the wide receiver room again kind of to that 2022 level. And I thought that given those limitations, I think everybody kind of did did what did what they could expect or the most you could expect from them. I think Felon had a good game again. One drop that was. You know, pretty big. But I think he showed that he could be a guy that you could lean on when you don't have one or two other guys in the game for an extended stretch there. So you know we'll see how we move forward with that. But probably his best game all around and obviously you know he he was more of the focal point this week than we've seen the last couple on anything data wise on, I know we're we're very, very short into the season with Felton but anything on him. No, he's graded out fine.

13:29 I know he missed he missed one pass buck on his screen pass I think in the first half which was not not great. But no I think he's been good and also the the touch on that he scored was a good a good route concept. Their Rutgers, I don't know what their coverage was but they're playing some, you know deep zone defense where I think the corner was backing off and he kind of came over as a crosser and drone sent him for a big score. So good, good route against that particular coverage. Yeah. So again, offensively not all bad. I think the other thing that I looked at that caught my eye immediately with the exception of the last one when we were down 35 to 16, you know how many three and outs we had not withstanding turnovers, how many goose egg we did not have 1/3 and out less the turnovers. We didn't have a three and out we moved the ball every time. Because if you think about it, we pinned them deep a couple times.

14:24 We got the midfield a couple times, third drive of the game, we missed the field goal, which really was deflating because it was a 37 yarder, you know, and John Love had made those. I told Brian I like he must have been aiming at the inside of the upright to miss it where he did. But that is what it is offensively. Let's talk about the defense because we got a couple points for the defense here. They're going to come out a little bit more. But you know, other than that one big explosive run Winstead had that 34 yard touchdown run, the other ten runs he had were roughly for about 53 yards. So if you tell me a running quarterback is averaging 5 yards of carry all day, every day, twice on Sundays? Yeah, besides that man, he had 40 yards passing. You know, I know we're going to probably touch on that in a little bit, but if you can, if you can hold a quarterback, if you tell me, we hold a quarterback to 46 yards throwing the ball and they are not running A2 quarterback system, they only have whatever, 50 yards passing, I would never think we lose 35 to 16.

15:41 But again. At least think it would be a close game, like the way it turned out. I mean, that ended up being a blowout. Yeah it all came down to those big runs like you said kind of reminiscent of the pick game last year man. You know you get to the point where okay we get a stop here we we got something and and and we we let them blow off a big ruin even you know and and again I know we touch on a lot of stuff but even thinking about that I think it was a third down call maybe like third and 132 and. We got everybody flying inside and they're running back busted to the outside for a 55 yard touchdown and what a turnover man you got.

16:24 You just can't as a team, you can't do that, Brian. Don't say it yet. Brian's got that play already. Don't don't say anything on that. You'll make him jump a segment ahead, Segment ahead. What else, Brian? Brian, I felt like sitting with you. You kept saying better raps, better raps, especially up front plus in the front seven, which if the front seven had tackled better against? They don't get as much as they did offensively. Yeah, I thought the tackling, especially with the linebackers, improved in this game. Unfortunately, there was other holes that opened up elsewhere in the in that aspect of it, but I thought the linebackers played pretty well.

17:05 I thought the front tackled pretty well. We didn't quite get home on some of those those blitzes, but I thought we did a pretty good job of. Tackling when we were in a position to make a play in the run game, you know the the the big problem was is that we'd have these long stretches of defense where we're forcing 3 and outs and then we let a big one go like very much a boom or bust defensive game overall. So it's really hard to kind of wrap your head around that because you know it was, again going circling back to Curtis is very much like the pit game where you either were giving up nothing or everything. Sheldon, do you have anything on like where we are currently explosive plays wise? I do not back in looking up quickly. All right.

17:50 Well, while he's looking that up, I think something we are noticing is and you mentioned with the 46 yards tally, the back end coverage wise, regardless who's back there, regardless how they're rotating the safeties, regardless if they're putting the young guys in at corner, the the back end coverage, those concepts with those young guys are getting it. And obviously the guys who've been here a while are absolutely, absolutely getting it because. And you got to understand too like this. I know this isn't a moral victory podcast or a excuse podcast, but the truth is what the truth is. Like somebody said the other day, we are down three out of four captains the third game of the season.

18:38 You know, you got Schrollman went out in that game. Yes, he did. Schrollman went out and you can see when he went out it was a different defense. Schrollman went out. Kiante Jenkins is hurt. You got Jalen Jones and a true freshman back there. Jalen Jones was a wide receiver last year and most Phillips was in high school. High school last year. So man, it is it, dude, we are. I said man, we got to be we we got to go tip somebody off, man. We got the worst any college football team I've ever watched. But again, man, it is a lot moving back there and I got to get at least some kudos to the young guys, man. They are getting in now seeing Dante Lovett coming in and and and absolutely put his face in a couple of tackles and that's a big deal we're going to need, we're going to need stuff like that.

19:28 We'll need guys to develop. Yeah. I mean, Tally, you talked about it like. We we said at the start of the season we were making our predictions that looking at this roster, it's improved but the margins are razor fucking thin because when your starters go out you get real young real quick. And the two areas that we are have some actual experience in are also two areas that we under recruited for significant years. Mention of the D line and O line. So that those are two things that are right now working in tandem is that we've got a bunch of injuries in areas that we did improve in, in some ways and you couple that with your other two units are now harder to hide. The two units that you knew were going to be problems this year are harder to hide.

20:22 So it's it's it's a lot, it's a lot of snowballing happening, happening right now with those injuries and and that kind of puts us in that situation we were talking about. You know, you're starting to kind of ratchet down those expectations because we said it. Things aren't going exactly the way you want to from an injury standpoint. Well, you can never predict injuries, and we'll talk about that in just a few minutes here. But Sheldon, you said you were able to find it. And I know I'm going to take this and we're going to pivot it in a second, but Sheldon, what are we looking like? Explosive plays wise on defense. Not good. I just focus on the explosive rushing plays allowed. Tech is 125th in number of 10 plus yard rushing plays allowed and if you'll get 20 plus yards they are 4th to last ahead of only.

21:06 West Kentucky, Buffalo and North Texas. So 125th 127 out of 131. So 133 actually, yes. I'm I'm sorry, forgot you don't. Don't say Houston State. Sure they. Got a boy corner? Let's not talk about that often, Sam Houston, hey. But I think let's pivot it over into the what went bad because you know Brian, go ahead and go to it because you you mentioned it all afternoon especially after struggling went out. What's causing the explosive run plays? I'd love to. I'd love to have the breakdown of where we went from week two to week four. Yeah, I mean, I I feel like there's a couple things at play here. Number one, we saw kind of the return of the cascade effect from last season where you have a bad play and that leads to another bad play.

21:54 The The bad part is, is that that happened right out the gate for us, right? We had a we had a fumble. One play later, it's a touchdown. We're already. Explosive run play there's been. Three offensive plays run and and you started with the ball and now you're down a touchdown, so. And it was a nobody touched anybody. No it. Was just deflated as soon as you get the over pursuit and then the the lanes like it parted like the Red Sea pal right up the middle. So the other problem is that you know we're we're looking at the safety situation. This goes back to the injuries. But as you said we've got Jalen Jones, most Phillips playing a large majority of the snaps in this game.

22:42 And I feel like from a from from the perspective of coverage, there's not a big drop off with those two compared to the the two starters this year People's and Jalen Strumman, there's not a huge drop off there. Where there is a drop off is in that run. There's run fits in the run coverage. We they are struggling right now with fits, pursuit angles and pretty much everything that they need to do in terms of run support. It wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't great last week. It was very bad this week. Well, the 55 yard run Brian, we were we we sat there and watched that and as soon as it happened, as soon as they showed the replay, blind screamed.

23:30 Because I think we looked on Twitter and someone was like, what's Strong doing? And Brian's like they're in man, he says. Strong. Strong is running with his man, as he should. The safety is supposed to replace that. He he is now the Force player. He was not the Force player. He well, he stayed inside. Yeah. Because if you, if you look at I wish, I wish we had time to pull it. We had to do this 24 hours notice. But you said as soon as Strong crossed his back, he should have taken with three steps and effectively turned his body to leverage inside. He did, and he stayed right there. That tight end got off on him in two seconds off tackle outside and I mean there wasn't a great angle from the from the backside safety either the the backside safety over pursued.

24:18 So it was really both safeties were now out of position. Were you about to say Tally? I'm just saying that's what a good coach team does like they'll exploit a broken play or a weakness. And you know that play wasn't designed to go for 55 yard touchdown. They were trying to get a first down. But that running back, he's, he's a good running back and he's a well coach running back and he bounce that thing to the outside and he was off to the racing. So those run fits have to get better if we want to slow somebody down. I like what what y'all mentioned there. Brian and Tally talking about that first one, nobody wanted to touch anybody and some of those we were just way too aggressive and and what we're talking about, there are times they're too, those safeties are too passive and there's times they're too aggressive.

25:06 And to me that's a youth thing, That's a youth thing because there's nothing you can do because if you tell them, hey, you got to be more aggressive and then the next time they be aggressive. And they completely overshoot the gap, but they completely missed the fit. Hey, you got calm down within the back 15 yards and the guys getting way up field Sheldon. Well, this, this is what happens when you have two guys that are playing that you expected to play 2025% of the snaps in the game playing 75 eighty 90% of the snaps of. The game they playing, all of them, and there's only so much because we're, I think there's a snap count out there about Mansour. And Sewer's trying to play some. They're trying to put Canteen in those safety situations. They're trying to rotate those guys to help it out. But eventually it's like they're still, even if you rotate perfectly, they're still going to be bringing 60% shown that. Were you able to get those the the the Moss and Jalen run grades?

26:03 I, I I just got to hear it, if we got it. It was. I know for Jones it was. It was in the I think his grade for this game was in the 20s for run, for run defense. So, and for the season he's in the 40s, which? I think is. I think is the third worst among Power 5 safeties, so it's been rough. So we're not just talking about it to talk about it, we're talking about it to. To bring the point up, but the point also has to be made y'all. You're not going to take freshmen. You're not going to take a guy who's switching positions and make them elite safeties or very tight, competent safeties in less than three games. Get your heads out your asses if you're thinking like that. We don't have Stroman back there, but people's back there. People were dogging on people's earlier this season. You wish he was there.

26:55 Now you got to think, don't just say we need everybody needs to be fired. We need to get rid of everybody. That's not how it works, right, Sheldon? You can't develop someone in three games. Yeah, I would also add to that Jalen Jones went to Thomas Jefferson High School, which is where near where I live. Shout to the 804, the the competition level in Richmond City is not great and also it is not great at his high school. So he was very much a developmental guy that kind of had to come in and learn the game. I would assume that his ranking was because, you know, obviously he's a really talented athlete. But he's very much in like that, that early stage of development. So this is not a guy where you can expect him to be, you know, to be productive 43 games into his, essentially his collegiate career.

27:39 So there's going to be some growing things. All righty. Another thing that went bad, and as I look at the statistics here is we did not get home any. We did not get one sack. We were there a couple times. But I think what sucks even more is we only had three tackles for loss. And Brian, you mentioned this was a chance to exploit them there. We probably should have been closer to 7:00 to 9:00. But again, we did miss some tackles, we missed some fits where they were getting positive yards out. Anything you feel or do y'all think this was just tally, Brian, primarily y'all is just just this is what that system is like. If you do the wrong things up front, even more burn in the back.

28:26 Well, I mean, even just some of it is, is just how tough you are. You know what I'm saying? Like, you can have the good videos, you can talk about lunch bell defense, you can talk about when it comes down to it. I think we talked last week when somebody pulled somebody down, I think it was Kelly Lawson pulled somebody down by their jersey while he was getting blocked. Like that's just a toughness plate. Yeah, you got to be strong to do that. But like, that doesn't feel good to get your fingers wrapped up in a jersey and pull somebody down. But it's just you want it more than the person that is on the other side of the ball and some plays we don't want it more than them. When you go against a team like Rutgers that is coached by their coach, I mean, everybody knows that they're going to be, they're going to be well coached and tough and that's just how they played. They just played physical.

29:12 They just were more physical than us. I don't know if it's just because of injuries. I don't know if it's just because of youth, but. We got to get to the point where we take some stuff personal and we we go and we produce with that you know so yeah I see. I see Andre thank you man. I see you back. I'm I'm you know just because you put that put his put his quote up right here, man. Put his put his comment up and when we said we need urban mind so I'll just I'll speak on that for a few minutes man. I get it. I get it. I'm not going to tell you how to be a fan, what to say, what not to say. But I will tell you that ain't happening.

29:55 If you you sit at home and you fantasize about all this stuff and think about this stuff, you will go crazy, man. My, my DM's and my Twitter goes crazy every day. And guess what? I'll get on there and I'll joke about it and I'll mess with people and I'll let them mess with me. But when I get off Twitter, I got a son that plays baseball who was at the baseball field all day yesterday. If I sit around and thought about Virginia Tech's program, I would be a depressed motherfucker. Like, you got to let it go, man. You know, I get what you're saying and I understand where you're coming from, but I do also understand how college football works. It ain't gonna happen for us, for us to get where we want to go.

30:35 People say, oh, see, this was what happened if we brought Dion in. Dion ain't coming here. You can talk about people that we should have got. We should have got Shane. We should have got Kirby Smart. You don't. It ain't happening. We got Brett Pride, and I'm not saying we got to like him. I got a lot of questions about the coaching staff, but I'm not going to rack my brain about that coaching staff. I'm just going to call it. You said call the spade a spade. I'm going to call it how I see it every week, but I'm going to get my time to vent and then I'm going to let it go and we're going to go to the next week and then if you rack up enough losses, he's going to be gone anyway. I mean, just keeping it real. I kind of take it back. I talk about my son a lot because that's that's.

31:17 That's what I watch like. That's what I equate a lot of sports to. My son's team got picked up by a big travel ball organization and people don't understand development anymore. My son's team, man, I've seen these kids since they were 7-8 years old. My son went in the travel ball and he but they couldn't. He couldn't throw the ball across the field, and he was a good baseball player, but he couldn't throw the ball from from first to third without bouncing. And it's just that cultures have been with them since, like I said, seven or eight years old. And now these get these kids are getting bigger, they're getting stronger. And we show up to this. We show up to this tournament down in in Birmingham. If you guys ever get a chance to go to Rick Woodfield in Birmingham, it is in the ghetto, it is in the hood. It is scary when you turn on 3rd Ave. When you have to pull in them barbed wire fences, it looks a little shaky.

32:14 But when you get inside that facility and you go see that field, that what the old Negro League games were played, man, it's just does something to you, man. It's an awesome, awesome venue, you know, And I was so happy that those kids got to play there and we played against a couple of Hoover teams, which, you know, it's pretty much home games for them. We also played at. Birmingham Southern College. But anyway, so those Hoover teams are pretty much at home and they've never seen our kids. Our kids don't count. Our kids don't go to All Star Games. They had never seen us. We just showed up and it was like, who is this team? We were the only team that went undefeated and we kicked everybody's ass and we were much better than everybody we played.

32:57 So I take that back to the Virginia Tech program. Sometimes you just got to develop, man. And I ain't saying just trust the process. You got to be in the process. You got to. You got to when you're mad. You got to let the coaches know it's okay to tweet. Hey, I don't like that. Maybe they'll see it and change it. We've been crying about the quarterback for how long? We got to see drones and we like what we see. So hang in there, man. Hang in there. Don't let it. Don't let it tell your day up. Don't let it tell your week up. Let it go about Sunday afternoon. Go ahead, Curtis. I'm getting ready to say I don't know what we would have done 35 years ago. The Frank years go Look at Frank's record. Y'all up to 1993. Some of y'all would have probably jumped off a building some of those years, 2:00 and 9:00 and all that, and not went having one winning season up from 1987 to 1993.

33:47 I know it's a different store. It's a different time, it's a different place. But know that. Everybody has their down and tally. You've been mentioning them a lot. And I'm going to just say it one second. Go look at where Florida State was just a handful of years ago. Yes, I know they get more elite talent, but Norvell has also developed that talent. He got a lot of talented guys and he's developed them. All right, Brian, what else went bad from your perspective? This is Offensive Line podcast, right? This is an offensive line podcast. It is. All right. All right. So I will say something bold. It's not bold, it's right. Say it in that opinion I I you know he was getting a lot of props in the all season about being improved and being healthy and all this other stuff. Parker Clements is an absolute liability and right title right now.

34:43 Charlie. And you watched the tape from yesterday, right? You didn't just. This isn't just. Yeah, I was. I watched the tape. This is not just live, this is not I've I've watched everything at least twice. His feet are lazy. In the run game. He doesn't really bring his hands well. He often looks like he doesn't know what he's doing in the run game, especially in something that's not zone like any anything that has gap scheme. He just looks lost, which explains a lot of last year and most of this year. So I'm just I'm ready to see a mix up whether that's.

35:24 If you don't lose shit, go down fighting. Yeah, let's. Park the Clemens. Change it. Hey man, you look cool. You had a cool looking bid one time on a on a on a picture. Royal King probably has a great place for you to work. Y'all need to be at right tackle right now. Sorry buddy. Hopefully you watch this podcast and you say fuck that dude, I'm going to go out here and show him and you plaster my face on the other team's helmet and you go and run through that helmet. But I need to be the visualization like. What I don't need you to do like if I get. Water in here. Visualize me talking shit. About it, We don't need to get behind your guard and give him the Hamlet maneuver ever again.

36:07 We just want you to block man. But it's not just him, man. Our line has to get better. But Brian, like you, I knew you were going when you said this was bold. It's not that bold, man. It's right. He's he's got to be better. I know. Sheldon. Sheldon, I'm not trying to put you on the spot. You don't have to look nothing up. You probably can just look at the camera and say, yeah, he's pretty bad. He's his scores have to be horrible, man. I think Brody Meadows came in and played much better than than a lot of people on our line. Just mix it up. Let's mix it up. Let's see some different stuff, because what we're doing is not working. What is that grade by the way? Shell and I mean I just just for confirmation. I mean, I don't, I don't even know. Like I hadn't paid too much attention to oh, line grades because I feel like there's no point because you can just tell the eye tests they're not they're not getting it done. And that's.

36:56 I mean to me that's an eye test position. Like you can just tell they're not the footwork is the footwork is bad. The angles are bad. The, you know, the speed. They're just they're just not getting the job done like they can. And some of the plays too like. If we block them up, right? I mean there there'd be some big gainers in there, but they just can't. They're just not playing a sign of football. And right now Drones is the Band-Aid to the offensive line. It's again why you need from averaging 1A carry to almost 3 1/2 right now. I'm I'm going to take 3 1/2 all day because it's a semblance of an offense. It's a semblance of a third and two you might actually get it. But I think to y'all's point. And and like, you know, you're mentioning bad angles and stuff, Sheldon. It comes to a point in time.

37:38 Right now we've got 3 two young guys on the line. It comes to a point where it's like we've just got to keep trying these young guys. Because if if there is not that big of a difference in the gap between what Parker's doing and what Brody's doing or you know, if we talked about, I know it's been mentioned, Jack Hollyfield, shout out Michael Yost, put Hollyfield, Senator, get Kate Moore back to his guard position where you know he can be and put Brody at right tackle. And put Brody at right tackle. What's it going to hurt? You're one and two right now, and you see where your struggles are and you know that is what it is. Part of the thing, that part of the thing that we wanted to see last year was we just wanted to see somebody actually fight for the job. You know what I'm saying?

38:23 Like everybody kind of felt like, you know, Grant Wells didn't. He didn't just had a fire body, you know what I'm saying? Just like I know I'm going to be the starter. I'm all we got. It is what it is. If I mess up, like scare somebody, you know, hey, you're not playing no more. We playing the young guys. You know, sometimes competition breeds some. I mean, it's going freaking make a diamond or bust a pipe there. You go. Let's, let's see what we let's see what we can find. Let's see what we can find, man, tell them, Hey, sit out for a couple of you going to sit out. You going to stand over here with me and watch somebody else do it? And then rotate them back in. I just need to see something something picks up, man. Because and again like Curtis has been saying the whole time, I mean the offensive line is atrocious, man is I don't even know what to say.

39:16 Like watching some stuff. From my standpoint, being a a tight end like our tight ends aren't great at blocking but they're blocking better than the line sometimes. Like it's just it's no hard in blocking so. Yeah, we can go on and on about that, but we ain't got that much time. We we we don't we could go on and on but until we see something different on the field we we continue to address it under this section because realistically is the only thing that can be done now is they're going to be they're going to be here until we they're average over 4 yards carry. To Shay Wes Osborne. Yes, we need a flex seal for the offensive line, but they're going to probably be in this section until until they average over 4 yards of carry. So until they're average over 4 yards of carry. They're going to be in this section. Then they're going to be in this section all year. I say if we can stick it 3 1/2 for multiple weeks we take them out of the section because the 3 1/2 if you run it 3 * 3 1/2 yards you get a first down.

40:12 Yes Sir, we're averaging 4. That means we're probably going over 150 a game, which is exactly where you want to be. At a minimum we went 130 week. On the drones, think if the meshes get better. Think if the passing gets better, the lanes will open. All right, we we've hit this already a little bit. But did anything happen? We're not prepared for. And I I got our our buddy David Cunningham's Twitter up from Saturday night, 2 deep injuries. There are 22 people in the 2 deep. So somebody do the math. Wells is hurt. Jennings is hurt. Lane is hurt. Tisdale is out and then hurt. Kianta Jenkins is hurt. That's your people's is hurt. Stroman's hurt. We knew right. Has been banged up.

40:54 Y'all, that's a third. That's a third of your two deep good teams who have developed and have good players could potentially be struggling. If you have a third of your two deep banged up, I don't even think that's a question. You haven't even mentioned Burgos with his shoulder. Yeah, but he's playing at least. Yeah, but I'm saying you didn't mention that. So yeah, hard to be effective with you. All right, now we at 9:00, we about to get to half of the two deepest injured in. Some way, shape or form? Hold on. Wait a SEC. Galloway's 10, Gallows 10. Yeah. Did you mention people's? I didn't mention people's. People, Holloway's nicked.

41:35 I think he's still out there doing things though. Yeah, it is crazy, man. It is crazy to injured but but it's football, you know, It's like you can never. Know who's going to be injured and how to prepare for it. But it sucks that it always happens in Virginia Tech. It sucks, man. And it's only the 4th. Like we're going to the fourth game of the season and we're talking about them and we don't know. We don't know what, where these people are going to make. Curtis talked. I don't know if it was the first, if it was the first show of the season, or maybe the second when Curtis talked about that going. Maybe it was a rule to implement and talking about the the injury report. Yeah, we talked about if it would, if it would, you know affect like people knowing the NIL stuff, we yes, tell us who hurt.

42:25 So we can just go here to prepare. Let me know before the game who's going to play and who ain't like these depth charts that don't really tell you the. Story No no. Don't even release one. Don't even Where's Pete B's tweet about that? Where's Pete B's tweet about put? Pull that shit out of it. Pete B, My boy Pete B has been fighting more than me on Twitter like. He has been fighting and he's. Been I was Pete B. You are a PR nightmare, Sir. When you're worse than talent, you it's bad. Well, the one that got me from Pete. I love Pete. We chat. When when Pete said this is the worst loss he'd ever saw, I literally went Dude, where were you at 98 Temple. That is the worst loss in program history. OK, you got to collapse over here. All right, pull it down real quick. I'm going to address this.

43:18 Then don't put anything out. Don't put it out. You got to put that doubt. Leave us. In the dark. That's definitely so much. Really, I don't know what else. Because we talked about, you know, not taking away their Russian attack, they went for 256 on us. But again, I think we're slowly getting to the point where this section gets smaller and smaller every week because you do start seeing things. The only thing I hope is that within the next few games we start having. Positives here, right? Yeah. Well, if we can learn to run the football more effectively and if we can learn to stop the rush more effectively, then these two middle sections will get smaller, right? I mean because most of these middle sections are either stuff that we're struggling with mightily, which is those two things or things like injuries, which some we can control, some we you know we try to mitigate but we may not be able to understand the, the, the full scope of what the ask is until we get into the the thick of it, right. So that's that's we're talking about the run game. So it's going to be interesting to see how we pivot this week and what, what sort of adjustments we make, especially if the guys at safety are not able to go this week. That's gonna be a real issue,

44:48 Sheldon. Anything else you want to add here? You have been very quiet in this section, so I'm going to give you the floor for a couple minutes here. Yeah. You know, The thing is, I think for me it's hard to really judge the efficacy of our defensive backs because they just haven't been tested. I was looking at this number before we got on because I wanted to confirm Tech has the 10th highest opponent rushing rate in the country. So basically the game plan for offenses against tech is just run or run and we kind of seen that throughout the course this season. I mean, I don't know if I could explain this right away if someone who knows more about the exit and nose could like you know, articulate this better. But when you watch these linebackers and safeties, they just, they aren't looking at where the ball is or where it's going to be. And Brian mentioned talk about the bad angles. I don't think they're just they're just not anticipating right and it's an experience problem. It's, I think it's also partly, you know, there's some physicality too, like obviously the linebackers have sometimes run themselves out of position.

45:44 But even when the arm position, I think they're just getting, I mean they're getting beat up physically now maybe that's, you know, a strength problem. They need a couple of years in the weight room. But you've got a lot of, you know, tall linking, athletic guys out there, linebacker, bunch of, you know, converted safeties and not a lot of guys that are, you know, big and strong like a prototypical Brent pie Mike linebacker. So it's just a combination of poor assignments, you know, not having the right, the right athletes out there and just using an experience. So lots of lots of things to correct for sure. All righty. Well, we hope we can get into that. Now, here's we got the laundry list of things going on because now we're going to go what to do better moving forward. And that's actually longer than anything we've discussed tonight.

46:25 Now I'm going to take the first one here. We already mentioned it once and I'm going to go to a little something that I read, didn't like and then I listened to something We're going to we need to stick with countering drones. I think everybody here agrees. I think most of hokey notion agrees. But if you listened, not listened. If you read some transcripts from people putting things on Twitter Saturday night and Sunday morning about the Brent Pry practice conference, you probably were under the impression that Brent Bry said we needed Grant Wells back. I saw that and I was like, that's an unusual statement, especially the way Kyron played. Kyron played pretty well to be a first time starter on the road against the top 25 defense. So I decided to listen to the full interview and things were taken completely out of context.

47:16 First of all, did he have some critiques of Conor? Yes, he did. He did, absolutely. But that was way at the front of the interview. That minute two or three, the comments about Grant Wells were as follows. And this is what people left out they he said, and this was all the quotes on Twitter. We need Grant Wells back. How many people did y'all see lose their ever loving minds when they saw that? Because what they did is they put the critiques of Cairo and then they layered it on top of that. Actually, this is what Coach Price said. Regardless of our quarterback situation, we need Grant back and I absolutely agree with that because right now Pop Watson is 5 foot 11185 pounds. He is a small, small, true freshman quarterback. I hear that and I'm saying Brent Pride's mind is regardless what happens at the quarterback room, I need 2 quarterbacks that can play.

48:15 Because if we are going to run Kyron drones 20 * a game, he's probably going to get popped once. And we're going to need someone that is as much as if you want to bust Wells all you want busing. But he could go out there and manage a game for a couple series that that that irritated me. Because as soon as I listen to it, I send it to all three of these gentleman, I'm like, listen, make sure I'm not losing my damn mind. Because that irritated me. And a lot of people were up in arms losing their damn mind saying fire him now. It's like he didn't say that though listen to the interview. So for everybody listening tonight, next week, don't look at Twitter, go to hokey athletic page, pull up the interview. Usually it's about 7 to 10 minutes. Go on your air pods and listen to it. Then you actually hear his words verbatim versus someone chopping and screwing things and definitely looking for clicks. Don't have the floor now.

49:11 Curtis Curtis fired up. That fires me up because you can easily twist something and get people upset and get people angry. We were already on tilt come Saturday night after the loss. Put that shit out there like that the way it was worded. He thinks, tire and stuff. No, he doesn't. And y'all. I will say he did say that threw me. I ain't going to say it threw me off because I mean it's. I understand the comment because I play football and I play sports and it sounds like something I tell my son. He said he was inconsistent. We got to get better at being consistent. When you have a first time starter, I just feel. And again, Brent, Brent Pride is very, very candid and high. He speaks.

49:55 Which is great when you're interviewing him and when he's out talking and things like that. I think he has to do a little bit different job or find a little bit different way to handle some of the stuff. Because when you have like a first time starter like Kyra Drones, I don't feel that he's got that full embrace of the team and of the coaching staff and even of the fans for him to go and perform yet. You know, I'd like to see Brent take him under his wing a little bit and. And and and say, hey, we this kid, we won't work with him. We're going and he said a little bit of this, but you know leading up into the game it was never, you know, hey, Kyron's our guy. We going, we going go out there with him and whatever he's got, we got full confidence that he's going to go get it done. All we heard was well, it may be Grant Wells like we haven't got that full endorsement of Kyron, drones to go and be the starter and lead the team.

50:51 I think he came in and did a great job. For what it was, you know. But I would just like for him just to get a little bit more endorsement. That's it. And now I'm on this. Let me since Curtis wants to have a little rant, can I have a little rant for a minute? Because somebody did on Twitter and I got to go. I got to talk about it a little bit. So somebody waits till Monday morning again. Everybody watching this. I just told y'all how to operate. Yeah, we record on Tuesdays today. We doing it on Monday. This is what we do for fun. We are not getting paid by the school. These guys that are on here are my brothers. This is what we do. We talk all the time about Virginia Tech athletics. We talk all the time about football in general. We watch a lot of sports.

51:37 But what somebody thought would be cool to do was to go on Twitter and tag Boundary Quantum podcast and tag Talibans and say this guy said the staff is racist and if y'all are going to back him. I'm never listening to your show again. That's fucking bullshit. And if you never want to listen to me again, fucking don't listen. But if you're going to record something I say, or you're going to quote something I say, please make sure you dig and you find out exactly what I said. My comments were never that the staff was racist and that they didn't like black people. My comments were there are politics in football. I would like to know who is helping with the decision making.

52:19 That's that's where that comment came from. Then I caveat of that by saying I live in Alabama. The people here are very blatant when they are racist. That's what I said. I said the fans here, if they don't want a quarterback, they're going to tell me exactly why they don't want him. That's what I said. Never said that Brett Pride's been on this show. And if I thought he was racist, I wouldn't have. I don't got to have a conversation with him. He don't have to have a conversation with me. But for somebody to go and try to cherry pick a comment and try to think that they're going to do anything to what we got going on here, let me tell you what you can do. I ain't going to even go there. I'm just going to tell you to have a nice day because it's a new week. That's. All I got to say, but in all seriousness, what? What?

53:05 What? That Twitter user 123, whatever his name is. What you thought was saying or what you tried to make a big thing that would say it, A lot of people listen to us and that's why everybody jumped on your ass and that's why you had to back off of Twitter. Sometimes you just got to log out. Because if you waited till Monday morning, that was near and dear, in your heart you didn't listen good enough. You just took that and you didn't go to church. Go to church, man. Pray about that stuff. All right, Siegel. Sheldon, this is this is clearly we're just opening it up. Feelings Hour. We're we're what to do better moving forward. We've talked about a lot of it. Well, I mean, I'm just going to say this, I mean we talk about it all the time. And I, I know I said it in reply to this tweet, but I mean we're we're, we're open. We're in open forum here, right?

53:49 Like we don't really pull punches. We we we want the thoughts and the ideas to be out there so and we want fans to interact with that. But what we want fans to do is interact with that in a way that is positive right in a in a way that generates the discussion, pushes the discussion forward, not shuts things down. When you start cherry picking things like that and twisting someone's words, you're not only alienating the people that enjoy what we're doing, but you're making it so other people don't want to engage and have those open discussions and feel like they can say stuff without, you know, somebody running and running it to Twitter and and making a big deal about it.

54:35 So just come here and have fun. That's that's what this is about. Come in, have fun. Nobody was trying to ruin anyone's career or like. I'm open. I'm open, but what we doing here? Anybody who has anything to say to me, you can ask just about anybody that follows me on Twitter. I don't have a lot of followers. I got a couple of them. But anybody who engages with me on Twitter, man and my my DM's are open. I got plenty of people's number and Blacksburg treats me good. When I go to Blacksburg, man, I got a lot of friends there. I wouldn't travel 7 hours to a place where I thought people were racist and they didn't want me. So I'm just going to put that out every time I go to Blacksburg and every time I've been to Blacksburg over the past decade has been. A movie for me.

55:20 So I just wanted to get my feelings out and I just wanted to address that because I'm not going to, I'm not going to, I'm not going to address stupidity too much. You know what I'm saying? Like I I'm going to say a little bit just so you can get your feelings out. But just like we had a comment section, if you hear me saying something that you don't agree with, please engage and tell me, Tally. I think that was dumb and we'll have a dialogue about it. So that's what we want here. That's why Curtis and Brian have did a great job setting up. What boundary corner is that? We do have those discussions, but we're not. I'm not going to take something that anybody in our audience says and twist it around to make it mean what I want it to be. That's just not what I'm going to do. I'm going to give you your opportunity to explain it. And then the person said, well, after watching the game, I do agree with you, drone should be the starter. But what are we arguing about?

56:11 What are we arguing? About. But you know what else we got to do better moving forward? We talked about the old line switch. Got to do it. Got to start trying it. Sheldon. He laid it out here a little while ago. We were one of the worst teams with the explosive run plays. It has to stop. I don't know if that means stacked boxes. I'm not a technical expert. That's why we got Brian and Tally. Sheldon finds the dad. I just. Talked you got Tally. You played you. You played at a level I never did and a lot of people. Pull everybody out. Put a whole new line in. I don't know what. You did. There's two pieces.

56:53 We haven't touched and Sheldon could probably find the stats on it right now. Y'all, we haven't forced a turnover since ODU. We have turned the ball over four times since ODU. Gotta win the turnover battle. We're. Losing that battle and in both games, both games we lost. Significant momentum switches when we had the turnovers. That has got to stop now. I know, I know the meshes and things like that are going to get better. I know if you keeping drones there he's going to get more time with two to more count Malachi, but we have not had a chance to pick or fumble or force a fumble since the ODU game.

57:39 And it's not good because we're going in that trend where we were last year where we were one of the worst tools that for some turnovers we can't live and die like that with the way the offense is right now coming along. Yeah, I mean we, we talked about earlier razor thin margin, right. So it's like that with the injuries. It's also like that with the turnover battle. We are at such a razor thin margin where we can't make those type of mistakes that give teams extra possessions, that give teams short fields. So we've got to win the turnover battle every week, whether that's Marshall, whether that's ODU, whether that's Purdue, Rutgers, we got pit in a couple weeks.

58:19 We cannot lose the turnover battle with the depth issues that we have with the injuries that we have right now. That's just, that's just the long and short of it. So anybody that's you got to be able to protect football. Man, you got a college a go ahead show. Yeah, I'm. Just going to say real quickly that it makes sense why they're not. Getting interceptions because as I said, nobody's starting the ball against tech. So you're essentially relying on, you know, 4 stumbles, which is kind of hard to do. But to me, the collusion from that should be just play better, play better run defense. I mean, because if you if you play better run defense, you force them to throw the ball more and to throw the ball more than. That's where chances were fixed. I mean, to me, it's really that simple. Just play better on the run. What defense is trying to do is is shut down the run game and make them test you down the feet, right?

59:04 But like, that's generally the way that you try to. I mean that that that's the approach that most people have is that we can stop the run, force them to be 1 dimensional, make them throw the ball down the field. We have a better chance of turnovers and things can go our way. You know, we'll live and die with the beat ball here or there, but we might get some turnovers. That's going to help us if you can't get off the field because they're rushing the ball on you and if you're giving up long run plays consistently, you're going to have very limited opportunities, like Shelton said, to get turnovers. I mean forcing a phone call outside of a like a strip sack is difficult like that. They don't happen very often so. So they do not. All right. Last.

59:46 Yep. Thanks. It's a good call, Sheldon, and that's why he's here. Last piece I got before we turn it over, We got to finish. We have to finish our drives. We cannot afford field goals. We have to finish stops. When we get a team in 3rd and more than five, they cannot get first down. So we've seen to meet and and maybe the stats aren't on this but as far as it goes from the eye test, it feels like third and four. It's like hold your breath like and they they're probably going to get this. And then the last piece we have to finish in the fourth quarter, it's two games now. We did not finish the 4th. That was the identity of this team last year.

1:00:29 It slowly changed. Can do the last things of the game to me. We can't afford that this year. It needs to get righted quicker but we need to finish. I agree. I think that one thing we skipped over that I just want to maybe maybe I just was in my feelings and and Mr. saying it. But we talked probably talked about the the slow starts, mentioned the slow starts and things like that. Like we got to get off to a fast start. In some of these games, you know what I'm saying? We got to punch somebody in the mouth first because in any sport, when you get punched in the mouth, like everybody's got to plan until that happens, you know, And I feel like we were fighting, fighting the losing battle from the beginning of that game because we went out and fumbled the first drive and they go and score.

1:01:16 So we got to go out and we got to we ought to create some things like that first we got to start getting up to a little bit better start and I think that you know of course that'll help us but. All the things that we're talking about will help us do that. Got to get off the field on 3rd downs. We got to stop turning the ball over. All of these things that we've talked about for the last what hour and and two minutes here. I know if we can cut some of that down, it's definitely gives us a better shot to win the game. Especially when you're paying people like Marshall. You know, not, no disrespect to Marshall, but like I expect a certain game from a Florida State or Clemson or even pit. But when you're playing people like Purdue or Rutgers, like we got, we got to find a way not to give them extra possessions and things like that.

1:02:05 Or or give them that hope early on. Like just think about last year. The reason that you know we were able to jump down on BC earlier was because we we we jumped on them early we we killed their will early in that game with some defensive plays and some timely offense that. You know, they really didn't have a whole lot of pulse. They had to abandon what their game plan was and do something different. You know what that? Enabled us to tee off on that poor ass offensive line. So if we can finally do something like that, that that would at least help us be able to stay with our game plan, stick to what we do well and put some pressure on them to have to make a play instead of us having to make a play.

1:02:51 I'm going to go to this right quick so we can we can move on. But Brian, you said you brought up BC last year. You know, I didn't have a pulse because that quarterback was who? Jacobic. Jacobic. Please, God, let him roll in there when Pitt comes into town next week. I'm not saying we're going to win, but don't change. Just let him go, please. Let him run in and have be the quarterback. It's horrible. He is horrible, man. All right, I'm gonna pitch this real quick and try to do this in as few words as possible. That sometimes can get difficult for us through the first three games. Shelton What's the team's identity? What's the team's identity?

1:03:34 I mean, well, I mean, it's changed a lot. Like ODU, it was, you know, we're going to run the ball in first down no matter what. And it's like, OK, we're going to start passing ball because if you have to run game against Purdue and against Rutgers, obviously got a new quarterback, so you're running. A lot more, you know, RPO stuff, kind of getting the quarterback involved in the run game. Honestly, I don't know. It's just it's hard for me to judge because the personnel keeps changing and there's just nothing that's really sticking. So I would say obviously they want to, you know, use the quarterback in the run game. That's that's your office of identity. Defensively, I just, I think they've got no idea what's going on and I don't know, I couldn't tell you. So it's just it's kind of a it's kind of a mess right now.

1:04:18 I think right now we auditioning for NCAA 2024. Is that when the game come out next year? Yeah, I think that's what we auditioning for. You know, we're just going to pick plays and until it until see what works and go from there. Hell, I don't know. I'm like Sheldon, man, it's changed every week. But I'm going to say this and I know you want me to keep it short, so I'm going to keep it short. I could see what the offense is supposed to look like in the Rutgers game. From what I've heard, from what they've been telling us and from what I've seen in the Rutgers game, I can see the style of offense that they want to run. I'm kind of with Tally here.

1:05:02 I finally saw an identity on offense this week with drones. As the quarterback, I felt like with Wells you could see the passing schemes. What they were capable of, especially when you had Jennings in there and Lane in there, you can see what the what, what the capability is. But in terms of the full scope of what the offense is about, you saw that with drones in the game. Defensively, I feel like we are scrambling a little bit and I think most of that is because of the injuries and safety. I think we're still very inexperienced at linebacker and it's showing. And I think we're still a little undersized on the defensive line and it's showing.

1:05:45 I think quarterback is the only position that I really feel has an identity right now. I feel like they are playing well. They're they're they're locking guys up pretty well. When when those situations arise, you know, we saw them throw a decent amount in the Purdue game. They they they they threw the ball around a little bit. They ran a lot, but they threw as well. We didn't see a ton of throwing in ODU. We didn't see a ton of throwing at Rutgers, but when they did throw, they weren't effective. Whether that's on the secondary or not, but right now statistically at least they're pretty good secondary and that's really the only thing. And that's really the only thing I feel like we're leaning on right now from a defense perspective statistically until we see more passing.

1:06:33 And I think that's where the run game has to get fitted. And I think what my identity is, Brent Pride knows what he wants to do on defense. But right now the pieces aren't there, or the pieces are too young and they're making significant errors, especially in the linebacking core and even more so in the safety core. Offensively, I love what Y'all said. I didn't really know. It's like we were this first week, we were this the second weekend, were this the third week. But it goes back to what y'all two just said, How that looked looked like reminiscence of Penn State about five years ago. It looked like Joe Moorehead's offense that I've seen at Oregon, like I've seen at Mississippi State. And that's how you can go, because I look at our stats here. We have 368 total yards against ODU368. That was a full team, right?

1:07:21 Jennings played, Lane played. Nobody was banged up to and Thomas last week down your two best receivers, brand new quarterback. We put out 339 or 319. Excuse me, I looked at the math room. That's 50 yards difference. And you're missing a hell of a lot of production there. Hell of a lot of production. All right, we are over an hour. So we are going to take a quick pause from our digital partners and Main Street Pharmacy. I can probably save you a lot of money and I can take a lot better care of you. That's pretty much it. My name is Jeremy Counts and I'm a pharmacist. I want to operate Main Street Pharmacy here in downtown Blacksburg. My brother's A pharmacist.

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1:08:48 As we take a quick break, we'd like to tell you about getting your free website report from our digital partner, Grassroots Digital Marketing Studio. They'll tell you how your website ranks on Google onsite, SEO and social media. No commitment to buy anything. You can get your free report by visiting grassroots digitalstudio.com/free Dash website Dash Report. Now back to the episode. And we are back and we've lost Shelton. He shall return in a moment. Now we are going to get into Know the Enemy and we're going to take a look at Marshall and we're going to start, as always, on the offensive side of the ball. I'm going to give the floor to Brian Sigla as he discusses the scheme and some things we need to be looking for. Yeah guys, we're looking at the the Clint trick it it's it's another Smash Mouth spread RPO.

1:09:35 We got a it's a run first scheme. Shocking to say, you know we're going to have to stop the run again this week. They like to go empty a lot with frequency. They'll split Rasheena Lee, who we'll talk about here in a second out wide. They'll run some draws out of that. They'll also swing it out there on screens and and swing passes and they're they're really heavy on that. But they will take the occasional deep shot in there as well. But it's supposed to a lot of the short stuff. And a heavy dose of the rushing attack. And since we're already here, I'll go ahead and talk a little bit about Rasheen Ali. He's there running back literally to me, the only player that scares me on this this offense.

1:10:23 And it's not just because we have a a really struggle bus. Run a rush defense Right now he's pretty dangerous. He's he kind of reminds me of a of a poor man's. Is he? Havana, Canada. He gets to the second. And third level, he's pretty dangerous. If we can keep him contained in the backfield, I'll feel okay about it. Him getting to the second and third level, that's where he does a whole lot of damage. He can be a a big play threat but he is very boom or bust. You know, he's not that plotting running back that's going to get you a consistent, you know, 4 to 8 yards as he's moving through the the line.

1:11:04 He's either going to kind of go for one or two or it's going to be one of those 15 or 20 or even bigger games on the running game. So definitely an explosive running back that can make a big place. So we got to stop him. If we do, I'll feel a little bit better. Go ahead. Yeah, I was just going to say he was. He had a big year in 2021, went for about 1400 yards, 23 touchdowns last year. Not that great of a year. I think he was injured. No, he was injured. The only one for about two, 273 last year, one touchdown. So had some injury problems there. But this year, you know he's already gone for 222 yards, 5 touchdowns on 36 carries. Again, they are using them out of the back fill a little bit, about 5 catches, 47 yards.

1:11:53 There are no touchdowns catching the ball. But pretty like you said, Brian hit nail on my head with him. Reminds you a lot of that name that we're not going to say like Walmart, like we don't want to talk. We don't say that name on this vodka. Curtis will get some flashbacks. Will feel like he's a bomb again or. Something yeah, it's crazy, but he's, he's, he's, he's one of the players on their team that. Kind of like Brian says, is a little bit scared. So we're going to have our hands full, we're going to have our hands full and I hope that our defensive staff are preparing for seeing him. All right. Shown any any deeper steps on Rasheena Lee?

1:12:36 He has a 71% breakaway percentage, which I believe is it runs the 15 more yards. And that is a third among all running backs in the entire group of five. So, like, like Brian was saying, he's a big time exposed to play guy. All right, well, let's hope the defense can figure something out this week as they prep for him. Because if the past defense is what it is, they're going to have to stop #5. Caleb McMillan. Caleb is a six foot three ��250 wide receiver. He was the almost the 25th 100 prospect in the class of 2018 out of Orlando, FL and Edgewater High School was rated A2 star down there and really hadn't been much of A contributor up until this season. Only 198 yards last year with one touchdown. This year, and especially last week against ECU, big game, 85 yards, including a 75 yard touchdown. Brian.

1:13:43 Was that 75 yard touchdown a make, a miss or was he down the field? Yeah, he was down the field. He's a guy that can beat you with the. He's a guy that he's their primary deep threat here, so he's going to be a guy that can beat you deep. But they will use him on those kind of swings and screens as well. So he's he does a little bit of both, but that big one kind of came off a deep ball. They will occasionally take a shot with him, but he's a guy that can kind of do a little bit of everything. But he's primarily going to be a guy that we're going to be concerned about if he's going deep. All righty. Well, let's hope we can stop him in that one. Tally.

1:14:27 Who do you got up next? Yeah, so we got Kate Conley up next. He's there tight in. He was pretty interesting prospect, I guess, because you don't show any offers out of high school. Didn't even have a rating. Went to Central Michigan. Transferred from Central Michigan to Marshall while he was at Central Michigan in 2022. It's like he had 11 receptions for about 168 yards. Also not. Used a whole bunch in the passing game there, but this year he's already got 9 catches for 114 yards, so it looks like they are using him a little bit more there at at Marshall than he was. I know he's more of a blocking tight end, but seems to be a intricate part of their offense.

1:15:14 Which you got on him, Brian? Yeah, I mean he's, I'd call him a balance tight end. He's definitely better at blocking than than being used in the passing game, but he's he's a fishing in the passing game. So I mean that's a lot of times that's what you want out of a tight end. Guys that can move the stick, kind of a change of pace in the passing game. But he blocks, he blocks really good for a tight end, blocks a good leverage, so shows surprising power for his size. So overall, just a guy that can kind of get in there and rough things up a little bit in the run game, but still kind of move the sticks for them in the passing game, showing anything on him as far as grades go, Anything unique, different? Not too much, pretty much a run in the mill tied in. They do target him a relatively solid amount, especially considering they've only played two games so far. They got 10 targets, but he averages almost 13 yards to catch, which from Marshalls is pretty good. So also, big time is supposed to play Guy. Alrighty, let's flip over.

1:16:13 Let's take a look at the offensive line because they've got a guy, Kelly, much like the guy you were looking for. I could not find anything recruiting wide on Ethan Driscoll. Who is there? Left tackle #52, six foot nine ��329 or red shirt senior. We crossed. Yeah, yeah, Big Boy. Holy Cross High School in Louisville, KY, where he played detackle in high school. Also played basketball and if you search his name up a lot of stuff is coming up. He is getting NFL looks. He was a preseason all Sunbelt second team by Phil Steele at Athlon with the Sunbelt Conference coaches. So Brian, is he good enough to potentially make it to the next level?

1:17:02 I mean, he's got the right body. I mean, I think from a run game perspective, he's very good. But I'd say overall he's a very balanced left tackle, shows good footwork and strengthen the run game. You know, pass pro isn't exceptional but above average. So I mean just overall he's, he's definitely a guy that you know we could really use on our side of the ball at this point when we look at the. The tackles there? We probably could use you right now. I mean it'd be nice to have an NFL prospect on our offensive line right now for being honest just you know cuz I don't right now at least you know I know it's still early with some of the young guys but we we do not have an NFL prospect on our offensive line right now so they got one. Like I said, he's pretty solid overall and. I know Sheldon's got a couple other guys. He wants to talk a little bit about the grades and and where they kind of rank in the process there as well. Sure.

1:18:04 So you've got Dalton Tucker who's played right guard and right tackle. He is a six year senior, highest credit offensive lineman for Marshall. On the flip side, Ultric Barlow is their left guard. He has been the lowest credit guy. He's a transfer from TCUA. Lot of experience with Trent Holler at center, 5th year senior. Very good in past blocking. One stat that I got so between Holler and Logan Osborne, who's their right guard, they've combined for 140 pass protection snaps and they have not allowed a single pressure. So Marshall has a team ranks top in the country through two games in pressure rate allowed. They they do not give up anything. Now you could say two games, small sample size, not a great competition, that's fair. But they're doing a lot of things very well in the past protection side so far you know doing it's the doing the things right against those lower levels. Yes.

1:18:55 Now I'm surprised you say that. And then looking at the two games they've played this year because they had a comeback against Albany State. I don't know what Albany State is. I want to say D2 I don't think. I think at their FCSOK and then ECU last week same thing. This is not a good ECU team this year and they had a comeback on them. So hearing how good they played offensively, hear an explosive running plays, something's not quite either they are hitting home runs at the exact right time to win games or there's a lot more that's going on behind the scenes there about why they are struggling with not the best of teams. Let's flip to the sensitive side of the ball, Brian. Let's talk about the schemes and something unique we're probably going to see from their defensive coordinator, Jason Samoa.

1:19:49 Yeah, I mean it's a, it's a, it's a 425I mean he calls it A425I mean it looks like a 245. They they they used to stand up D NS. And the reason I say it's more of a 4245 is that they do use those those ends in a lot of zone blitz schemes, right. So that they're they're dropping those guys in coverage on a regular basis, not, not necessarily both at the same time, but sometimes they do, but it's usually one or the other. You know the he's the he's the new guy, first year taking over for Lance Guidry. Scheme is pretty much the same though. So you're not going to see a bunch of different, different differences from a scheme perspective, but it's deployed a little bit different. You got a new guy that's calling the place in there. All right.

1:20:38 So it's always interesting anytime you see a change in play caller as we're seeing on the defense this year. It can happen and things can change. Let's talk about some of the players on their defensive side of the ball and I'm going to start with Sam Burden of 6 foot two ��230 defensive lineman. He is at a Spanish river community in Boca Raton, FL. He is a class of 2018 eighteen 19202122. He is a fifth year guy, probably with a COVID year of eligibility left. Not a lot of offers coming out. The Thune Cookman FIU or some that did give him some offers. FIU as a walk on offer. But you know what? As a two star guy, he's gotten to Marshall and he's actually made a kind of a decent career of it so far. Especially the last two years.

1:21:26 21 and 2261 Total tackles, 11 1/2 titles for loss along with eight sacks already starting this year with a strong campaign. 6 tackle, excuse me, 9 tackles, 3 1/2 sacks. Brian what is his tape showing as far as it goes and does he stand up or is he up and down with his hand? He's the standup guy. Unless they go into like a true dime package, which they will from time to time, that dime package is kind of a a three man line. So the the the two standup D n's will be the the the hand of the dirt D n's and that look there. But he's a he's a standup.

1:22:06 You call him outside linebacker and call him DN depending on which way you want to spin it there. But he's their best all around D lineman. We'll call him a D lineman in this case, really good combinations of strength and speed and he will get, like I said he will get dropped in coverage on zone blitz calls there. They'll also use them as a spy if you got an athletic quarterback, so look for that. If Drones is the guy this week and like I said, when they rarely go into that dime look, he'll be the in that four eye alignment. We got anything extra on him Shelton from analytics perspective? Yes, he is the 4th highest rating group of five edge rusher. He's got 12 quarterback pressures and 51 pass rush opportunities, which is around 25%. So about quarter, the time he's getting to the quarterback. Quarter the time he's getting the quarterback and I hear 3 1/2 sacks.

1:23:02 It sounds like when he pressures, it's 1/3 of a time he's getting there when he puts the pressure on so. Why do you keep putting higher and higher numbers on all these guys, Sheldon? I mean, it's not going to, it's not going to get better. They they've got a good defense. It's not getting better. Well, may well, who's the next guy we going to talk about Tally so Sheldon can make us feel worse? Talking about linebackers, Eli Neal for linebacker, where I was #24, it's about 6 foot 226 out of high school. He went to a white station there in Memphis, TN. Not a ton. A ton of. Big offers out of high school. He had about 15 offers, one being Arkansas, I'm sorry, one being Arkansas. So Arkansas and Marshall offered him. He went to our went to to Marshall. He is a 2019 guy so he's been there for a little bit. He was 2020 All Conference USA Honorable mention. 2021 All Conference USA Honorable Mention. 2022 Honorable mention in 2020 in 23, he is a preseason All Sunbelt Conference second team with Phil Steele, and then 2023 preseason all Sunbelt Conference first team with Athlon. So that's just a little bit of accolades that he's had or how they feel about him.

1:24:31 Where's my other stat on him? Just what he's doing this year? From what it's showing, it says he has about 14 tackles so far this year, so each game he's had about 7 tackles, half a sack in the in the first game. That's what I'm seeing on him. Brian, what you got? Yeah, he plays that Mike linebacker for them. He he's very effective against the run. So you know it. It's going to be hard finding some space in that middle there, especially if we continue blocking the way we have. Does a good job of shedding blockers, uses his hands really well, is really physical at the point of attack.

1:25:13 The only thing I'd say he can get fooled with some misdirection, whether it's motion or whether it's using your offensive line to kind of create misdirection, whether it's in a counter or some sort of RPO going away from the flow. He he does primarily key on the guard, so if you can play around with that, sometimes you can get him out of position. But very sound linebacker overall and good playmaker all. Right, bring us break. The more bad news where is he like the best linebacker in the G5 level? Shelton. Not quite, but he does have another good pass pass rush grade up at 83. 66 quarterback pressures in in 12 or excuse me, five in nine opportunities.

1:26:01 So a small sample there, but like I said, I mean these guys just they get to the QB all. Right. We we keep hearing more about them getting to the QB. It's our offensive line. You know what I joked with them? I'm going to be at my son's baseball game during this game, with the exception of probably about 20 minutes of it. So if we win. I don't think y'all are going to allow me back in front of the TV, right? Especially as good as they are statistic standpoint. No more, No more Vt guns for you the rest of the year. Live I can watch it on replay when it's over right One more player to hit up here and his name is Daytoni Smith. He is a defensive back from Highland Springs High School.

1:26:42 Boys Highland Springs High School had to throw them all here. Was a two star prospect when he came out back in 2020. So far this year, 11 total tackles. He does have one sack. He has a past deflection, played in eight games. Last year we also had 18 tackles, 3 past deflections and just a very short time frame There. They put him as defensive back. Where is he going? Sigla? We're going to see him at one specific spot or is he move around? He's moved around. I've seen, I mean he's listed as a cornerback, but I've seen him at safety in pretty much I'd say 75% of the steps I've watched. He's lining up at safety.

1:27:27 He'll he'll kind of be that third safety in this look here. They'll also put him at corner, but he's really strong in man coverage. That's where he excels. I haven't seen him play a huge factor in in run support, but when he does, he is very competent and he he tackles pretty well and they'll use him in a lot of the blitz packages. He's very effective in getting home, not always getting the sack, but he will get there and cause a little bit of disruption in the backfield. Alrighty, anything exclusive on him, Shelton? Yeah, Brian's eye test kind of lined up with most of the grades, Good in coverage, not so good in in run sport. And like he was saying, he has been used in a lot of different positions, so some in the box summit free safety and some of the slot as well.

1:28:15 So very versatile, versatile player. All right, done shocked me coming from Highland Springs and what they do out there. So there is no the enemy. Some players and some things to look for during the game on Saturday at 12 on ESPN2 for the second time this year. But now let's talk about what the Hokies keys are and I'm going to start with Shelton. Shelton, what is your key for the Hokies this week? Yeah. So I my key was secondary play. I mean it's got to be better. You look at, you know, the running numbers they've been giving up, I think most that falls on the guys in the back seven. You look at the the freshman tech is playing between Caleb Woodson most fields, you throw Jalen Jones in there it has not been great.

1:28:56 I mean these are some of you know the worst grades and and all the power five quite frankly at their respective positions. We saw them try monster lanes, summit safety, but that's not going to be you know a dependable strategy for the entire game. So the secretary play has to be better. I think they need to do better job of sticking to their assignments and playing anticipatory football. All righty, Sigla, what do you got this week as far as your hokey keys go? Get home. We've got to get in the backfield, whether that's disrupting, using the defensive line to disrupt the rushing lanes, get those tackles for losses, but also getting after the quarterback and putting them behind the chains significantly. Because right now, teams that right now feel that they can run the football against us if the down and distance is 8 or less, they they're comfortable.

1:29:50 Are it's third, third and eight, Fuck it. We'll run the ball against this team. We'll probably get the first down. We've got to get the Marshall behind the sticks consistently and make them have to go to the throw and then we have to continue to tackle well. If we can do that, we can slow this team down all. Righty, Tally. I think after here Tally wrote this down the a couple last night and then after hearing Shelton's, it's even going to be more clear, right? Yeah, we got to keep the quarterback clean, man. Got to keep the quarterback clean. He ran the ball 22 times against Rutgers. So he's going to get out and he's going to try to make some plays, put his feet. But when he's in the pocket and he's trying to deliver throws, especially after hearing about all the people that they have that are rushing the passer, that are getting home, that are, you know, just. Causing chaos in the backfield.

1:30:41 We got to keep whoever the quarterback is there upright. It's covering drones. We got to keep them clean. If it's Grant wells, we got to keep them clean because if we don't do that, it's going to get ugly for us. Yeah, I agree with you there. I got a little one on the offensive side of the ball too and it's going to be third down efficiency. We need to continue the improvement for due on 3rd and 4th down conversions. We were 21%. That took a significant increase, almost 100% increase. Going against Rutgers went up to 39%. We need to continue to do that. If for nothing else, it's going to help the defense if we're staying off the field. We dominated TOP versus Rutgers.

1:31:23 I think that's one reason why the dam didn't break until as late as it did, because we did keep them off the field. So keep that trending in the right direction. Keep converting the third downs, keep converting the 4th downs. I will say this Brent Prize aggressiveness. This year I've liked. There's been times where it's like we're not pun, we're not going, we're trying to score points, which does make me a happy individual. So Sheldon, you got one more thing you want to throw in on this? Yeah. So just to find out where I'm Marshall, obviously, they've really struggled to run the ball this year. We talked about the really good pass protection, I think if you're looking for comps to Virginia Tech's previous opponents. Their offense is probably not quite as good as Rutgers, but definitely a much more formidable opponent than than Old Dominion was.

1:32:10 They have a very experienced defense, They've got multiple 4th year starters, 5th year starters, even one sixth year player, and you know, bottom line, this is a really, really good defensive program. Not just team, but program. You look at over the past three years and SP plus defensive rankings 22nd, 41st and 8th. So they had the 8th best defense of the country last year according to SP Plus and that's adjusted for strength of schedule, everything so that you know that takes without all the teams are playing. This is a really, really good defensive program. So as we can see by the the Vegas line do not expect a lot of points and Bridget Tech is going to have to try really hard to to get some points on the scoreboard today. So I expect a grudge match. Alrighty. Well, let's look to it. Let's get to our prediction and big screeners, which this week we actually have a sponsor for this. This is going to be presented by Prize Picks. We are proud to announce a new partnership with Prize Picks for our big screeners and pick segment. Prize Picks is a daily fantasy app where you make entries based on player projection.

1:33:10 This week this is my boy although. If he's hurt, I might take this one off. I got Brandon, I you going for more than 53 1/2 yards against the Giants. I'll take Moser less than 60 1/2 against the Broncos. That's my 2 for the week price. Picks will match any deposit up to $100 when you sign up using our code BCPICKS. That's BC picks. And if you look right there on the screen right now, there is a little QR code. You can also click that or head to boundarycornerbt.com back slash BC picks.

1:33:53 Last week we all picked the exact same record, everybody was two and five. So if you're bend the lines on our games, maybe not, but we'll say Tally, you're starting it off. What's going to happen this week at Marshall? You know what, man? I'm going to say. Last week I picked Rutgers to win. This week I'm going to go, I'm going to go with the Hokies, man. I think that we're going to go in, we're going to have a little bit more of a game plan or what we need to do, and I'm going to say Hokies pull this game off 2821.

1:34:34 I'm taking the Hokies, man. If if we don't get this one, though, I'm going to start having a little bit of doubt creeping in. You're probably going to see another team's logo pop up next week, but I'm going Hokies 27th, Marshall 21. I think it's kind of a Grindfest. I think we get one late to kind of put it over the top. All right, Shelton. I'm taking the Hokies also outright, mainly based on gut feel. I think Kyron Jones is going to make a couple of big plays with his feet. Even though I'm concerned about this matchup because Marshall has some lockdown corners and obviously they they don't really let anyone get to the quarterback, I I just got to go with my gut, my gut saying BT, they're going to make a couple big plays late and they're going to come away with a with a close win. All righty, I'm I'm with y'all as well. A little different score, 2717 here. Hokies win again.

1:35:26 It's Utah, the Gut Field Show. And I think it's also, you watch them play as good as they are, statistically as good as they are, they have been in two wars. The Albany State game has to be questioned. They were down and had to have two fourth quarter scores to come back in that game to beat them 21 to 17. That's why I'm sticking with the Hokies on this one. All righty big screeners time and good God all. When we started talking and texting yesterday with the amount of big games coming on this week, it was insane. This is my big Screener. Hey, it's going to be on in the afternoon so I will get to actually watch it. After baseball, we got the Colorado Buffaloes who pulled out somewhat of a miracle against Colorado State for all those I saw somebody put up there the other day. I don't know how my body's doing is staying up to 2:00 in the morning.

1:36:22 Y'all are some non veteran people out there. Veteran of PAC 12 after dark. You stand until 2:00 all the time to watch the late games on the West Coast and people complaining. Get up at 2:00 or go to bed at 2:00. Wake up at 6:30 with the kids in this game. That is a massive line. Colorado is going to score points. I do not have a doubt about that. I do think Oregon wins, but. You're going to give me 19 1/2 points With the way Shamir Sanders and that offenses looked thus far, I will take it. I don't know what the Over under is, but lock that up as well because this is going to be a shootout at the zoo in Austin. Yeah, let's see who's next on that one. Tally.

1:37:05 Tally, who you got? Yeah, man, I'm. I'm taking to Colorado as well. I think Oregon wins that game. But you know, 19 1/2 points, that's a lot of points, man. I don't think that, Oregon. Blows them off the field by 20 points. No way. No way. You're with me here. All righty, what about this one for you? I'm going with the Buffs. Oregon will win the game. But sure, Sanders is a gamer. He's not going to go down without a fight. Brian, we're going across the board here. I'm right there with you. I think Sanders is going to be a gamer. Even if they fall behind 123 stores, I think you'll do something late, kind of bring that thing close.

1:37:47 I do think Oregon ends up pulling up the wind, but 19 1/2 is just too much water. Way too much. By the way, we should have got this line earlier or later. Like an hour ago it went up to 21. Just so y'all know I'd even be hammering buffaloes even more. 71 1/2 is the over under. That seems way too way too small. All righty Brian, you are up next. What game do you have on the docket this week? I got the Ole Miss Bama game and I'm. This is interesting. I mean it's obviously 22 ranked SEC opponents. But to me this is interesting because this might be depending on what Alabama is able to do. We haven't seen really good offense from this Alabama team in any game so far this year.

1:38:35 They're switching back to Millro. I mean they they had a quarterback shelf of the last three weeks, so I'm interested to see what happens here. But I've got Old miss. I mean 11 1/2 is a whole lot for a team that's struggling that much delay. So give me Old Miss. It'll be a tight one. I think Alabama might squeak it, but if they don't, this could be the earliest that Alabama is a non factor. Maybe in the College Football Playoff. 2010, yeah, right. 2010 was the last time it was this early. And I'm with him. By the way, we caught this line at a great point. This line has went down 4 1/2 points since we locked it in yesterday. Give me Ole Miss as well. Especially the way Alabama is struggling on offense. I I I can't foresee who's gonna actually win the game. Because I feel like save it against Disciples. He always does well, but I'll definitely take Ole Miss with 11 1/2 points.

1:39:29 Tally tally who you got. Yeah, I'm going to Ole Miss as well, man. I mean, Alabama making another quarterback change. They've been in quarterback disarray, worse than the Hokies as far as who's going to play, who's not going to play Lane usually if he just goes out and coaches a football game. I think it'll be a good game. You know, Lane, last year, he gets so caught up in the him versus saving thing. He just makes stupid, you know, going for it on his own 30 and stuff like that. If he just goes out and he coaches a football game, I think we'll have a close game again. I can't pick who wins that game, but I don't think Alabama beats him by 12 points.

1:40:10 But you shall. Yeah, I'm taking Bama mainly because Nick Saban. I I trust a a mad Nick Saban led team. I know they did not play well. They did not play well last week. I know he's going to give it to them. So they're going to come out motivated this week? That's fair. That is fair. That is very fair. It is. He easily bounces back pretty strong. All right, Tally, where are you going on Saturday afternoon with your big Screener? We got to go Clemson, Florida State, man. I mean, everybody picked them to be at the top of ACC this year. We got Florida State, what 2 1/2 points, 3 1/2 three and a half. We called it early.

1:40:51 I thought we got a 3 1/2. We got a 2 1/2. 2 1/2 Yeah, man, you know what? I'm taking Clemson. I'm taking Clemson in this game. I've seen some kings in the armor for Florida State. We've been talking about Florida State being a being a College Football Playoff team and and they may, but you know, I think Clemson has something to prove. I've seen BC give. I know it's the red banana game. I know those games are crazy. But I'm not just ready to say Florida State is all the way back, so I'm taking Clemson Sheldon. Yes, I'm taking FSU. I think FSU is at the point now in terms of their recruiting development where they have the skill guys to compete with Clemson. Personally, I think Clemson skill players are a little bit average.

1:41:40 So I think this is a game where I expect FSU to win. I think they've got the the better quarterback and they're gonna they're gonna win this game. Yeah. Down in Death Valley high noon so opposite of the Hokies game so get you definitely get you two screens going. I'm I'm with Shelton on this tally and I think what happened in the Red Bandana game was the best thing that happened to Florida State. They got challenged by a team a lot lesser than them in a hostile environment. If they go up there and blow the doors off, BCI might lean the other way. But I think having that adversity, it's an easy thing to coach to like. Look what just happened. We took our foot off the gas. We took our off the prize.

1:42:22 We damn near loss to a team that almost lost the Holy Cross and did lose to Northern Illinois. Give me the Knowles. Give me the Knowles by two scores. Oh, OK, I'm give me the. He's locking it up. He's locking it up. I'm saying it's going to be a they're going, they're going to dispatch a Clemson pretty easy. Well, not easy, but you know. Well, I'm going Florida State as well here and for a lot of the same reasons. You know, I think talent wise they're there. But Curtis mentioned it. They got a test. I think we're going to see a similar type of urgency that we saw from UNC against Minnesota after they had that scare at App State. I think it's going to be a similar type situation. Florida State comes out focused, ready to handle Clemson. And I think as Shelton said, the skill position players for Clemson are very pedestrian.

1:43:15 You got Shipley and then a bunch of guys. There's there's not really a standout, a ton of standout skill position players like they're used to having. So give me Florida State here. Alrighty. And if that wasn't enough, Shelton's pick is, I think, the highest rated game of the week #9 against #6. Sheldon, who'd you pick on yours? Give me the Buckeyes. I trust Ryan Day. I'm a big Ryan Day fan. I know he's kind of underperformed and in some of those big time games, but I think this is the one where he gets him back and he gets a big, I'd say, fan base. Inducing confidence Win.

1:43:59 The way they've looked. He needs it. I who you got Tally. Tally. Man, I'm gonna go Notre Dame in this, man. I just, I've watched Sam Hartman. They had a show. I can't remember what the name of the show is, but I watched him in high school, then it watched him in college, and now he's with the Notre Dame. And I, I mean, he's a kids, a gamer, man. I think he's gonna go and he's gonna have a good game and they're gonna take this one. Alrighty. I am next on this one. This one is at Notre Dame under the touchdown. Jesus. And to be honest, just the way the Buckeyes offense has looked, I'm going to take the 3 1/2 points we're getting with the Notre Dame. I don't know who went. It's just like the Ole Miss game.

1:44:40 I that game. I can't see Bamma winning by more than two scores this game. I think it's going to be that classic 2728 game. Whoever has the ball potentially last wins, and I got to go with Notre Dame just because of Sam Hartman being at home. Give me the points, home Dog points, baby. See. Yeah, I'm. I'm going to Ohio State here. I think that so far the Ohio State hasn't really put a a full, complete game out there yet. I think they buckle up for a big ring to match up and finally do that. And I think they're able to cover that 3 1/2. I I think it's still like a six or seven point game, but I think they win by a score late, Wins by a score late. All right, we got one more.

1:45:27 It's just another big game this week. It's Saturday night under the lights at Kennick Stadium where top ten train, top ten teams dreams go to die. How many times if people went into that place, they wave to the kids at the hospital and the next thing you know I was beating you 1312 because some fluky stuff happens. Brian, you're going to lead out with this one. We talked we should have held on a few more minutes on this one. I guess one this one went up to today 1330 1/2 eighteen and a actually it's not at Kenneck. I thought it was a Kenneck. It's a it's at Penn State. That's.

1:46:08 It's Penn State. It went to 14 1/2 today. So Brian, who you got? Well, that's why I got Penn State. Yeah. So if they were waving at the kids, you know that 10 1/2 and even you know what you said 14 1/2 would would be a little bit much. But in Happy Valley, 10 1/2 seems just about right. So I'm going to go Penn State here. Well, my original pick was me looking at it completely ass backwards and thinking it was a Kennick, not at Beaver Stadium. Well. It's on the board. It's on the board now, Curtis. Sorry, buddy. Oh, you might be right.

1:46:48 Once. Once the bet, once the bet goes in, you know you can't get that ticket back, right? Should've looked a little bit closer. It's like being in Vegas, being drunk, making a stupid bet, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But my hope is. That it's a. Low score. I mean we were, we were all two and five last week. I mean, this is just as much of A dice rolls. In right, Exactly. And you know what? Maybe I always Defense shows up to play, keeps it to an ugly 2115 game. Who's got this next tally? Tally. Tally. I got to go with Penn State, man. Just I just looked at it in there at home. I got, I got to go Penn State with the win and Shelton to wrap us up here.

1:47:32 Yes, give me the mini lions. One thing I've learned in in the betting world is that I don't trust teams that have really bad offenses against teams is really exposed to playmakers like Penn State has. Even though I was office is really good. I just do not trust them going in there and getting and covering the spread. So give me a Penn State and their playmakers. By the way, The Quarterback Hour, he's he's been really, really good this year. So that even adds to my confidence. Very nice. All right, so there are our big screeners and I hokey predictions for the week. Anything boys wrapped up in an hour and 50 minutes? I'm sorry, we had to go on a tangent the first half. Y'all we had, we had a couple rants, so we had to get off our chests. Man, you know that sometimes that pumps things up of extra 1520 minutes. Yes, Sir.

1:48:15 All right. Anything changed? I'm looking at my fantasy score real quick. Hey, I. Pulled out the victory, man. Oh, you got another kick? As well I got an 18 point lead with approximately 6 minutes left. So going for 01/2 and fantasy or two and 01 fantasy. So that wraps up this episode of the Boundary Corner podcast, brought to you by Main Street Pharmacy in Blacksburg. I'm Curtis Wilson. I'm Brian Siegler. Jonathan Tyler. I am Shelton Moss. Visit our website boundarycornerbt.com to listen to all of our episodes. Check the merchandise. Shop out. Check the prize pics site out. Definitely use that code, folks, to get your double deposit there. While you're there, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Please click Subscribe.

1:49:05 If you're listening out there on YouTube tonight, continue to grow there. Also subscribe to the Spotify, Amazon, Apple Podcast wherever you like. To listen to podcast, subscribe and let us play. As always, we let our buddy Jason Long. He plays us in. He plays us out every week. Check him out at jasonlongmusic.com. All of his stuff to Apple, to Spotify, his YouTube, his Facebook pages. He is going to be live nowhere this weekend. He's taking a break this weekend. It looks like we always. He said. The bottle of raw, man. I think he finished that bottle of Rye last weekend to be honest with you. But anyways, as always, we thank you guys for listening. We appreciate all of the comments and everything that you guys do every week.

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