This week we take a long look at what we expect from the Hokies in Week 1 as they host the Monarchs of Old Dominion. We also breakdown the Week 0 outcomes, more conference realignment, and the B1Gs new rule on injury reports.

Show Notes
Transcript

0:45 And welcome back to the Boundary Corner Podcast with my partners Brian Siegel and Jonathan Talley. I am Curtis Wilson and this episode is brought to you by Dr. Jeremy Counts at the Main Street Pharmacy Your friendly neighborhood pharmacy located at 301 S Main St. in Blacksburg. And boys, we have finally made it with Game Week. Game week is here. How y'all feeling today tally? It said start jumping. I mean, when it was coming on, that's what I seen flash across the screen. I see Jerry's already in there. Jerry says she's got questions that she needs answers to. We all need them, Jerry.

1:28 We need them too. How y'all doing tonight? We going to try to do that? That's right, Matt. In this game we LFG baby. See. How you doing tonight, man. Living the dream man I am, I got a little Hardy wood fighting hokey HEPA vising over here. It is a good night in the the RVA. It's been a busy week already this week at work, so I'm just happy to be able to kick it with you guys, talk a little football and get ready for Saturday. Yeah, and we got a lot to go through tonight. We'll get to some of the other stuff in a little while here, but we're going to just start off real quick with this. Last week, our buddy, you know Grayson Wimbush on here talking about rowdy for Robbie.

2:16 We wanted to give y'all real quick where that's going to be this week to go out there support such a great cause. So on Saturday on game day it is going to be in Lot 1 spot 164. That's the that is the lot near Castle Coliseum. It's going to be there between 4:00 and 5:00 PM. Now starting Friday it is going to be at our partners Main Street pharmacy down there $7.00 a piece. Now game day they're going to accept both cash and Venmo and if you go to the pharmacy, if you're in town on Friday like we will be in two weeks, me and Brian at least they will only do Venmo so definitely go support it. Great cause definitely you know something out there.

2:59 Clearly you heard the story about Robbie last week, a massive Hokie fan who passed away a testicular cancer and now trying to do some good more to bring more awareness to that particular cancer. So every week we know it's going to be a home game and we know that they're going to be there. We're going to tell you where to go to support this cause so. Yeah, we really appreciate Grace and jumping on with us last week, You know #1, getting a chance to talk to you all about Roddy for Robbie, but also bringing some great insight to our our our season prediction episode last week. Great episode all around. And just a big thanks to him for joining us last week. But this week it's all about game day, baby. It's all about Saturday, what's going to happen Saturday and what we can expect.

3:47 So looking forward to doing that. But Curtis, tell them what we're going to be doing first here. Well, we're going to look at first. Let's take a look at some of the Week 0 outcomes because I am sure everyone at some point in time sat down for a few minutes on Saturday to watch a little football. And you know, even though these two teams aren't we, they aren't on the schedule this year. One that will be every once in a while watching Notre Dame. Absolutely. Just mall, Navy. I don't think that shocked anybody in USC. I'm going to tell you what what I tell Jason, our wonderful music guy. I I told him Friday night. Jason, you'll make any bets.

4:28 Now I'm like, dude, you need to make a bet. What I tell him, Brian, I see Guarantee of the Week. Yup. USC, San Jose State over 66 and a. Half. He didn't make the bet and I sent him the game. I said hold you, USC doesn't. Play defense. See Jason's got gunshot with bets now because every time he bets it goes the opposite way of what he would actually desire it to go. So I feel like, you know, he feels like you put the a big kibosh on the. The US Women's National Team soccer, I mean he's he's done some folks dirty here the last few weeks and he's starting to get a little gunshot. Yeah, but he is going to start a go fund me just for his gambling habit is what he's telling us, Jack. I see how that works out.

5:15 So he just. Got to put out more albums, man. He put up more hours. He got to have all the money he need. He good. All right. Well, I got a question Tyler. You've been you've been kind of roaming around the Twitter space. Was there a game on Saturday that somehow called everybody in Okie's attentions? I. Oh yeah, You know, it was. I mean, I don't even know how many people watched it. I didn't. I didn't watch it. I watched some of it, I saw a lot of the the highlights that were posted out there and I think. Once, once people saw the stat line dropped out there, it got it caught a lot of people's attention. Now that's what it was. Stat line and of course, highlights. I mean, look like he had a great game, look like Jason Brown, if people don't know what we're talking about. Jackson State University's quarterback now had a great game and he looked good from what I seen. You know, I didn't watch the game, but watching the highlights.

6:11 He looked great and I'm happy for him. I mean, I want to see, I want to see everybody produce very happy. If y'all didn't see they won 37, seven. He went 25 for 59 or 25 for 29356, three touchdowns and you know and it and it just brought up everybody rushing back to last year right when Grant will beats him out. Jason Brown never got a shot. You know, it was one of those wild things that you know, obviously, right? It had to be the hokey going to do it. You're going to transfer from any other school and got to do that shit. It had to be the guy who was a hokey last. Year The one thing I'll say how I feel about.

6:52 I didn't mean to cut you off single, but what I how I feel and I've seen a couple of arguments and things about it. I never, you know, I feel like last season was as bad as it can get. I know it's not, but as a hokey fan, you know, winning three games is as bad as it can get for us. I just wanted to see a change at the quarterback position. Not for the rest of the season, not for the whole game, just maybe a series. I just wanted somebody to be like Okay Grant, you done threw 4 picks, man. Come sit down for a minute. Let me let let's see what else we got.

7:33 That's I think that's what most people was thinking. But all of the arguments have been, well, it wasn't no matter who was the quarterback, he he would have lost anyway. You know he was sorry we didn't have this. We had we just wanted to see a change. We just wanted to see what would have happened. So I'm just putting that out there. That's what I feel well. Yeah. I'm kind of with that just because, I mean it would have been worth seeing even if you don't pull pull wells as the starters. Give Brown some series, let's see what he can do. You know, we know he had probably a little bit of extra wiggle, a little bit more size, probably could have did a little bit more in the run game.

8:13 Would he be able to come along in the passing game against Power Five competition? That's that's to be seen. Obviously he had some experience down there at South Carolina before he came in. So we know from a big game pressure standpoint he could handle that aspect of it, right? And that looks like the area that. Wells was struggling with a lot last season, but I I just don't know. Obviously in South Carolina he was throwing to what I would consider true power five wide receivers, whereas we had Caleb Smith and a few other guys that weren't quite either were too young to contribute like that or weren't. Weren't where they needed to be. So I don't know, but I'm glad that the kid found a spot where he can go and ball out and. I hope that.

8:58 I hope he does it all season, honestly. There you go. I hope, I hope, I hope we see how it lights up in miles season. There you go. All right. Couple other things to hit before we get into the big stuff tonight is I want to just hit it real quick. We have not mentioned it, but this talk of a CC expansion, Stanford and Cal and SMU down in Texas, obviously it's going to bring in a little bit more money, probably about 5 to $10 million extra a year, bring it on 13. Bring it on. OK, you say. Bring it on. So is it a longterm solution? No, no, I don't think so. I think it's dead no matter what, honestly, you know what I'm saying? But if that's going to give to school, when you say 5 to 10 million, you said it like maybe 5 to 10 million, like 5 to 10 million is a lot of money. So if they don't come and play, can I say something to go ahead just so you can go, shit, even that extra 5 to 10 million, it's still $40 million.

9:58 I already looked at it. It's kind of like when you in debt though, you know what I'm saying? Like you in debt and you know that you got bills to pay, but you find $500.00 on the ground. You like this money I didn't have. It's casino time. Let's see what we can turn this into. Should I go play the house? No, no, no. We're playing the mortgage. I was, I was it's it's a good shortterm move. I mean it at least puts a little Band-Aid on it, but I don't think it it changes whatever the longterm plans are for Florida State and it doesn't really for any help the ACC get competitive relative to the Big 10 and the SEC. Now what it does do is that it potentially in the shortterm keeps the ACC.

10:44 Neck in neck or just ahead of the Big 12 if if that's what you're aiming for, you're you're accomplishing that. You're not doing a whole lot else. But The thing is is like, right now, too, you had so much speculation about this person is going to be gone by this time, this person going to be gone by this time or this school, this school. Well, that's not happening. You know what I'm saying? Like for now. Nobody's gone. Nobody's, nobody's left. Now it could happen next week, we don't know, but I'm just saying as of now. So I think they're just trying to put a You ever seen that? What's the commercial the guy puts? He's got the like the tape looking stuff and it's a leak coming out. Oh yeah. When he slaps it on that flex seal, he's. I think they're just trying to flex seal it, you know what I'm saying?

11:29 It's not a longterm thing, but I mean, shit, let's do it. I see this right here by Jim, and it'll keep Notre Dame associated, but the second FSU in Clemson leaves all the notoriety. The ACC is gone, but the second they leave, it's going to be the it's the domino effect that you've got the the true schools that care about football and care about sports. We know who they are. We've seen that they're going to be, we're looking for a way out. That's it. They're going to be looking for a way out. And as soon as the two big dominoes fall, you're going to see where everybody else lands. Again, stay competitive with the Big 12. That's fine. But anybody else tired of Notre Dame trying to flex their nuts? In the end, you know what?

12:11 Without fully. Screw them. Screw them. You want us to add these schools because you want to play them. Join the conference. You know what should have happened. I'm gonna go on a tangent. You know what should have happened 2020 when they joined the conference? We. Should have said fuck you, that's it. We should have said, Nope, go find your own conference this year because we got you on lot for about the next six years. If you break that contract, you're going to owe us about $300 million. Yeah, because they didn't. They play. Didn't they play for the ACC candidate? They play for the A. CC title. The commissioners of the ACC have not they deal did a strong enough position. They have not strong armed anybody into anything ever. They're just leaning on the grant of rights to maintain their conference.

12:53 They they have not taken any sort of initiative to grow. To take long term moves since really what 20/10/2011 we've been, I saw somebody put it it is the most reactionary conference in the country. Because when all the stuff was breaking last year, if you want Cal and Stanford, that's fine. Great educational institutions, big endowments, great Olympic sports, but you should have been looking at them and you should have been looking at tools north of them in Washington and Oregon who have football tradition, who have a very strong. Sports program even even right now. I mean, I ain't saying we got to grab all of them, but I mean the other two schools, they're still in the where they pack for right now. Whatever.

13:33 They're talking better TV ratings. I mean, I think they are better football programs right now, you know, So why not? Stanford pulls good money, but Caledon pull shit cows, the cows, the Briles. SMU has money, but SMU don't pull shit. They don't push. They don't pull shit in ratings, pal. They both just like the drunk friends who's tagging along when you covering the bar tab for the night is what it is. That's what they are. All right, let's go to this one last piece. I don't know if y'all saw this. I know I sent the article, but we busy. We got lives touché Thanks Will for that. But if y'all notice that the Big 10 this year is going to be instituting game day player availability 2 hours before the game.

14:24 Basically they've got to say who's in and who's out. Y'all like that. If this was let's say this is the Hokies, would you like to know two hours before the game who's playing, Who's not playing? I mean, as a fan you do, you know, But as far as like giving your team a edge, it ain't going to fucking matter. It's either you prepared all week to just go play. You know, two hours ain't going to help you. You got to go be ready for whoever trots out there, you know what I'm saying? And then in our case, like we would go play teams in the past and it would be that fucking backup quarterback that would come in and rush for 290 yards, you know what I'm saying? So it's like it ain't a huge deal, but I understand it. Yeah, I mean.

15:12 We've ended up, we've ended up getting completely torched by backup quarterbacks that we didn't know we're going to play a snap. So I don't, I don't know if this is helping or hurting from that standpoint. I think it's a fan. It's nice, it's nice to know, right? I don't have to like, troll, you know, bitters or David Cunningham's Twitter feed just to see who's on the field warming up and not. Well, I think the, I think the main thing is like kind of you're starting treating the college athlete like a a pro athlete. You know, it's like you're buying tickets and then you've got NIL stuff.

15:54 So you may just be coming for whoever you're supporting in NIL. So as a fan, if you know, you know they're not playing, that may make a difference in something that you're doing. You know what I'm saying? Whether you're supporting this this week or you're not, maybe. I don't know. I guess that's the only way I look at it. I I like it. Again, I I look at it from a fan perspective because what you just said Brian all three of us are on will be on here Saturday night. Brian's going to be over at the house. We're going to probably be texting back and forth with you Tally. We will be looking at Bitter and whoever's at the game who's out there. You know, we heard Gallows questionable. He. Is he out there warming up? We heard so and so ain't playing. Is he even out there even trying to stretch? Is he going to play next week?

16:40 That's what you look for for as a fan because there are sometimes there's been so, so much secretive stuff, you know And then on the other team it's the same way you always y'all joking about backup quarterbacks torching us. But I tell you what, when we get to play in some of the bigger teams, if you tell me, we play FSU and hey, Jordan Travis ain't playing tonight. Good, good. I'm glad he ain't playing. All right. Well, as y'all know, we usually have a breakdown segment every week that we call Know the Enemy that's going to return next week. This week we're going to do a little something different because of how drastic the turnover is of our team. We going to do a little know yourself. You got to know yourself before you go out there and start knowing everybody else.

17:29 And we're going to do this position by position, group by group. I want to discuss what we us 3:00. We we we got together, we wrote a bunch of stuff down what we have to see Saturday night in Lane Stadium to make us feel better about this season. Now I'll also say this another reason was because we have been attempting to find stuff on ODU for the last three weeks. Other than I know Grant Wilson's the quarterback, no relation. They had like 56 new players so they look very different. I think one of the defensive backs and one of the edge guys from last year still there, like 1 white out, like Watson left.

18:11 Obviously Allie Jennings left. They don't have a lot out there to begin with. So y'all ready break you up. Get yourself ready Taly, break it up. We got to do it. Just old man, let's start. You old. Uh, huh. That's the best part here. I feel you never say you old in this group. Curtis Curtis is officially the Four Zero man. He's holding it down. The Big Four. Oh, my brother just turned. No, he didn't turn. He turns 50 September the 5th. We went to his house for a big birthday bash last weekend and he will be spending his birthday. He's already there in Africa. Wow. He's yeah, he's gone already. He's 50. Yeah, he just he's how? I don't know.

18:53 He's been sending me pictures and stuff. So I got to go check and see all of his stuff. I had to download an app just so I can talk to him, but I mean, he traveled by himself. He doesn't have kids, not married. So he was just like, hey, I forgot to tell you I'm going to Africa for my birthday. I was like, okay man. Have have a good time. If I'll hear from you in a couple of weeks, I'm going to come looking for you. You know what I'm saying? So, yeah, but anyway, so so we're going to start. People had to go grab a drink. Y'all, he'll be back in 30 seconds. So we're going to start offensive side. Obviously we got to start offense. Y'all, we're here to hear us talk about defense and we're going to start at the quarterback room and the quarterback room.

19:36 It's two guys. We're going to talk about them both. First let's talk about Grant Wells. Tally, you brought up the strong point. What's the one thing you got to see Saturday night from Grant Wells? I mean, if you've been hired under a rock. You know Grant Wells is was announced to starter. So we are work. We are running with Grant at starter starting quarterback on Saturday and the first thing I will say is no avoidable turnovers. I I don't want to sound like I hate it and deep dive into what his whole career has been but I'm just saying it's football. You're going to get some turnovers. But the big word is. Avoidable turnovers we don't want. You can't be trying to fit stuff where it's not going to fit. Take the layups, man.

20:23 Take the layups you know don't be trying to fit the ball with because this is an inferior opponent. I hate to tell you, anybody who wants to argue with me, argue with your Mama. This is an inferior opponent. Use your play makers that you they went out and got hand the ball to who you need to hand the ball to throw the ball away. When you need to throw the ball away, make the make the pass when you need to make the pass. No avoidable turnovers. That's what I'll be looking for. Yeah. And my my hope is that having those weapons around him will help some of that because when we look at last year, there was probably a lot of prep with with the running game, not not doing great receivers, not getting a ton of of separation on on a regular basis, Grant Will probably figured.

21:13 I'm going to have to take some risk here if we're going to move the ball right. I'm hoping that with a better cast of characters around him that he takes fewer of those risk, and the ones that he do he does take are more calculated risk and not just I got to make a play right? If if we can get to that point, I feel like that will you know at least you know. Let's at least get to to a 2 to one ratio like if we can get. At least there then we working with something. I ain't saying we gotta go 3 to 1, go out there and two, light it up to two to one. 2. To 1/2 to one will put us in probably a.

21:55 What a what a shit ton of games last year 2 to. One. Yeah, if he was 18 and 9 and not 9:00 and 9:00 last year. That that That's a big difference last year. 63 more points. So, so if we get there, then you're you're working with something and and I want to piggyback on that because we talked about avoidable turnovers. We also got to talk about the other part of it, which is the domino defeats is what I call it when one thing goes wrong and that leads to something else going wrong and that leads to something else going wrong. We had that a lot last year. It happened with Grant. A lot it wasn't. Explicitly a Grant problem, but Grant was definitely someone that had those moments where one wrong move would lead to another would lead to another, and all of a sudden a game that you had to lead in, you lost the lead in a game that you were close in now was a blowout. So if if we can be more mentally tough and play the next play and not let what happened last time effect was going on this time. And play within the scheme of the offense. We're going to be a lot better.

23:01 If I could just go ahead, Curtis. Well, for me, you know, just like you said, like the domino defeats, like everybody that plays sports, period. No matter what sport it is, be water polo, like everybody's got a plan until you get hit in the mouth. Either that's a physical hit in the mouth or, you know what I'm saying, a mental hit in the mouth. Everybody has a plan. I just want to see the grant that was in the spring game, you know, to talk about how good of a practice player he is and him going out there and he's progressed and things like that. And I believe, you know, he's got better. But I want to see the command he had in the spring game. One play that stands out in my mind if he was live when he scores maybe like was it the first touchdown, maybe the second touchdown where he pulls the ball and goes straight up the middle and you got those two defenders, the virgin on him like in a game he would have got hit. You know what I'm saying?

23:58 Do you hold on to that ball? Do you make one of them miss? Do you die for it? Like that's what I need to see. Are you going to make those winning plays and and have that confidence when you get hit in the mouth? That's what I want to see from to see if he going to lead the team. You know what I'm saying? I agree. With that 100%, I'm going to go back piggy what? Siegler says. Where I make my point here. He seems like he is a guy that occasionally he gets in his own head. He gets in his own, you can see it. There's times last year where he was, you know, he had threaded a couple times and he gets picked and then either there was a hesitation or he would make the same throw again and it wouldn't be good. And that's, you know, that's something that I think you get to a certain point in your life.

24:43 That's just you are what you are now. Can some people overcome it? Yes. Is he one? I hope so. Now before I make my point here, I'm going to make a real quick point because a couple folks have already thrown in the chat, do put in your game predictions. We're going to be making hours at the end of the segment in a while here because it is going to be a while. But definitely put it in. Somebody's already put one out there. Thank you, low country. We will pop that up later. But here's my thing. I'm looking more for schematic things and one of the big schematics are this year we are going to the true RPO. We're not looking at power runs. We're not looking at potentially being Wisconsin. You let Tyler Bowen take what's his and make it.

25:24 And what I need to see is there are going to be times he needs to pull the ball and run on those RPO's. I don't care if you get 2 yards. I don't care if you get 10. I don't care if you break a 30 yarder. I don't care if you get stopped at the line of scrimmage because. No, we got to keep him honest. And the way this offense works is if that linebacker and no safety start moving on those RPO's, whether you're going to run it or not, lanes open easier, throws are made. He's got to do it. And if he's not doing it, Tyler Bone, who's going to be up in the booth, better walk down, take this thing and slap on his head, run the ball occasionally, run the ball occasionally. They are spitting you and they're taking your lane down. He can call down and say, hey, you know that other guy that's over there on the bench, tell him to go run. Well, let's talk about the other guy. What?

26:15 What? What Y'all think about what? What do y'all feel like? We need to see some from Kyron over the next. This week, I mean, I feel like, you know the fact that Prize said he's going to get play every week, he didn't just say he's going to have some packages, he's going to see some time. He said he is going to see time every week. So I'm not sure if we're we're getting a full. You know, redux of, you know, 2007 here or if it's going to be mix and match. I don't, I don't know what it's going to be. The thing for me is that when you put drones in the game, it can't be predictable.

26:57 You're you're going to have selected plays for him. Obviously a smaller playbook, but it can't be a predictable smaller playbook you're going to want to give him. A handful of run plays he's good with and a handful of pass plays he's good with and his first play out there needs to be a pass because of his first play on the field is a pass that everybody will be thinking all right, just cuz he's out here and ain't a run. You got to be prepared for everything now. And even if he doesn't run, even if it's not a pass, I agree with you think a pass would be great if he turns around, turns the ball around and and hands it to one of your running backs and they get 4 to 5 yards.

27:37 You know, just a normal running play. You just can't be predictable. You can't have him. You can't be going out there. But we lost Tally for a second there. While we get him back on real quick, something we've been discussing is basically find his 10 best plays. Running or pass. We lost you there for a second tally. Yeah, I've seen that. So I'll let you, I'll let you come back in what you were going to finish up saying, but find those 10 best plays running and pass because it can't be all pat run and it can't be all pass. So mix those in, give him those series and and when I say that, that's a lot more of, it's going to be more passes because you're going to have plays that are strictly for the running backs. Kelly, what were you saying?

28:27 I mean, that kind of sums it up what you say. Give him, give him 10 best plays, you know, not just a predictable one play, not just two plays. Like he's got to have some plays that are going to get the they're going to get the defense off kilter, you know what I'm saying? Like we got it. We got to be able to put him in to be like a change of pace back. You know, it's got to be something that just changes that offense up just a little bit to give the defense something different to look at. Now can I say this if it's third and 1 1/2? Occasionally you put him on that field and just let him plow his 6 foot, three turn and 35 pound frame forward and get the first down. I can be predictable. I can be predictable. We saw that with the Eagles last year and how they perfected that.

29:10 Sneak on like what 3rd and 4th and two they get 3 yards. If you're getting decent push and you got a quarterback that that size that can get low and push the pile, predictables are because it's effective. The problem is is when you're predictable on first or second down with your with your second quarterback in the game and they know all right well it's it's first down they put in this quarterback expect quarterback power like we we can't get to that point if if they if they know what to expect every time drones walks in the game then that that's going to be a problem. That's what we need to avoid if we can avoid that, I think. The two quarterbacks set up here could work. For us could work. I've been watching Swamp Kings on Netflix, so they two quarterback system was working pretty good. Maybe we can take a, Maybe we can take. A.

30:03 We lost you again there. But yeah, although the Chris Leak does not get the respect he deserves in circles, so. We're going to move over to the wide receiver tight in room. I put those together because that is the skill positions to me and after what we heard from coach today with Nick Gallo seemingly questionable for this game, potentially questionable for multiple games, I think Benji Goes now has got to be the go do it all tight in. Although Daquan White look like maybe he gained some some weight and some muscle, showing up at about £250. But we've seen Benji again, I think in the spring and not in the spring game, but of his build, he's that guy can go in there, play in line, play H, probably flex out. So that's a big piece for me because they did name them. Looking at the depth chart over here, it's Benji or Dequan is the second time in behind Nick.

31:02 I think Saturday night they're going to be basically one and twos. Yeah, I mean I think you know you're seeing, I think when we look at the depth chart here and you got Benji above Daquan. I think the thing there is that Benji is definitely the more all around tight end, right, probably more in line with what we expect from Gala, whereas right is definitely more of a joker type tight end do it all. So you'll probably see him in. Different packages that you may see Benji in Benji would probably be in every, you know, 11 tight end set, whereas you know right might not be on the field if it's just a an inline tight end, single tight, tight formation. So that's probably the difference there. Yeah, go ahead.

32:00 Tell me what you got. Another thing that we got to think about is right. You know, being. I don't think he's 100%, you know, I think he's been a little nicked up. You know, he didn't play in the in the spring game and then I think they said he had some kind of little issue during fall camp. So we don't know exactly where he's at as far as health goes. So I think that's going to be something else to to monitor too because it's football man. You going to get injuries? You know, so how? Do you play through it? How do you play through it? What's that? What's the next man going to do when he steps up and has to has to go? Absolutely single. What do you got for this room? The big thing I've got, the thing that we struggled with all of last year.

32:43 I need Daquan, right? I need Feldon. I need Lane. I need them to feast on those intermediate routes. We were awful in that area all of last year. If it wasn't deep and down the sideline or short right right in front of the line of scrimmage, we weren't really doing a whole lot with it. We need to take advantage of that area of the field because that is what moves the sticks and sustained drives. If we're struggling with that against ODU, I'm going to be worried going forward. Yeah, definitely. I mean pretty much the segue until the next point that we have kind of stand on that piggybacking on it.

33:24 But going to the next point, it's the yards have to carry as well, but the yards have to catch. It's like all of the people that you're naming, like I seen Felton catch one in the spring game and get hit. I mean a lick, lay it on him, but he fell forward for like 3 yards. So that's better than falling back with three yards, you know what I'm saying? It may not show up much on the stat sheet, but if you can catch a 5 yard out and you fall forward 3 yards and that's eight yards, you know what I'm saying? So that's you know, second and two third and two instead of second and five, you know, so things like that second. And two, opens up that play action. So I mean, there's a. Whole lot you can do with second and two, there's a whole lot you can do give that third and short versus that third and medium so.

34:11 But it's but it's also and this will go back to both the quarterbacks though it's it's getting people comfortable. A little short 3 yard slant or a little, you know, 5 yard dig and you can hit it a couple times. You feel good, right? You. Feel better? You have some confidence you can throw. You make a good, you make a good out pattern. Make a good out pattern and he it's 6 yards and and he breaks the tackle and he's up. The next thing to know it's like he's going to sit hard on that route. He's going to sit hard on that route. So maybe Tyler throws up. What I've got to talk about is I want to see what the route concepts look like because I think they are going to look different this year than they did last year. I think we have.

34:52 I think we have two really skilled guys with Jennings and Lane. I think Jennings can do the whole tree. I think Jennings is going to be all over the place. We know Lane on the slot and and then we talk about the growth of Stephen Gosnell. Stephen Gosnell looked solid running routes last year. He did. He didn't look bad running routes, but The thing is he wasn't there as a player yet. I mean he'll he'll white wire receiver they that's what they good at. But he won't. Barely. He's gonna have the routes down. Come on now. But even in the like if you go back and look at him in the spring game and you watch his routes that he ran it's pretty clear and he he was doing it like I'm watching him even on some passes that he didn't catch and I'm like hold on that defense like you you looking he put some people on some skates man like so you know he he definitely I think the route concept is going to be different this year which we need it you know what I'm saying Like you can't just run it. You can't just run a go route.

35:52 You got you got to have some stuff different and it all ties into what we're saying. When you talk about intermediate pass game, you talk about you are set at the after the catch. When you talk about hitting, laying on a bubble screen hitting laying on the slant, go watch him. Against Miami last year, a lot of the plays that he made was him making the play, making one man miss and then beating everybody else to green to you know green grass. So that's what we need to see. That's what's going to take us to beating these teams that we're supposed to beat and and by a lot of points and hanging in there with some teams and beating them at the end of the game. 100%, All right, I'm going to flip this up here. Good question from one of our watchers tonight, Ellis Savage, because we're going to talk to Brother Savage, Ellis Savage, Ellis, how you go on that?

36:47 Curtis Ellis, it's I watch BSBS high as well. I don't think it's on Netflix though. I think it's on. I think it's on. Max, if I ain't mistaken and if y'all hadn't watched that, you need to go watch it. It's about that Bishop Sycamore stuff. Man, that stuff is fucking nuts, man. Like, I'm talking crazy. Like I can't even believe some of the stuff I'll say. But anyway, go ahead, Curtis. First of all, I ain't got time. I got like 6 shows in the can. I'm still catching up on. And yes, he agreed it is HBO. Max is bad, but let's talk about We got to talk about the running backroom in general. But if y'all saw today with the kick return, both Tooten and Thomas are one of the two of the three four kick returns.

37:35 Ellis. Not a fan of that, clearly. Y'all neither tally tally your Aunt Tigler. You know, I'm not a big fan of it either. I would prefer. So we got two. Then Thomas, if you said one of those was the kick returner paired with somebody else as the two maybe Thomas, let's say I'd feel a little bit better. I don't like that that both of them are potentially out there as the kick returner. That gives me a little bit of pause, but as far as especially up to see in Thomas's health history. Yeah, you know, just keeping it real. Too was nicked in the spring game he had a little nick to.

38:16 Start a camp. So I mean both of them have not been obviously Thomas has had, you know, historical health problems you know too not so much, but has been nicked in the time that we've known him as a hokey. So it definitely gives you a little bit of pause to say, all right, we got both started running backs, one with injury history. We'll be doing here at the same time. You want your two best back there. If these are the two best, then you. Know can we just put one at a time though, so there's no chance both of them get hurt on the same leg. That's all I had. I won't need nothing neither, whatever you hurt at all, I. Won't need one of them get hurt, but I don't need both of them getting hurt at the same time, so just really take two running backs. But let's also say this a lot of times with kick return, they'll throw, they'll throw a depth chart out there and then when you actually look at this.

39:03 It's like this. It's not the same. Well, another thing with me that kind of threw me off is because I feel like this year we actually have some pieces that can be back there. Besides, you're starting running back, you know what I'm saying? That's. True, whether you talk about Cole BIC like what is he going to do with the didn't. Bryce. Duke, have one last year. Bryce, you know we got a. Big return last year he didn't have. He didn't take it for the house, but he got Jalen, Like you got a lot of people who we can, I feel put back there and just see what you're going to see, what we get. Yeah, Champ. Champs Black was in that spot last year. A lot too. So I mean, and I I kind of agree with what Curtis is saying.

39:44 I don't think we see like you put a depth chart out there, but who knows whose trots out there? Hell, you know what I'm saying? That's just, that's just to make, you know what? They got us talking about it, right? They got Andy and David and Bitter, I mean, and Barber and everybody's tweeting about it. We're talking about it. Fine, but let's get to the running back room in general. Mr. Sigla, what are you got two on here up front. What are the two things you've got to see Saturday night from the running back room? First thing I need to see get to and involved in the passing game early. We we saw with looking at the tape from NCA&T like what what he can do. I'm excited to see that in a hokey jersey. So get him involved in the past game early, get him in space, let him make a couple guys miss.

40:36 He's got good size, he's elusive. He can, he's got some breakaway speed. I just want to see this guy get the ball in space, especially when we're still, you know, we we want to establish the run game early, but we also want to be able to generate yards without having to run between the tackles all the time. Getting the ball to your running back in space at the line of scrimmage can kind of give him an opportunity to to get some yards. Without having to, you know, stick their neck in there with those big defensive tackles and linebackers, Yeah, I mean I get, I get you on that. And I think the thing about the tuning in the passing game too, again, and and I look forward, it's going to be chances where if you're running a little RPO where it's like a flare, that linebacker is going to void, right?

41:22 Because he's going to go with tuning and it's there's going to be gaps. There's going to be gaps up the middle. Again, Grant's got to pull it and just say, you know what, that's four yards right there. The safety's going to come crash me. I'm going to get hit, but I'm going to go it's second and six. Now we're third and two, right? Right. There's going to be things like that. Now another piece I'm looking for is we know two and Thomas are wanting to two, clearly to one and then clearly the two in more of a 1-2 punch. As coach was saying today, I want to see what happens after that. I want to see because we know Coney's out coach. Coach Price said that today in the press.

42:04 So we will not see him. He's been talking him up, but it's black and Duke and the reason I say we've got to see who's the Next up, who do the coaching staff have faith in, Because now I'm thinking six months down the road who might be in the portal. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Like you said, it's like. You got Black and Duke in that room. We've seen them make some plays on the field in games. What are we going to see? You know what? What? Who's going to be in? Who's going to get some burn? How many points are we going to score so we can see some of the second team people. You know what I'm saying?

42:44 Like in games, like what we should see this weekend, we should go out and thrash this team. So we can put the second team in so people can see, and it might cause some controversy if everybody goes out and plays great. That's what we want everybody to do. But you know, do we get to see drones play a lot of steps? Do we get to see, you know, Bryce Duke get in and score a touchdown? You know, I don't know. But it all comes down to how much we're going to score to see how much playing time those backups get. Can I make a point? And we keep talking about it over and over in game. We need to do this to get them in game reps because as as you've said before, Italian Sigler, you said it to me plenty of times. Some guys are good in practice and sometimes guys are okay and then the lights turn on.

43:32 Some guys, when the lights turn on, guys are great. And the guys who's good in practice, he actually ain't that good because the moments are too big. Well, also let's talk about if we're talking about drones too, in this case with the running game, that's somebody that doesn't really get to be hit in practice. So just being able to show what he can do in the running game in a live game is going to show a different degree of his playmaking ability that he's not really able to show in practice. So outside of what he was able to do with Baylor and things like that, we haven't seen what those tools look like live, and the coaches haven't seen a ton of it either. So you know, maybe that's a difference maker in terms of how how we start the season versus how we end the season for on that front. So that's just something else to watch in the running game. I know we're talking about running backs right now just but but since we kind of very veered into the the Drones territory again I wanted to make that point. Well it's got to be talked about too because he he is a part of the running game.

44:32 They are. They're both should be parts of the running game. And again the the deeper you get into it is for me it it it would stink if we go up like a really big score and then drones gets all the run, but he gets all the runs with the lesser guys. That to me that sucks. It's really good for them because they're both younger guys. You know where Malik, excuse me too. He's a younger guy too. But you kind of want to see him with the big guys too. That's why it's going to be very important to them to drift them in. All right. Let's talk about offensive line next. And tally, I will start with you on this one. What don't you want to see? Stay on fucking sides.

45:16 Don't just don't fall start, man. I mean I can't remember one game we like had eight of. I don't know how many we had. I had all the boys here. You can't. You can't win games like that. You know, you got to, you got to stay on sides, you know, if any, if we're going to get any penalty, I want to get a penalty of somebody like gouging somebody's eyes when they got them on the ground or something, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, just do something crazy and get a a unsportsman like that. Get nasty. You know what I'm saying? Like stop jumping off sides and giving them an extra 5 yards. You. Know getting penalized There needs to be a finisher. They don't need free Snap. Yeah, they. Got to be doing something. They don't do this free like you ain't even get hit yet and we already giving them yards.

46:01 So no, no unforced. Yeah, No unforced stuff. Yeah. And I mean, I'm a piggyback on that. I mean, we're talking offensive line here. This is the ODU team that lost most of their defensive front. They're almost completely brand new on both sides of the ball this year. There's no reason that we shouldn't average 5 yards per carry against this team. Combined quarterbacks and running backs? I don't think that's. That's something we can necessarily aspire to for a season outlook. I think we can take more baby steps on that regard, but against this opponent, 5 yards per carry should be a good team average.

46:44 Yeah, at least. Need to see some big runs. Need to see some big holes? Yeah, And that's the thing I'm going to be looking for. And again, Sigler's going to be over at the house Saturday night watching the game with me. I'm going to be bugging the crap out of him because we know Crooks teaches different coaches different. It's going to be a slightly different style. So the question is how do the run concepts look? How do they look different than last year? Is it better technique? And I was listening to the Crooks interview from last week and excuse me, listen to his interview, didn't listen to Xavier Chaplin's interview. And it was a mention that Xavier talked about how Coach Crook doesn't try to correct him practice. He doesn't try to correct him practice.

47:26 He gets it on tape. He gets there in the film room. You're staring at it. That's where he starts coaching you up. And I was. I was going back and forth, I sent Robbie a message. I sent both of y'all and y'all kind of elaborate how that can help an offensive lineman because to me, the answers Y'all gave were great. So I'm going to let y'all kind of speak on those a little bit. So I think like my basketball coach did it best, he would take a practice, but it would be like a, you know? Pregame practice day before a game or something and we'd be scrimmaging. He would set a camera up and he would sit down. You know the plays, you know the plays. Talking about the two teams, go run your plays.

48:09 He wouldn't say nothing. Tape doesn't lie. That's what he said. If I come to you and tell you, hey, you ain't giving me full effort, then you're going to say in your mind I'm going as hard as I can coach, but then you look at it on tape and you loafing. Then I can coach you. You know what I'm saying? Tape does not lie. What What you put on tape is what I see is what the fancy is, what is what you're doing. You know what I'm saying? That tape's going to show us what plays you're taking off. So that's a good, a good teacher to show you, you know, when what you're doing. I got you on tape. You're here. I'm here. Let's correct it now.

48:50 Yeah, I'm with that too. That that's exactly what the the mindset that I was thinking there. When you look at practice, you got a finite amount of time and practice to get through everything you need to get to, right. So you're meeting anyway, you're you already got the time scheduled in the meeting room. I'm going to do my correcting in the meeting room where I've got something I can point to and say here's what you did, I can pull other cut out, cut ups together and say here's what you should be doing. I can do that, get that visual there and and make sure that what I saw on the field is actually what happened. Because sometimes we see stuff in real time and it looks either better or worse than it actually is, right? We can look at the film, watch it two or three times, maybe four or five times, and kind of really dive in and and break down what each individual player did across the line. We'll have a better idea of what went wrong and what went right on that play.

49:50 Seeing that one time in real time and trying to correct that, you might be correct in things that you don't need to correct and you might miss something that you know you can correct later. So it's just a better use of time in my opinion, approaching it from that perspective in one piece. Tally, you didn't say, I'm going to say what you said here, he wants them to play, not think and I think let's go last year we talked about those false starts. Y'all, you said it numerous times on Twitter. Segler said it on his program. We fought too much playing offensive line. Your job on offensive line and and tally you were in inland tight in what's your job what's your. Job, you got to go hit, you got to block, you got to find somebody, you got. To find somebody you cannot think, you cannot think. And I think, and I think it's the time and two with Crook being hired because he's been doing this for a long time, you know, I'm sure he's had all kind of. Different personalities and attitudes that he's coached. With him being hired so late in the process, he had to learn what he had pretty quick and he's still learning. So certain kids, you can't push them at certain points. Like a game.

51:04 I might lose you if I say, like if I get on your ass, you know what I'm saying? It's kind of like I'm with my son in baseball. It's only certain times where I really can. Get to him and say what I need to say. I just got to let especially when he's hitting, I just got to let him hit, you know what I'm saying. And then if he, if he, if he gets under the ball or if he does something, he'll come ask me what I did, what did I do? But guess what I'm using recording it. I'm using recording and I'm going you keep opening your front side you know your front shoulder is popping up your back shoulder is dipping too quick so you're popping the ball up. You know you got he's learning what his kids can do during these. Fall camp and a little bit of summer that he's been there.

51:46 I think that that's why he's had that kind of approach that he's had because the last thing he wants to do is him to go, hey, you ain't blocking nobody and then this kid's in a funk the rest of practice. And so now I've wasted a whole practice and we don't have many practices before this game. Now I think we, of course, and being a coach, you're going to see him coaching, you know, into the game and into the season. He's going to handle that a little bit different during the games than he has, but I think he had to do this getting up until the getting ready for the season. Yeah. And then you also got, you know GA's and other other members of the staff that. And as groups are rotating in and out, like when you go from the ones to the twos, twos to the threes, you know they're, they're going to the side and saying all right on this play you might have did this and they're giving those like micro corrections as they're going along.

52:41 You know, the crook's probably, you know, over there watching the big line, you got those guys giving those minor corrections. But what you're also not doing in that case, you're not calling the guy out in front of the whole team. You know, you're not stopping the flow of practice just to just to make that correction. So you're being more efficient. You're still getting those corrections done during the practice, just not by crook directly. And then you're getting crook diving into the tape and pointing out those corrections and how to make those. Those changes going forward, absolutely. The one last piece and and this and I'm going to just put this on here and we're not going to say anything else before we flip to the next one. Don't play down, don't play down, go play, go attack, go drive them out of the way.

53:24 And I'll always say this, make them not want to be on that field come to third quarter like like I don't coach, I don't want to go back out there. They keep hitting us. They keep slinging us. Xavier's driving me and riding me to the ground and putting 330 pounds on me every time and he slapped in my head afterwards. That's what I want. Don't play down to this team real quick. Before we go to break, we're going to talk about special teams. We got a couple pet peeves here. I'm going to start with mine. I want to see Peter Moore from two years ago when Peter Moore used to boom punts. You know, I think that I think having a new special teams coach is definitely, you know, one of those things you see can definitely take it on. But Peter Moore went from averaging almost 45 a punt last year to under 42, three.

54:16 Some people say, well, what's 3 yards, 3 yards over the course of the seasons is a couple football fields and that's a lot of field position. And I understand when you change coaches things can happen. But I all say Stew Holt's always been a good special teams coach wherever he's been, so hopefully it's the season of Gellin. He gets back to booming them and we can pin some people deep. Sigla, what you got? So we got a new place kicker, We got John Love in there. All I want to see is no misses inside 40 man. Consistently make those those not gimmies, but very makeable kicks. If you make all of your makeable kicks, then you know we'll see what happens.

55:01 You know, outside of 40, Outside of 50, it sounds like love may not be taking the the long kicks, but pretty much anything probably inside of 50 is going to be his territory. And if it's inside of 40, I need that to be pretty much automatic. All right, Tally, what's your one Piece home? Listen, good execution, whoever. I don't need to know. Dante Ramanovich or whoever the fucking long snapper is, I don't even need to know your name. I don't need to know your number. I don't need to know what high school you came from. Because if I know too much about you, that means you've done something wrong. If you snapped this ball over that kicker's head and they get a touchdown on it, you need to get on that bus and go back to Norfolk with them.

55:51 Like you, you just can't do it. You cannot do it. This year, we don't need to give up any points on special team that we don't have. No business giving up good execution. No matter if it's on punt, kickoff, field goal, whatever. Just go do your job. If your job is to snap, just snap. If your job's to hold, just hold. Don't hold, but thank it don't do. This that child said no. No taps to go from Norfolk to Newport News this time. Come on now. All right. So there it is offensive and a little bit of special teams there. When we come back from our break from our digital partners and our Main Street pharmacy partners, we are going to talk about the defense. I can probably save you a lot of money and I can take a lot better care of you.

56:39 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. I'm a pharmacist. My uncle's A pharmacist. My dad's a pharmacist. I remember he would give me M&M's to count in little pill counters. This is something I've always done, and I'm just lucky that what I know so well is something that I can do and feel good about it and get back to people. Pharmacies are your frontline defense. Pharmacy's job is to make sure you're getting optimal care for the lowest price possible. Also, we take the pressure off of emergency rooms. I'll tell people immediately when they need to go to the doctor, or I'll tell them if they just need a cream over the counter. If there's something that isn't commercially available, if it's something that's not available in a certain strength or a certain form or anything like that, we'll make it tailor made medications. Some of those options save people a lot of money. What motivates me?

57:27 I get to take care of people in Limit Blacksburg, I thought. Neat. 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. All righty and we are back, and we're going to talk a little defense. Before we talk defense, I I got to agree, Andretti's been putting stuff up here. I haven't had a chance to get to it. But yes, I think we all. Want to ask? I don't know if y'all been watching and really been coming on strong like the last three weeks. Yes, he has.

58:15 He's put some good stuff and then we get off the topic and I see, yeah, tonight I won't. And I and. Yeah, because we do want a nasty ass defense. We do want some lockdown corners, We want an edge, we want an X man there. So that's. For you right there, buddy. Oh, that's some names. That's some names right there. So all three of those guys play live. All three of those guys, they were all. One of them, one of them been on the show. One of them been on this show. Yes, he has. That man in the middle down tap has been on this show. But let's talk about the defense boys and let's talk about the defensive line. And I'm gonna throw a little stats at y'all.

58:55 I'm gonna let y'all jump off of it from here. So last year, Hokies averaged just over 2 sacks per game. Y'all me how? With the ODU game? How? Many. We got 111. We had one sack last year. And they were not in that game. I think we've got to have the defensive line set it off and I think tally you, you've been bringing him up, you've been looking at him. You know who it is. Yeah, Power Rollin, man. I mean, we need him to be disruptive with everybody knows. I mean, what what have we seen on the tape? The spin move like. The. First time that I see that spin move used in a game and work, I might have to buy a new TVI, might knock my TV down, You know what I'm saying? Because it's been a while since we've had, you know, a defensive lineman, a defensive end in particular, just be dominant, you know, or just, you know, show us something like that. So, and we've had some good defensive end and not taken away from anybody that we've had, but just to. You know get to that.

1:00:03 I think somebody said on one of our other on our other shows maybe it was the, the. Dwight Preview Yeah, we were talking about who's the last person to have 10 sacks, but it was Kenny Cannon. Like, that's a long time ago, you know what I'm saying? So where you get those? 10 years at this point we're pushing 10 years where you get those sacks, that is. I mean, yeah, you want to get some sacks against Florida State, but when you play teams like Waffle, then you play teams like ODU, you go and pad your fucking stats. If you can beat that man in front of you, you go beat him every play. You get to that quarterback, every play if you can.

1:00:43 So go out there and get you 2, 1/2, three sacks. That's what I want to see. Yeah, yeah, I think that definitely need to see a big game for Pal Ryland right at the gate and I think we need to see some some big things from these other three guys. I think we need to see Burgos name the starter. This week. Today, I'm surprised by that a little bit. I ain't gonna. Lie. That's that's big surprise. Yeah, because that that tells me that the level of play, not counting APR, has also been leveled up, right? Because we saw Nelson last year, we saw McCray last year, we didn't see Burgos last year and we did Burgo. Burgos is taking significant snaps away from those two. That tells me that we have leveled up based on what we already had on the roster before APR got here. I don't think I called his name, but I think he was on the BMF awards.

1:01:30 Yes, he was on the yes, I think his number. I think his number stood out on the BMF awards. Yeah. And I think we know a little bit more why a guy like Kyrie Boyson decided to move on, right? Because I, you know, we we talked about him maybe being like the fourth or fifth guy, you know, depending on what Burgers did. But if Burgers is leveling up like that, I mean that's that's big man. And then? You know, you know you're gonna get solid play from from Nelson. You know that Mccray's gonna be able to to flash from time to time he's put on some more size. So you know I'm excited to see what they can do. But coach process today, when when Burgos is in there with APR, they just make more plays. They make more plays.

1:02:13 Hey, somebody put that put this up right here. What low country just put? In hello country, all right. Put that. You gonna make him on it? Put that up. If he has 12, actually we've been it's been a decade for since we've seen 10. If he gets 12 low country, we sending you, we sending you some merchandise. If if he gets 12, then Curtis's prediction of eight's definitely coming out, yeah. Yeah, he is 12. The eight's definitely coming out because they ain't going to know how to game plan for us. But we keep talking about that line and stuff and the what I'm looking for Saturday night, we can get one that that'll be just fine, just fine. No, we need more than that.

1:02:56 But go ahead, Curtis. Listen to me, Listen to me. Theory, man. That first pop, he gets hit hard. Grant Wilson back there, He gets hit hard the rest of the night. He's short. Arming it. No relationship, OK, OK. Short arming. It He's sailing it. So you telling me Grant Wilson's gonna turn to Grant Wells from last year? If if Apr hits that spin move, it hits them hard the first time that kid ain't gonna know what to do with the ball. He's gonna know is I'll tell. He's got, I'll tell you. Something after me fast. I'm getting rid of this thing quick. Hey, I will take one second. Four picks all day. You gag them, right? I would take 4 picks all day. But it's setting. But I agree with you, right? I agree. It's the tone.

1:03:37 We go out there and have five sex. Great. We're going, we're going to know about it. They're not. They're going to be behind the chains all night. If we don't, if they're constantly getting rid of it, if it's constant pressure, if they're constantly worried about what's happening, then you know, that's what we got to see. And then let's talk about the inside guys. You know, they're they've got them five there. Darius Payne did make the 2 deep with Wilfred Penne. We didn't see any young guys. These are all older, you know, Pain might be able to come back one more year because of the Achilles. He might be able to do a medical red shirt. Panay's back and Fuga's back next year, guaranteed. But the two guys who kind of lead that unit in Kendrickson Pollard are gone.

1:04:24 And you know, I think somebody, somebody, and I don't know who it's going to be, y'all got anything about on the inside? Who? Who do y'all feel like y'all got to see on the field this year at D tackle at some point to start doing things? I mean, I don't, I don't just have somebody that I would just say I got to see, but I would love to see a kid like Law, you know what I'm saying? Like I'd love to see him in just sheer sizewise, but I don't know if he's there yet. You know, I haven't heard much about him. But when you start getting up in games and you're able to play some young people, you you never know, You know, you may you may get to see somebody get in and get a tackle for a loss or just make a tackle, you know, get a game tackle in lane under the lights.

1:05:14 You know what I'm saying? You don't know what kind of confidence that builds for the rest of the season, you know, just to be able to get in and and and and show something. So I'm going to be excited to see who they rotate in. Yeah, I'd be interested to see what he does. I'd be interested to see if a guy like Malachi Madison makes any makes any run this year. Was he hurt, though? Yeah. Didn't he do something to his knee? Maybe. Yeah, I couldn't see if he was done for the year or what he was done, but I can't remember guy, guy like him, maybe getting some run, you know, are we going to see a gun or giving sight?

1:05:54 And if we get up, that's a good name. That's a good name. I think some of y'all went out. I think I went out. What about Malachi? Because Malachi was the guy last year who flashed the most like he was looking like he could do something. But we haven't heard his name in a long time, right? That's who Brian was just talking about. Malachi Madison. Yeah. I think that's when you went out. Brian was talking about him. We were trying to remember if he's hurt. I thought something. I thought he got hurt, like you have a knee injury or something. That might be the case in that, but from this line on the inside, I hope one young guy flashes, if not the portals got to be hit hard next year. But I'm going to be interested because they're keeping pain at that D tackle position.

1:06:39 I'm wondering if there is some sort of package that he's staying in there for strictly nickel situations because that seems like to be the way. And let's talk about nickel. Hey yo, I'm so ecstatic boys. We finally got a nickel on the death chart. Like a truth. If they literally say Derek Canteen is going to be the nickel, y'all know how excited I am for years. We need a nickel. We need a guy who plays cornerback to play nickel corner. I'm excited. I think you're going to be a ball or two, man. I think you'll have a good year. I mean, again, whenever you just hear and I know it's football talk sometimes, but watching that kid, the first time he steps in lane, he gets that tip pass from Jalen Stroman and he picks it off in the spring game, like, dude, I think he's going to be a baller. Yep.

1:07:30 And now Speaking of Stroman, that's one of the points I kind of want to make about what I I'm interested to see Saturday night, because I want to see how Chris Mark calls the game with Stroman back in free safety, because Stroman is a true free safety. I love Tamari Connor. Tamari was a strong safety playing free safety. Was a nickel linebacker playing free safety. Jalen Stroman is a legit NFL free safety. Argue with me what you want to say. He is a NFL free safety. You look at his body tight, Jalen, 61, he's 200 pounds. We know he hits. We know his movement. When you have somebody like that, I always go back to Kyshawn Jarrett.

1:08:11 Who Kyshawn was More of a box safety, but is a little bit more athletic when you have those true free safeties. Y'all can Y'all can attest to it. You can do a lot more upfront, you can do a lot more schematic because that guy's got this side of the field to that side of the field that he can get there. Yeah, I mean we we saw it in the spring game, man, with the instincts to break on that ball and get the tip. I mean that you can't really coach that. That's just something that's, you know, it's innate that that type of intuition so. You know seeing him take the next step this year I think it's going to be big for this defense. I want to see him make some of them big plays like we saw in the spring game against ODU and again at to Curtis's point seeing how Marv calls that and how how he's going to deploy his safeties in particular Stroman in this game is is what I want to see. The other thing I want to see, since we're talking about safeties is you know how much run are are most and and Jalen going to get?

1:09:15 They kind of in the in the 2D over there because they too deep, you know most looks like a man. Most looks like a man he's, you know he's a freshman. But he's he's he's, he's one of them. Them BMS we talked about and you know Jalen switching sides of the ball already, you know jumping into the too deep making some noise here. I want to see number one. I want to see them get some some quality snaps #2 I want to see what they do with them. Yeah, the the two say Jalen especially because there were guys who were in that room that had been defensive back to their whole life and that's what they got recruited for. He's the 2 deep guy that tells you and they talked about he took them into mentality.

1:09:57 He took that competitive mentality and ran with it. Tally, what are you looking for, man? I mean, what killed us last year? When we think about ODU, you know. Ollie Jennings, you have a girl. You have a pretty good game on defense Until what? The last series, maybe the next to the last series, and you get big play here, we're going to just throw one up and our cornerback gets turned around and Alan Jennings, you know, catches a deep pass on us. That gets them to about the five. We can't have any big players from ODU, you know, 5 yard run, whatever. You know, they may get a first down, whatever. That's football.

1:10:39 We can't have no explosive plays to a team like this. You don't want to be in a dogfight with a team you're supposed to be because crazy shit happens when you let people who are inferior to you step around. And yes, I'm calling ODU inferior to us. We have a better team. We are playing at home. We are playing at 8:00 at night under the lights. Lane is going to be rocking. That is a game we should win again. Go ahead, Brian. Yeah, I was gonna say if Shelton Moss is on with us tonight, he'd be saying the thing that killed that defense last year was explosive plays. If you take out the explosive plays, that's a pretty damn good defense. Probably. But, but we gave up a bunch of explosive plays. We, you know, we talked, we talked ad nausea about what happened against fit, but also looking at ODU about three or four big pass plays, most of them to Olly Jennings. Is the difference between 10 more points getting taken off the board and it wasn't even good passes? No, they weren't.

1:11:37 No, they were ducks, man. They were ducks. They were throwing while getting hit. I mean, he was floating in the air. I was like, I don't know who needs to pray. I don't know who. Ollie Jennings got praise because if they want Ollie Jennings on that team, it was all going to get caught, man. Well, he's on our team this year. Yes he is. So we need, we need to make sure we get him the ball. Yeah, we just know, man, we can't have any big plays. We can't have any, you know, fluke plays, you know, is what I'll say now. I'm going to say something else. I don't have this on the run down, but talk about the too deep of the corner backroom, because the too deep is Dante Lovett. Is Braylon Jennings or Johnson?

1:12:23 Excuse me? And it's JP, not JTJP. Jonathan Pennix. We got three true freshmen, basically with The Deep, and I know Canteen and I, Delaine Mansoor and oh, I say no, no, no, I know. We get, we get, we know. Dorian, we know Dorian and we know Canteen, and we know Mansoor Delaine. We know they're going to rotate because we know all three guys can do all three positions, so. But we know just based on this depth chart, when it's a true nickel canteens going to be in that slot. I think Canteen can play that the best. Anything else Y'all want to talk about the secondary room? Yeah, let's go ahead.

1:13:07 Let's like like you said, man, let's just highlight the the three youths getting into two deep, man, because that that's big because that shows you that the dogs that this staff is recruiting are showing up and are ready to play. True. Well, it's kind of like Delaine last year, like we as hokey fans kind of knew or thought you know, oh this kid is pretty good, you know what I'm saying? Didn't have a flashy rating if you go back and look at his rating. Good off the list, not great rating, but good off the list. But casual fan would just be like Okay. You know he's another freshman.

1:13:50 He'll he'll developed into a solid player. He goes out there and takes a spot last year, you know. Well guess what Pratt comes on our show. If Y'all ain't been listening, you better go back and listen. He's been on here, he said I'm going to recruit people to bring in to take your spot. So these people that he's going to recruit, these freshmen that have come in, he's went and told them, I want you to come in and play. I'm not recruiting people to be fifth year seniors and you know, finally get a shot if you can come in right now. We won three fucking games last year. We need people who going to come in and help us win right now. And I think the freshmen have been showing that, you know, they're willing to get out there and make plays.

1:14:32 I'm going to make a point on this, and you keep hearing it all the time. You heard it from Canteen today talking about these guys come from good schools, winning programs. Fante Lovett play the DeMatha. Best One of the best in the WCAC, Right Miss Sigla. Yes, Sir. Brandon Johnson plays out here at Highland Springs 5 state titles in the last eight years. It's one of the two, probably one of the two or three best programs in the state. Went down, beat Maramar down in Miami. Didn't have a problem with them. That's they went to Daddy Johnson school and took his high school out of my town. And then Pennix went to Appomattox County. Appomattox couple years ago won the 2 eighth state title. That's a smaller division.

1:15:13 But again, you're talking about the mentality. Those guys ain't used to losing. They aren't used to losing competitive reps So you bring those guys in, you look at their body, 6 foot 196, one, excuse me, 611756180. They ain't me and Kelly, me and you keep. We've had this conversation that's like where we at they look like. Where we get to fix it back unless they playing somebody like Quan Felton, six, five, 220 pounds. But there's so many of them in the world. Right now I was. I was told by somebody that doesn't know Ball that Jonathan Pennix wasn't going to see the field until he was a senior at at best. So we know we talked to a lot of people who don't know Ball. I'm just going to play that all.

1:16:00 Right. All right. All right, let's go. We got one last room before we get to our prediction, and that's the linebacker room. And I'm going to hit mine up first just because I'm leaving it. I want to see We know County Jenkins is the lock starter. You know our our buddy right here. Ellis threw up here talking about Cotman history, what Cotman's going to do. Cotman not on the too deep at all. I still think you'll see out there cuz he's got the body tight. But I want to know how much run Woodson gets as a too deep guy. And Tally, you made a big piece about what you want to talk about talking about the young guys, right? Yeah, I mean it's let me say, I'm just thinking you had two at cornerback, then you had Woodson, so you got Johnson, Lovett, Woodson.

1:16:49 You know, Cottman probably will be somewhere in there. Like how many of these guys do we get to see and how big a jump are they going to take, You know what I'm saying? If they get in early, that's what we need. We need them to get in in these first couple of games because I feel like the the bulk of our schedule, it's probably game five is when we really start to get into some oh shit games, you know what I'm saying? So if we can get some of these early games and get some of these kids some confidence and some playing time, you know, what's that? What's that youth movement look like? How big a jump can we get from them to get ready to go into the rest of the season? Yeah, I'm with that.

1:17:32 And like, you know, especially when we talk about. You know Woodson and Copman that that's the future of that star position. So if we can, if we can see what they got early that that would be big. I'll tell you what what interested me was was to I mean you. Man, got it. Dude, he he got it. He called it last week. Keller started. Mike that. That's a big one for us. I feel like I'm excited to see what he brings to the table. Obviously athleticism out the gate. We haven't probably had this athletic of a middle linebacker. I I can't remember when if we being honest probably. You may go straight up with you. I love Vince Hall. Vince Hall was somewhat athletic. Ben Taylor CUZ Ben Taylor made it to the league and Ben Taylor was an athletic ass Mike.

1:18:18 Yeah, but you're probably right. You're probably the most athletic. Yeah. Vet. Now Vitch was athletic, but you said the most, and that's. Probably it, yeah. This is probably the fastest and quickest Mike linebacker we've seen in probably almost 20 years. And then you know the name that popped up in the 2 Deep. I know they're sitting on the run down, but I'm going to talk about it. We saw Will Johnson crack the two with two deep at will. Shot by that? And we hadn't heard his name in a minute. He's been injured most of the first two years on campus. But seeing him crack the 2 deep, that's big because that's somebody I don't think a lot of us had thought about. And if he's pushing other guys that we did think about out of that too deep spot, I feel like that's a good sign, man.

1:19:04 All he's got to do is get hit one time and have a little blood come down his nose. He's going to be a hokey forever. They're going to love him, Will Johnson. Hey, get that little blood running down your nose, man. Go look at the pictures of decks. They love him in Blacksburg. Well, but, but, but will. Johnson's a little bit different than Dax will ever, because I remember when his take came out, Brown was talking about him. Brian, you thought he could play star. You thought he was athletic? Enough. He came out. I mean, he was a he was a safety that we were recruiting as a linebacker and he's, he's got the tools there. I feel like Will's probably longterm a better fit now, especially since he's got in the weight room.

1:19:46 You know all of that. He's probably at a point now where Will is probably a better fit for him. So, but again, we talked about it. Athleticism. Athletic. I mean, look at the four, look at the six starting linebackers this year or the six in the 2 deep. We got Keller, you got Lawson, you got Johnson, you got Tisdale and see what you want to say. Tisdale's somewhat athletic. For his position and then Jenkins in the freaking nature. Caleb Woodson out of Star. Well, Sunsdale was a good fit athletically at will. He's going to be an Amatic athlete. It might, yeah. So you know something I think with this one though, because we talked about the athleticism, is I think we need to see Kalai Lawson take over this game. And when I say that, it may not show up in the stat lines, right?

1:20:39 It may not. It could be one of those games where they they drop him more in coverage, Not to worry about it. But I sit here and I and I go back to one of his analysts and I think about X. In his second year, X had some monster games. X had a game against West Virginia where he had 10 tackles, he had a sack, he had a tackle for loss. I think he's going to have games like that. I think they're still going to be growing pains, but his athleticism, I think Saturday night, depending on how they use him, I think he could wreck shop Saturday night. And I think if we see that if he wrecks shop, I think all of us like that defense.

1:21:20 It was solid last year. It has a chance to step up if they wreck shop because the levels have changed. You have we we'll go through all of them. You've got a really good secondary. You've improved on the defensive line and we just talked about it. We have athletic linebackers everywhere. All righty. Well boys, we have hit that time of the night. It's time to make predictions. Now before we throw our own predictions out there. Some of y'all have been nice enough to throw your predictions in here and I'm going to pop these up real quick. We got Low Country Living saying 3110. I'm assuming all these are Hokies, Hudson Hatfield 3817, William account 3810.

1:22:08 Anymore photos out there? We're going to be given hours, Brian. We're going to let you lead it this year, man. What do you got for Saturday nights under the light at Lane Stadium? All right, so last year we lost this game 20 to 17 in Norfolk. We gave a 10 point swing on a field goal. We had an in in a completely inept running attack. We had a bunch of turnovers from our quarterback. And we still lost the game by three points. On paper. We've gotten better. They've gotten worse. If this is anything less than A2 touchdown victory, I'm going to be a little concerned.

1:22:53 Shout out, shout out. Pete B, he's right there with it. I I was saying if this is anything worse than a 2814 game, then there's there's probably some things we should be a little concerned about. I don't have it looking that way. I've got it looking like 38 to 10. I've got us running, running the boat on them a little bit. All right, Tally. Because I'm a hokey fan and because I know how the world is makes makes me feel I got us right at 2814. I got us getting a little bit of hope. We look pretty good, but we can't look too good and get too excited because. Just enough not to worry. Just enough not to.

1:23:34 Worry that wouldn't be the hokey way. You know what I'm saying? That I got us 2814. All right, we're going to throw up a couple other scores here before I give nine. We got Ella Savage saying 2710, rescore win. And here's our big one. Justin is saying 4210, and Justin, me and you aren't that far off. But hold on there, there's the real number, right? There, there we go. There we go, got some more coming in here. Chris Martin saying a 10 point game, that's the one where if that's that game, you know what we going to do next Tuesday. We say we're going to try to cut it down this year and we going to be here while if it's 20. 13 I do not want to criticize the hell game. I understand why you put that, Chris. Yes, we all.

1:24:21 Understand why you put it. All right, So I'm going to go with this score. It's the same score I had last year and if it don't work this year, I ain't using it again. I'm saying 4117 Hokies. I'm going to go a lot of what Brian said. We've gotten significantly better in just about every facet of the game. They effectively have gotten significantly worse. I added the 17. I've decided to stick with that because I think it's going to be something like 4110 and they're going to sneak that one little score to Tally's point that makes us go away a second. Are we really all that good?

1:25:01 Why we let them score late like this? But I do see us winning. I also think if we hear the tones from the the tones from the presser today, Coach won't fucking around somebody in there. If y'all didn't hear, we won't talk about Alan Jenkins and he did, he deadpan. He didn't say we don't have anybody by that name on our team. Ali Jenkins, we don't have anybody by that name. The kid was like, well, Ali Jennings, yes, that's who we're talking about. Like, I think that probably piss Coach off more than anything. Get the name right, you. Got to get it right to pay the price, baby. So if y'all got more predictions again, throw it in there, we'll put them up. But we are going all with hokey victories here for Week 1. And let's hope it is, boys, just because I don't feel like talking a week from now after a long Labor Day weekend, it's going to be a long Labor Day weekend. Yep, yeah, all of us.

1:25:56 I got Friday off, man. I got a four day week, man. We're I'm, I'm taking Friday off. I got a four day weekend. It's going to be craziness, but Speaking of a four day weekend, it's going to be football on starting Thursday all the way to Monday night. Well, see, my son, my son's game got rained out last night. Started lightning. He plays tomorrow at 6:30. So I got football wins, yeah, Thursday and y'all play next Tuesday, right? Yes. No, no, no, no. We're off. We're off. Excuse me, five straight days of football for talent. So Tally, let me pitch to you. I know what game you got. I know this game is going to be kind of overlapping the Hokies, but I got a feeling you got your you got one and why do you have it on this one?

1:26:40 And who you taking? I'm going to say North Carolina and South Carolina mainly. You got the you got ACC versus SCC first week of the season. Drake may I think one of the best quarterbacks in college right now. We've heard a lot about this conference realignment. I think I'm going to take I think N Carolina's -2 1/2 right now I'm. Going to take it. I'm going to take North Carolina -2 1/2 on that game. I think N Carolina's going to come out. And I think they're going to, you know, show why the ACC is better, baby. We do it better over here.

1:27:22 No, I just feel, I just feel like the beginning of the season, Drake May is going to come out and he's going to start his. He's going to start his campaign. I got them winning that one and I think that's going to be a I think it's going to be a good game, alrighty. Sigler Yeah, So my game I I kind of went a little sideways on this and I wanted to do something a little different, not take some of the obvious matchups I'm looking at Boise State, UW All right. That's a that's a 14 1/2 favor for the for the Huskies there it is. I will take Boise plus the 14 1/2, but I think the Huskies take the WI think it's going to be closer than the experts think.

1:28:10 I think that's a game that can come down to the wire. That's a good game. Let's not watch this. That's also Brian, Brian, just trying to make a bet on the 3:30 game, so we actually have something to pull up at the house. We go. I'm gonna throw one up here real quick. Ellis is saying he's gonna be watching the Penn State, West Virginia game. Ellis, if you got three TV's, you can definitely do that. That's why I got three TV's, because like to watch two games at once? Boys. Here. Here. Hey, here's there. There. You gotta have one on the phone too. You got one on the phone? Yeah, you can go 4I. Got two more screens here on my computer so I could go five boxes if we want to, baby, we can go crazy. We can go crazy.

1:28:55 I'm going to Thursday night to kick off my weekend okay. I think it is going to be an absolute slugfest in Salt Lake City with Utah versus Florida line is 6 1/2 Florida. I think Utah will win the game. I think Florida covers. I think it's going to be similar to last year's games where it literally that game came down to that was a hell of a game to watch. It came down to the wire with Utah just fallen short and in so many games all over the weekend to watch the big one. I'm I'm I'm kind of glad they put Florida State LSU on set Sunday night. Yeah cuz man, if that would have overlap with the Hokie games like I'm gonna watch the Hokies. But the college football fan of me wants to watch that game, too.

1:29:43 Yeah. So thank you TV producers for finally. Getting great game last year, it was a great. Game last year, Great game last year. I'm interested to see if Duke can keep it close with Clemson. That's gonna tell a lot about Duke this year, yeah. I'm interested. You see the spread on that? See the spread 12 and a half 12 1/2? That ain't a big spread. No. One might be saying a lot about. Speaking of big spread though, y'all see the UVA Tennessee line. No. What is it? 28 1/2 isn't it? 2828 flat, 28 flat. Now that might not be enough. That seriously might not be enough. I I know you. I love you, my boy. But if y'all lose the the Tennessee, then Tennessee fans going to be on your ass, right? They only day on all day, all day. Just a couple more things to pop up here. Thomas says take the under on Florida. I think the under I think it's 44 1/2 might be right. That's 40.

1:30:39 Anything like mid 40 scares me cuz fluky things happen in college football where it's like I got this at 43 and it's somebody rode to pick six back the last second you're like, yeah. 4849 is where you start feeling a little bit more comfortable. Exactly. Cucked us down into 75. We appreciate it. We appreciate anything breaking. Y'all we've been in here an hour and a. Half nothing breaking, man. I think one thing that I do want to say though is of course all of the people, man, we appreciate you guys coming in, spending some time with us. Somebody asked the question and we have been slacking. We do have merchandise. We do have a merch store. We will start to get a little bit more active with that. Haven't even talked to the guys about it, but we want to start doing a couple of giveaways and things like that just because we do appreciate you guys interacting with us. We're trying to grow.

1:31:34 We want y'all to, you know, come in and give us what you're giving us tonight. We want that every week. We love to spend some time with y'all and we love to have the Boundary corner name out. I got to get my cups and all of this stuff on the screen so y'all can see it because Brian has been doing a awesome job with some of the stuff that he's designing. So I want to get that out for you guys to see it and. We got more coming. Yeah, and I was going to say we got more. Most of it's going to be orange. I'm going to let y'all know, but y'all just get ready. So Clark just joined in. We put Clark up here right quick, man, Clark said great show, man. We're glad you. Hey, you just better be getting ready, man.

1:32:15 It's season now. You got a job. You got a job, Clark. Yeah, job Clark. Clark. We might run into you next or not next Saturday. Yeah, next Saturday. Hopefully run into you because we've said it already. And I'll say it again, we will be in town for the Purdue game. Me and Brian are going to be pulling in sometime early Friday afternoon. Tally going to be in at the butt crack of dawn on game day. I might get the slide in Friday. I'm not sure yet. I know. I mean, it's not looking like it, but you try. I'm gonna try. You try. If you pull it, you know, you know, you know what's gonna happen. It's gonna be a fun Friday night. It's gonna be a. Fun Friday night. It can be that fun of a Friday night because I actually want to go to the game.

1:32:56 The fun of it won't be like I'm gonna be. Doing what I'm doing here if I got. Here for three guys pushing their 40s. If I gotta carry you to the game on my back, you going to the you gonna make it, don't you? Don't worry about it, Tally gonna hand me over his shoulder. He's going. To the game. Yes, Sir. All right, we'll hit you up on Friday, Clark. Under 30 hugs from Jeremy. You're right, Chris. Inner night. Let's go, Hokies, boys. Nothing else breaking. Let's wrap up this episode of the Boundary Corner podcast brought to you by Main Street Pharmacy in Blacksburg. We will definitely be making a stop by there. Definitely on Friday. Over. Under 30 hugs. Over, under, over. Depends on how much James hold on over under ten shots. OK, that's good.

1:33:41 It's going to be over 10 years for that. So the hubs is going to be over too, over just be like over. If it's Jeremy, just hammer the over on everything. Everything. Everything. Everything. I'm Curtis Wilson. I'm Brian Siegler. Jonathan Talley Visit our website boundarycornerbt.com to listen to all of our episode. Also, if you were on with us tonight, I did throw our Boundary Corner store in the comments. Click on that, take a little some of the stuff we have created there. While you're at our website, follow us Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Subscribe to our YouTube account where so many of y'all listen every week over over 1500 of y'all listen to the panel on YouTube. That is our highest number ever. We really appreciate you guys pressing that button. Also follow the podcast to see our faces. Listen to it at work on Your Drive Spotify, Amazon, Apple Podcast.

1:34:32 Our buddy Jason Long, who I believe Jason's going to be coming with us to Roanoke on Friday. He's not going to be able to make it Saturday. I got to come Friday. I got to. There you go. I got a meeting. Hey, you know what? You know what you need to do? Set all your meetings on Zoom and just just make sure that you might have to go the long way through Atlanta so you don't lose. Signal and you're there by Friday afternoon. You don't miss any work calls? Check out Jason Jason longmusic.com, all his music, Apples by Spotify, his YouTube account, Facebook pages. He's got the new album out there to cover. ZP definitely pick that up. Check it out. As always, we thank you for listening.

1:35:14 We got a new one. We got a new one, we got a new one. We got a new one. And I got one more thing. We'll let Ella start us out here. Let's go.

Know the Enemy: Old Dominion