Know the Enemy: Pittsburgh

0:45 And welcome back to the Boundary Corner Podcast along with my partners Brian Siegel and Jonathan Talley, and our special guest, The Hardest Working Man in Hokey podcast land, Mike McDaniel from The Hokey Hangover. I am Curtis Wilson. This episode is brought to you by Doctor Jeremy Counts at the Main Street Pharmacy in Blacksburg, your friendly neighborhood pharmacy located at 301 S Main St. in Blacksburg. Mike. Hey, buddy. What's up? What's going on? I thought. I thought if I came on this podcast this week, we might have a chance to actually win a game. You know, I I've been recapping all these games on my podcast. And nothing good has happened yet. So I was thinking, if I went on another Virginia Tech podcast, maybe something good would happen this week. Let's mix it up, let's let's do things a little different, see if we can get a different outcome because if we're being honest, I mean it is not look good the last three weeks. No, not at all.

1:47 It's not look good. It's not look good at all. Good evening, Lavar. Always good to hear from you, man. Down in the 75. It hasn't boys. It has been a rough last three weeks. Hokie sit at 1:00 and 3:00 after the 24 to 17 lost to Marshall the first time they have beat the Hokies in 83 years. That's right, 83 years. Right down. Big Yikes. And before we get into all that, got a couple things. Obviously we always are pumping it rally for Robbie this year to support testicular answer. Not sure what lot it's going to be in yet trying to get with Grayson on that.

2:28 Look at that. Once we know we will tweet it out, go visit get yourself one and it will be always at the pharmacy 7 dollars, then they'll only they do accept them only cash there. Before I get into the game, there's two things we got to talk about. First of all let's talk about Pop Watson. He was suspended indefinitely. He has since been reinstated and has also been. This is what happens when we record before the the Tuesday presser man. Like we we don't get to actually talk about the news when it happened, and now it's like it's already over. Yeah, surprise, we glad. We glad that's over.

3:10 Definitely glad it's over. But I mean like, you know, we had, we had talked about it elsewhere off camera here like. Indefinitely definitely got taken with and ran. But I mean that's if it's only one week, that's when you know just say it's one week or say it's pop. Needs to take some steps before he's back with the team. Don't say indefinitely and definitely makes people think he's out till November. And then don't don't forget, somebody comes up and says, well, the last person that was. Suspended and definitely killed a man. I'm like, Jesus Christ, we can't. We can't win, man. We can't win on Twitter. We can't win on the field. We fucked up all around.

3:53 Thank you, Virginia Tech. Twitter. You keep my started. And and it's and it's started with Fry winning every press conference and winning over everybody and now it's like every little thing gets deadpicked when you only win four out of your first 15 games. So. That's what happens. Oh yeah, Oh yeah, everything will be nitpicked. Can't even tweet the one and no graphic anymore because that's going to get trolled all the hell. Oh yeah, they killing it. I've seen one of the coaches say something about God or or or or. Thank you, Jesus. I saw that. And somebody. You gonna have to Was it winner, Marv it? Was one of the two. I'll go man. I'm smart. Marv is smart for sure.

4:33 It's Mark. I had them messed up. Y'all it was Mark. Messed up. Hey man, some of y'all out there. Ruthless man they are. Ruthless they are. Ruthless for them. It's a passionate fan base, man, but that's why we show up in 65,000 in the seats for a one in three team coming off a three win season. It came sold out. Super interesting to see it sold out beforehand. It'll be interesting to see second anyway. You see network. How many people are actually there? I'm not going, Mike, you going this week? He lagging a little bit. I think we lagging Tally, you ain't going obviously. See you. Ain't going, are you? I'm not going. All right, We'll let him. We'll let Mike get sorted out here. He is lagging there, but let's talk about the other thing. It broke today.

5:21 I think this had been in the works for quite a while where the Hokies are moving their home game headquarters from the Hotel Roanoke to Blacksburg at the Inn in Blacksburg. This was a David Teal article. It is going to cost the department about 100 + K more a year. But I mean, if you've got something that can accommodate, there we go. He came back. He left again, left again. Well, that might figure it out here. But if you have the amenities in Blacksburg to keep the team 5 minutes from the field, please do that. It's it's almost an hour ride with a bus up 81 to. We've had enough travel issues so far this year that we don't need to continue adding to that, to that run, right. So we don't, you know, you got a late, late plane. I mean, let's let's keep it simple. When there's something else that happened in the travel that threw things off, I can't remember what it was. Some of the Rutgers, the plane, they went there, they went back and all that stuff.

6:42 To my knowledge, nothing else travel wise happened. They did mention at one point this year like there had been some issues coming up 81 that had delayed them, which makes sense because they're roughly leaving there what, 4 hours before the game? How much of the traffic from the 75, the 804 and Nova's coming in at that point in time, getting into it 3 hours beforehand? Of course there's going to be traffic delays, right? And right now we've lost Mike, so we're going to try to get him back in here he. Said his computer crashed. He's getting back up. We're good. We will get him. But do y'all like that. I mean, y'all y'all both played, you know, collegiate ball and stuff.

7:26 You know, how far did y'all stay from your home stadium tally? Well, I mean, it was. I can see good and bad, I guess in in in why you do that? Because sometimes you want to be, you know, away just to have your team just not really run into people, just focus on the game, you know what I'm saying? But of course, we're dinosaurs now. So you got social media, they got their phones, they're going then. They're not just going to be with the team anyway and mostly everybody knows where they stay, so you're going to run in the fans there as well, so. I mean, I feel like why wasted like you said, why it caused more problems going and taking off when you can just be right around the corner or not. Yeah, I would.

8:17 When I played, he used to stay in the Wyanoke Hotel for game nights, sometimes for the home games. Big home games. We actually didn't. We didn't do it for every home game. Curtis knows that because Curtis knows I would occasionally DB for that motherfucker on on Friday nights if I didn't have to go to the hotel. Yes, he did, because he couldn't sleep too. Amped up, yeah, I mean, night before a game, if I got to sleep before two or three, if I was doing something good, even even on road trips in a hotel like it could, just I just got amped up and. That was kind of my routine. So I was like, if I'm awake, I might as well do something productive with my night.

9:00 What do you think about it, Mike? I mean, did you read the TL article or see it or hear about it, the moving from the hotel, rolling out back to the Inn at Blacksburg and what are your thoughts on it? Yeah, I read it. No, I'm here. I'm here. I'm here. Don't worry, I'm here. No, I read it. I read it. I my thoughts. My thoughts on it are, look, it makes a lot of sense, right? I think this is one of those things where, you know when your program is struggling, you're looking for a layup literally anywhere, right? And I think this is one of those things where, you know, David Teal writes his story and you know the staff is looking for anything good in a moment where the team's really struggling, things are going really poorly.

9:44 And I think when you pen this story. And you, you put it out there. Any positive press right now for this football program is good press. And being like okay, there's a reason why we're doing this. It's, you know, something that will bring the recruits, you know, around the team, have them be, you know, part of the weekend, have it be a little bit easier to the Virginia Tech. In that way they're right there on campus all weekend. I think it makes a lot of sense and I don't know why they weren't doing that before, to be honest with you. It seems like this was something that started back in the Beamer area. Again, Gladys, there also you, if you read the article, Mike, you saw too.

10:28 It was one of those things with recruits on campus Friday nights. Now the coaches, like literally can just go meet with them. They can set up visits and all that. The other big part, and this is wild, you spent how much money on the Beamer Barn. You weren't using it for walkthroughs on game days. Now they're going to use it as their walkthrough on game days versus one of the conference rooms in a Hotel Roanoke. So it makes perfect sense and all that. All right, all right, well, let's just get to it. Y'all because we can't hide it. We got a lot of people. Yeah, right. Tell us, Dwight. We got to tell the truth Tuesday. And we've got a lot of stuff, too. We got a lot of. Stuff going forward.

11:09 Mikey, welcome on board. Mike. They all love you here but we got to tell the truth Tuesday. Mike, what we do here is we talk about what went well what went bad, did anything happen we were not prepared for and what can we do better moving forward. This is a philosophy taken told to us by our buddy Robbie company. He's a coach down in North Carolina and he they developed this from Pete Carroll. So. So you know where it's coming from, but let's talk about the first one. And this isn't a long list today, it's the shortest of the year so far. But what went well? What went well? Anybody want to talk about anything?

11:51 For two quarters we run the ball pretty damn well. We did best run we had all year. Yeah, I mean, we had. Runs. We had runs. Yeah. How many yards did? Two. And average was it? Was it like 6-2 was at 9.82 almost averaged A10 spot? They should have gave him the ball like he was Jamal Anderson back with the Falcons. They should have gave him the ball 35 times. And I would have told drones you are running back until you throw for over 300 yards. When you drop back, just fucking run.

12:33 They ain't stopping us from running, so why are we stopping running? Going with the other Evans one reading go let. Me slow back down. We talked about what went well. I think somebody put the quick start. A quick start was good. You know, again, let me let me put this in slam out there right quick. I did not watch the game Saturday. My son had a baseball tournament that I was at, so we were in Coleman, Alabama, which has no service. At all. It don't sound like it had service. No, it had no service at all. So I mean, like I was getting updates on the way home. Marshall just scored again. And when I say on the way home at 8:00 at night, I'm getting updates then. But I did not watch the, you know, reading Twitter and talking to the guys, I knew what happened, but I didn't watch the game until.

13:26 Earlier today, I didn't plan to watch it, but I knew we had to do a show. I was like, yeah, I probably better watch it. So I watched it earlier today. So that's just a disclaim I wanted to put out for everybody. But the quick start was, I guess, you know, hit or or getting the text from Curtis and saying, hey, look at that, we scored y'all realized that we hadn't scored a touchdown all year in the first quarter. The only points that we had got. In the first quarter, I think was the safety against Old Dominion. It's not good, man. It's not freaking good. But we all, we all. They gave us that. It wasn't like we really earned it. They just snapped the ball into the next damn city. They gave us back 1 from 20. 20 Yeah they you know we stepped we stepped the ball into you know Williamsburg from from Norfolk and we and they snapped 1 to rolling. Blacksburg to Roanoke.

14:19 So that's right, Mike. What else? We hit a couple spots here. There ain't many bright spots. What else went well in your opinion? So this is for for 25 carries. For Rasheena Lee. The rushing defense actually played really well for 25 carries. Just want to emphasize. Disclaimer. Disclaimer. He had more. He had a couple more than 25. He had 27. He had 27 for 174 and two touchdowns. He also had 25 carries. He had 25 carries for 57 yards. He had two carries for 117 yards, 2 touchdowns. So for 25 carries, the Russian defense was very, very good. Which, I mean, it seems ridiculous to even bring this up given, you know, those were two of the biggest plays of the game right for Marshall's offense.

15:08 But that was, in my opinion, it was a step in the right direction for much of the game against the run now. Of course, you look at the two touchdown runs and what was the issue? It was it was the run fits again, right? And it's just, it keeps the rearing its ugly head. But I was actually encouraged by the rushing defense for a good portion of the game, even though, you know, it was the two carries end up, you know, constant tech and it really just led to the outcome. Yeah. And and Mike, we were talking about it just before that. You take those two runs out, they averaged 2.1 a carry. Yeah, on the other 42 carries they had, they pounded the shit out of the ball 2.1.

15:49 Wouldn't you, though, Like, oh, I would too. I mean, even if we're showing, even if we're showing a propensity to stop the run consistently, we're also showing that we will give up explosive plays in the run game. So if you keep running the ball, you're eventually going to hit something. You're going to hit one. Now there's one other actually bright spot. We forced 2 turnovers. We forced 2 turnovers. We had two picks Saturday. We didn't do anything with them, but it's still the whole. One of those was part of the fast start. So one of those worst part of the fast start. But again, we have two picks and we are, I mean, what are we up to five now? Turnovers. I think we were at 7 total last year, yeah. Something like that, Not many.

16:31 Where's John? We're on a better, we're on a better pace right now. But yeah, you know we're going to talk about a little bit. That's the part of the problem I have is that we're we're seeing. Steps up in some areas and steps down in others. And we we can't ever get those steps up to sync with the with with not taking a step back. So it's true, all right. Y'all Got anything else on what went well? That's it. That's it. Because that's it. We got a lot here. We got a lot here for what went bad. And I'm going to start this one out because this one is the one that I think could have really changed it. The what went bad. I think coach prize hyperaggressive go forward on 4th down up 7. We're already got the lead.

17:15 It's I think it's 4th and 3 1/2 from the 36. Brian you did the math. 47 yard field goal. Kick it, kick it, You go up. I think it was the 3032, it was 32, but you when I texted you, you said 47 yard field goal. We've seen John Love. He's got the leg to get there. Take it. You get them down 10. Nothing to Bonds point just a few minutes ago. Now they might not be able to just continue to pound the ball because okay, we're down. We're down to scores. Now if if they stop us and we get 2.12.12.1 we got a punt and we could be losing grass to this game.

17:57 Go ahead. It's just football. one-on-one, too. It's like most people know, when you get a turnover, what's the first thing you want to do? You want to, you want to try to go down the field, you want to try to take a shot right after a turnover. You get the ball in plus territory and you're only able to move it. You know what? 20 yards, I think 19 yards, something like that. If that much. Like why go for it on that 4th down when we can at least give ourselves a chance, You know what I'm saying? Like we just we weren't moving the ball very well, so there's no reason to. Try to go for it there in my No, no, no, no, no, Kelly, this was right after the scoring drive. This was right after scoring Dr.

18:38 We had just went six. Plays and 74 yards. But I'm saying, I'm saying on that drive, once we got the turnover, we weren't moving the ball well enough to like have the confidence of my opinion that just well we're going to throw it. You know, because I think on that, on that 4th to Aaron play, we threw it right, Like he threw. A deep Yeah, he's coming right here. Yeah, it's like, why go for that if you. I mean, it's just the wrong call all around to me. I would have rather kicked it there and go up to you because off of a turnover, if you got the opportunity to get points, let's get points. But if you're going to go for it in that situation, I feel like go for it. Go for what's been working. You know, if we've been gashing them with the run and the quarterbacks legs have been killing them, why not do that?

19:24 Gentlemen, we know there's nothing there. There's not a shortage of short pass calls in the Tyler Bowen playbook. We don't need to be throwing it 30 yards down the field. And he had three men on. I'm like, yeah, why throw it to him? And some people say, well, when Drone, if Drone starts, you got to give him the same energy. Drones definitely gets the same energy. Anybody who sets back there at quarterback is going to get the same energy. You can't make that throw. I don't care what kind of pressure you got, if you got the legs that he has, you got to. You got to take off the run. You have to. I get it. But go ahead, Mike. No, I was just gonna. I hated. I hated the play call. I didn't hate the decision to go for it. I was actually okay with that.

20:04 I mean the 47 yard like if this is inside 40 yards, right With Love I feel better about it. I get love has the leg but from an accuracy standpoint, 47 yard field goal, you miss it. You're giving a bunch of field field position anyway, right? I'm of the opinion that. You know, it's Brian's point on the short passing game. I mean, Bowen calls short passes all game long and then we decided to air it out deep down the sideline on 4th and three. I hated the play call. I mean, it was the wrong read by Drones 2, I think, right? I mean throwing it downfield, it really well covered. I mean that had no shot of getting completed. So I I just hated the play call. But the decision to go for it, I was actually okay with. I appreciate the aggressiveness because you know right out the gate you go down and score, right? And then you get in your reception. And now for the first time all season really it feels like you have some positive momentum like with a lead, right, Because we've seen some positive momentum like coming back, right.

20:58 Purdue, you're down 17, Old Dominion, you're kind of screwing around. They have a good, you know, a good third quarter start to pull away. But we, we haven't really seen tech play from the lead much this year. And so I was okay with the aggressive decision to go for it. I just really hated the play call. Mike said he was okay let pride let his nuts hang a little bit on in that scenario. Just. Be a. Little bit of strategic with what you do with. He wasn't okay with Bowen trying to let his nuts hang out going for a touchdown and a triple coverage. All right, the other one I got, and these are mine personally because I wrote these out three and outs. You know how many we had against Rutgers? Mike maybe 3 and outs we had against Rutgers, we had zero. 0. We had four versus Marshall and they came at the most inopportune times and the worst times all game and it's that's where it frustrates you because and I and I, I shouldn't say 3 and outs because you know 3 and outs 4 and outs because money downs.

21:58 We were three for 16. We were dreadful after having a good game against Rutgers and it's like, Brian, would you just say? We took the steps up in the run game. We look more competent moving the ball. What do we do on the money downs? What do we do on the three and outs? Thanks. OK, right back down. It's the old one step up, two steps back in every scenario and and and and that and that really screwed because the way we were moving the ball if we could have converted three more third downs. I say 3 or 4, three to four more third downs, not a great number, still still under 50%, but the way we moved the ball numerous times against them that that probably took one score off the board. And if you're not so awful on 3rd down in that second quarter, you probably don't get quite that many points scored on you in that quarter.

22:54 And that was the quarter that really flipped the game and put us behind the 8 ball pretty much the rest of the way out. Yep, because it was fumble 3 and out, three and out. And they went field goal or they scored a touchdown, then they scored a field goal and we didn't do anything to answer either one of those going to have. So yeah, but what else? What else do y'all have up here? We have a bunch of stuff written out here. Who wants to tackle the next one? I'll go go for one thing. Offensive line pass pro was atrocious. And we thought it was doing good, like the run the run stuff was bad at first. Now the the pass Pro is horrible.

23:36 I think we we finally hit a team that can rush the passer pretty well too and the guy that we were concerned in this in this situation got absolutely worked a bunch of key times gave up a sack bunch of like about five or six. I think hurries surrendered. I mean, it was, it was a bad night for for our right tackle. And Mike, I'll let you go. I know you're about to say something that I was, I was just gonna say it's almost like Tyler Bowen should just roll the quarterback out like he was doing against Rutgers. Why are we now having Kyron drones be a dropback passer? I don't want to dive in this too deep, cuz I'm gonna go on a little bit of a rant later on this podcast about this.

24:18 But why? Why are we all of a sudden we're we're rolling him out against Rutgers, getting him real comfortable, right? Having him kind of feel the game out a little bit as a passer. And then against Marshall we're we're just turning them into like Peyton Manning like drop back like three or five step drops. What are we doing with the passing game? I. Don't understand it. You want to know why we're doing that? Inexperienced. We have a inexperienced offensive coordinator that is picking fucking Madden plays and hoping that you're going to score on them. Inexperienced. Prior. You need to go get some experience in the coaching staff at those coordinator positions. That's what the problem is. I was disappointed that that is. So two things happened that kind of switched up the way this kind of play calling went, right?

25:06 So Bowen comes out the game, he's calling run plays. He got Kyron drones going on a quarterback power that he broke a tackling and went up for a touchdown. Good opening scheme, right? So the the, the play call sheet, he's like, I've scripted this, it's good to go. And then? The second drive you have two and put it on the ground. We get we get it get back on it though we end up getting a field goal range end up going forward on forth, down. Then the drones fumble happens and it's like every every time something bad happened on offense that butthole was getting a little bit tighter and after that drones fumble it's like all right Kyron you gonna be you gonna be thrown from the pocket for for the next two quarters and you're gonna like it.

25:48 We're gonna have maybe 2 design runs in the next two quarters for you and you're gonna like it. That would be great if you have people that was blocking. He was under duress every time, the whole game, and the only way that you could beat that pass rush was to roll the quarterback. And if you've been coaching as long as some of these coaches have been coaching, I don't understand why you don't see this, which I'll get into what when we talk about some of our stuff later on. Yeah, can we shout out Owen Porter for absolutely working? Our tackles, but particularly our right tackle. Listen, I'm on. Let me let me say something right quick, #70, #70. I don't want to call your name because I've done it too much and I think you're a great kid and you're probably going to make a great husband and you're a great son. You are not a very good tackle at this point. I'm going to tell you like I tell my own son that thirteen years old, that plays football.

26:45 He's not a football player, he's a baseball player, told him last night. They got beat 40 to 6. By a team that they shouldn't have got beat 40 to 6. I say it Enjoy this next game that you play because it's probably going to be your last football game. You ain't playing no more. That's it. We ain't time on football. We're going to go do something this productive. I'm gonna say to me, if you're a good Fisher, go buy you some reels and rods, man. Go catch something as bass. With that facial hair, if he's not a good Fisher, somebody did something. It's almost hunting season, man. We a few weeks away, Mike, anything to add on any of the offensive stuff? Because what I said it was. I called it Tyler Bowen being a Jekyll and Hyde because there were times it was times it looked like genius, and it was times it looked like what?

27:36 Yeah, his lack of his, his lack. I think his, I think his lack of creativity. So the opening script was pretty good. Obviously go down and score great. But when it comes to like big moments in the game, you know he won't roll the quarterback out. He won't make life a little bit easier on the offensive line. He won't just be stubborn in some ways and just stick with the run because you know the running game actually looked pretty good early on and then we just went away from it. I just think that he goes through these spurts in the middle of the game where he gets so inconsistent.

28:18 He's just very he's very tentative like the tight butthole comment is like that is that is that is the truth. I mean the the big time moments. I mean, he's just kind of, I want to say shrivels up, but it kind of feels that way, right? And you just, you have a feeling in the big moments. You know it's felt that way. Obviously for the first two years you just have a feeling in the big moments. The offense is just not going to come through and that's a terrible feeling. Right. I'll say this. Let me let me talk about this real quick though, because I've seen this on both sides of the ball, both coordinators and I think this goes back to the inexperience that Tally was talking about it, what Mike you were talking about, it seems like in the moment.

29:04 We get really conservative because we don't, we don't want to roll the dice and take take a chance that our players can make plays. So we end up playing it very conservatively and then that bites us in the ass. So thinking about it on defense, every time we get there's the offense is as a check with big. When we've got a blitz going, we've checked out of the blitz almost every time. We don't say I'm going to trust my guys to get home. And make this play work. Yeah. Just like on the offensive side, as soon as there's a first sign of trouble, we we get really conservative, all right, We're going to essentially become an Air raid offense for two quarters because we're we're afraid to to run the football and and potentially put the ball in the ground again.

29:50 And we're afraid that if we throw the ball deep, we might turn the ball over, like at some point you got to let your players go out there and make plays. Yep, you got to become fearless in in some point, regardless of what you are as an offensive coordinator. Mike, I'm going to do a little bit different before I pitch it to you here. I do think some of Tyler's play calls are creative. I think what you're saying is is in tight moments he does not want to get those creative play calls going and it's like that's the issue. It's not that he doesn't design creative plays. It's like this is the time to pull that creative roll out with the with with with Benji Gosnell trickling back. Right up the scene with a crosser coming where they don't know where to go and he's rolling.

30:33 So the linebackers leaving their space, the safeties are out of place. That's what he doesn't know how to do. Now agree. I agree with that. I thought he called a pretty good game. I might be in the minority here. I thought he called a pretty good game against Rutgers. I thought that execution wasn't there. I thought, I thought the play calling was pretty good against Rutgers. I thought the play calling early in this game was pretty good and then he just went away from it. And you know, again, Tech was playing from behind the 8 ball right before halftime and then on throughout the second-half and just kind of went away from what was working early in the game. Yeah, it seemed like he didn't go back to it until it's like, all right, we're in desperation mode where if we don't score on this drive, this game is over. And that's when he finally, like the the switch finally clicked.

31:14 He was like, all right, maybe we need to get back to the running game. Maybe we need to use drones in the running game to generate some offense cuz you weren't generating it consistently enough with. Air Raid concepts and a couple of inside runs with Thomas and let's talk about it tootin was very effective and Thomas had a lot of run in that second and third quarter where he was very ineffective and we just kept him on the field for drive after drive. So that that kind of frustrated me too. I don't know if that was a call by Brooks. I don't know what The Who, who's controlling the rotation there at at the running back position on a game day situation, but it just felt like.

31:57 We're getting back to a point in this We had similar criticisms of the last office of coordinator, like situational play calling is not where it needs to be. And you don't need to be great at it. You just need to be good at it. You don't need to be great. You just need to be good. All right, let's move on. Let's flip over to defense. All right, Mike, The floor is yours, man. Mike wanted to go on. This is this is the only reason he came on here. Y'all he wanted to go on this rant. So Mike Floor's yours, 2 carries, 117 yards and two touchdowns for Rachina Lee. 68 1/2 yards for carry, that's that's pretty good for two runs. Then he also had 25 other runs, went for 57 yards and averages over 2 yards per carry.

32:40 The the run fit issues are just unfathomable. I don't understand it. Like the linebacker play in particular has been so bad, and I get that. There's there's personnel issue, there's mismatched personnel. Guys play in our position at linebacker. I get all that and they're they're trying to get more athletic and more talented. There's no excuse for the run fits. That's that's got nothing like being more athletic and getting more talented at linebacker, that's got nothing to do with run fits, right? Fill the gap on the right, You call defense, you have a defensive play call. Fill the gap you're supposed to fill. And how many times this year have we seen explosive runs through the first four games?

33:21 That should never have happened. It's just fundamental football. I mean, that's all that it is. It's just fundamental football. We can have a conversation about Okay, linebackers aren't big enough or they're not fast enough. Not like enough. They're not wrapping up. We can have that conversation. That's not what this is about. It's a run fit issue. It's been a run fit issue and hasn't been corrected. Brent Pride led unbelievably good defense is a Penn State. Like good defense is a Vanderbilt under Franklin and he comes here and I get that. He wants to kind of bring Chris Marvel along, have him under his wing, have this defense like you know in his image, right. He's got that. He's got the the scheme that he wants to implement. He's got the guy that he wants to bring along and mentor, right.

34:06 The issue is that PRI was over involved defensively last year and I thought the defense throughout the year, given how bad the offense was, I thought the defense hung in there last year. PRI is now more hands off and everything's going to hell. Tech had some issues on defense last year. It was run fit issues from time to time. It wasn't like this though. This is unbelievable to me how bad the run fits are and I get they're down to you know, you're down to starting safeties. I get that you've had, you know, injuries on the defense. I understand all of that, but there's just no excuse for the for the run, fit issues through four games now, right? We're going into conference play against the Pittsburgh team and we'll talk about it in a bit. It's not that great, right?

34:49 Not very good. And I've got zero confidence that this team's going to stop the run on Saturday 0. Confidence because I think they can do it in spurts. Obviously there was you know, 25 out of 27 carries by Ali on on on Saturday against Marshall. They did it. They're pretty good, pretty good. But it's the two that they didn't which end up costing you the football game. And it's been kind of a week over week thing and it's just been inconsistency on the defensive side of the football has now become a hallmark of a Brent Pride head coach team, which is the problem. It's the inconsistency of stopping the run and that's what it is, because if you look at the other metrics, Mike and I'm sure you have and y'all probably have too.

35:32 We're like upper echelon pass defense. Well, we always go back to, well, if you can run the ball on us, you're not gonna pass the ball. That makes sense. We forced turnovers. We forced 3 interceptions. We are a middle of the pack team in Tfls. We are middle of the pack team in Sacs. You start looking at the metrics, We're Okay. It's stopping third down and it says Okay, We're Okay here. It's the one glaring issue, right? It's the one glaring issue that I think if you said it's somehow between now and the end of next month, it can get fixed. This team will go from us wanting to throw shit to probably being like, you know what that used to be a 35 yard run. It's a 10 yard run now. Well. The thing. Is down, yes, but it's not killing you. And that's what the that's what it is. Go back and look every game.

36:18 This year we've played every game. The big runs, the big runs, if what's killed it, the big runs are why we're losing the games. We can talk about the other shit, y'all know that. But that's what's losing us. The games it's not. Oh, we didn't. We lost them last year. It lost them last year. I lost PIT last year. Jesus Christ. We don't want to talk about pit last year. We're talking about the pit this year. We'll put, you know what, Brian, but hold on, hold on. Can I say something real quick? I'm going to give you a floor tally in a second. We are stepped back. We're in the pit to Georgia Tech phase again. We've taken that step back because look at the games. We're not getting the shit kicked out of us like we did against UNC, like we did against West Virginia, like some of those early games we're not. It's that same threshold where we were last year from PIT up to Liberty, where we do one fucking thing wrong. We make one bad fit.

37:15 We screw up one bad penalty, one holding, one false start, one false start on Saturday, by the way, 4th and one to 4th and 6th with the Game Online bitch. It's one little do y'all see what I'm saying? It's like we thought we were over that and now we're we're right back in it. Yeah, we were hoping this year as Tally is is prone to say that we were in the win by a little stage, but we're back in the lose by a little stage, so go. Well, the thing that yeah, because the thing that's concerning is like Brett Pride is a defensive coach. You know, you came to a no matter what Virginia Tech wants to be, they're known as a defensive school. You know, like we've always been known to have a the lunch pail defense.

38:02 Take that away. We don't have to be the lunch pail anymore because we can't fucking stop nobody from scoring. But anyway, Pride is a defensive coach and I just don't see him like. With the fire, when things are going wrong, because he's seen it like I I have no doubt that he has in his mind how things are supposed to look and how he can fix it. But standing on the sidelines writing stuff down on a piece of paper ain't fixing it, you know, Doing it at practice ain't fixing it. Maybe in the game you need to get in a coach's ass or a player's ass or put somebody else in. I don't know what the right thing to do is. That's why I'm not getting paid $4 million to coach the team. I'm just saying as a defensive coach, going to a defensive school, you can't keep having the same defensive problems and think that everybody's going to be okay with it. Like at some point you got to win. And I don't just mean win on like in the win column, I mean. Not have the explosive play.

39:03 They threw a touchdown and beat us. It's got to be something different. We keep saying the same thing, the same thing over and over. Kind of like what Mike said, what Curtis said and for me it it's the head coach like it's on him. It's the second year we're we're regressing. We're seeing the same thing over that we've seen last year and hell, it's fucking it's. Embarrassing at this point. You know, you're getting commentators that starting to say stuff that are just like, well, sooner or later, Virginia Tech's going to have to leave or have to do more than just have a cool entrance. They said something like that the other day. I've been saying that. But when I hear somebody else say, it pisses me off, you know, So the head coach and again, like Mike said, and I'm going to give it back to you, Curtis. He was so great at press conferences in the offseason. I think he has to flip a switch now and he has to kind of like Biggie said, you got to lean into the beef sometime. You got to address the hard stuff. You got to start saying, look, I hear what y'all are saying about this team and we're going to fix it. If we got to scorch the earth, we're going to make sure that this works instead of just doing the hey, we going to make it. It's going to be okay.

40:19 We kind of get now we do it. Hey man, stop the stop the sweet talking. You know what I want? You know what I want? You talk about the Big E blind. I want to enter defensive coordinator in him to come out because defensive coordinators don't act like that on the sidelines. We saw Bud for years. We even saw you ever watch some of the Penn State games. He was a fiery guy on the. Yeah, exactly. He's got to find that because I think that's what's missing on that side of the ball. I think so. On that side of the ball and we said and and we sat down like for the Purdue game we were right behind the bench. Chris Mark give Chris Mark credit Chris Mark did have fire on the sidelines you we saw him like getting in guys faces grabbing face masks hitting you know doing the old thing like good job probably was calm the whole game.

41:05 I think what it is is a lot of the team is following that. Yeah, you need to be cool under pressure, but sometimes you got as as we say it on this program, like, I'll let you nuts hang. He's got to let his nuts sang in somebody's face. The prime opportunity, especially as bad as run fits would have been, was getting after Will Johnson when he missed that fit on that first touchdown run. Like, literally come here. Why are you looking where the quarterback's going? You are in B gap. You get the fuck to B Gap and you stop his ass. I don't care if you just get an arm or if you get a part of a leg. Guess what that's going to do? That's going to make clean up a lot easier 10 yards down the field than it is 61 in the end zone.

41:46 Anything else from Saturday? I'll play for you anytime, Curtis. Jesus. I thought Curtis Red is always a fun thing. Yeah, I thought about playing for Curtis until he just said somebody needs to let the nuts hang in somebody's face. Definitely. Just take everybody's face. I promise you, you did. No. Well, you go back and listen to this. Why? You better not. You better not edit it. I'm not editing it out the teabag. I'm not editing it out. The Teabag Man Teabag stays in. What else do we see from Saturday that that was bad? I mean, we went through bouts where we're not, we're getting consistent pressure.

42:30 I mean, I know they weren't throwing the ball very much, but I feel like. Since ODUI haven't seen the consistent pressure that I want to see. I think we're we're getting some hurries but we're not getting home and getting those sacks and getting them in long down and distant situations that would benefit our team and help on those downs where we're surrendering these long ass runs. You know they might be throwing the ball if we can get them in 3rd and 12 and 3rd and 9 consistently. I got. I got one piece for y'all and we're not we're not the worst team in the country and I'm the bottom 10.

43:10 We're, I think we're like 72nd, but it's the penalties and it's the stupid penalties, 6 fall starts, 6 fall starts. We're regressing there again. We're regressing there again. We're regressing there again. And then we had a couple offsides and I know I got two guys here, one play D line, they both played on the offensive line. That's that's them. Y'all said it before Italian Brian. Like that's that's not coaching, that's you. You're supposed to do your job. You know what you're supposed to do? That's that's thinking too much about other stuff and not not staying focused on what the task at hand is because and and I know they're practicing enough where from a mental Rep standpoint, this should not be a problem.

43:59 I'm I'm not concerned about that. Because if you're repping it and you're repping these situational calls where you're going on a different count, are you, are you doing this even in an even in a hostile environment like Marshall? I know that's not, you know, hostile. I'll use quotes here. It's a road game, right? So I mean that that really shouldn't be a a problem, that that is you thinking too much about your assignment or you got beat last time and you're trying to get one back. And all this other stuff, and now you know you're doing too much. Do less. It's fear. That's, that's what it is. I hate to say that as an offensive lineman, tight in a lot of times jumping outside is fear. Or if you seen even like wide receivers or somebody jumps at them and they flinch.

44:50 It's fear, you know, because you're reacting to what's going on around you or what the other person is doing. I've talked about it before. When you're on that line, it's a lot of stuff that's being said. You know, you got the quarterback making calls, you got your center supposed to be calling some things out. You got their defensive captain, probably linebacker making some calls. You got your lineman switching and moving and you got lineman that's probably talking shit. And if I did to 70 what 55 did, I would be saying do y'all know what I'm about to do. I'm going to go kill your quarterback. I'm about to fuck y'all up again. We'll get some Alvin Mac folks in here. Exactly. Bad. We don't even talk about this movie right now.

45:31 But, well, last piece. You can see the fear, you see the fear on our offensive line and I think it's what pisses me off. Go ahead Curtis. Well the last piece I got and it goes back to some we talked about probably 20 minutes ago. Now is we are having another, again, lack of complimentary football because we forced the turnover. We get nothing. We have a string of them going 3 and outs. We get nothing. Prac keeps preaching it, complimenting football, complimenting football. Eventually you got to do something. And The thing is, everything. We're kind of leading up to this, right? It's great. Those those four drives, they could not run the ball, they could not pass the ball. But you know what?

46:14 You were so conservative and you were tight. You didn't attack. You didn't attack just like Y'all were talking about take somebody put on here a while ago, Why didn't we take a shot on 1st down when we were right there after the turnover? That's your prime time take a shot. So it's it's this whole, if you won't call any football, you've got to do the right things in those points. And right now we're not seeing it. And the bad thing is we're seeing pieces here and there. All right, Y'all got anything else on what went bad? Because I think we just went 20 minutes or 25 minutes on what went bad. Yeah. And I mean, I'll, I'll finish one more thing here, wrap it up, let's take you to the next one.

46:54 Yeah, you you talk about the the complimentary football, but it's also it's like we we can't seem to do each of those. Like you have buckets of things, things you have like you do every week, right. These are the things we need to do this week and like. One bucket will look good for 1/4 and another bucket will look good for 1/4. Another like a different quarter and but we're not piercing together other than like coming out of the gate in the first quarter. We did never piece the rest of the game together where everyone all of those buckets were kind of working In Sync, yeah. And that's only for like a couple of possessions in the first quarter too. You know, it wasn't even, I know it was a it was a pretty quick quarter, but it was really just those first.

47:37 You know, it was the the one offensive procession and where they, you know, go out and score, get the interception and then that was about it. Then it just kind of stopped, right? Especially on the offensive side. All righty. All right, let's move on to the next one. Cuz we've talked enough about that we probably could talk another 15 minutes about it, but eventually we have to move on. We have a lot more stuff talk about and the next piece is, did anything happen that you were not prepared for? I'm gonna just tell you all this, nothing shocks me anymore right now with this team. Nope, it likes to me. I got a kind of positive, I got a kind of +1 that I was really prepared for. So I we haven't seen a lot of of drones, you know him coming from Baylor and then him practicing and that's not now this is not the pat him on the back because he still has to get better. But I was shocked at how.

48:31 How strong he is. If you watch some of his runs, he's starting to fall forward on that touchdown run, he wasn't supposed supposed to score. I mean, he was locked up and he broke out of there. And not only did he break out of there, he accelerated, you know? So that kind of shocked me. Now that takes me to kind of another point. Once you start seeing somebody game, once you start seeing somebody be a gamer, you got to build off of that. If you see that he has that. You got to let him cook. You got to let him do that. Hey man, you remember in the first quarter or you got bottled up and that you didn't go down. You kept your legs turning. I need that. We need 3 yards. That's what we got to see.

49:14 I'm going to ask you a question to y'all because I don't know the answer. I wish I had Shelton here. How many offensive coordinators and quarterback coaches are in the in the booth like across college football? Do y'all know I I can I do not know that I'll I'll I forget while y'all talk about it. Well, it just seems to me because of what Tebow is supposed to be, you know, he's coaching the quarterbacks and they said, oh, he's close to those guys. And you have a quarterback there now in Kyron Drones that has been playing that's very young, but his skill set is a little bit different from somebody like Grant. Would it not help if he's there on the sideline and can talk to him and see what he's seeing and they can have that commentary instead of he get off.

50:06 You got to pick up the phone. You know you. I don't know, man. It's just it's a it's a lot of stuff that goes on in that coaching stuff that I don't understand. This is this is where having Bowen be both the OC and the QB coach, I think becomes a little bit of a problem, I think because of what you just said. And that's a really good point. That's something I actually hadn't even thought about. And there are a lot of reasons why. So I I was actually originally okay with Bowen being the quarterbacks coach. Like, I didn't love it, but I understood it Now. I'm not as big of a fan of it and Tally. I think that was a great point. And now it's making me wonder like I'm good with the OC being in the booth normally, right? Sees, sees the whole field and all that. But usually you got the quarterback coach on the field, right? You got you know you you used to have Glen on the field just there and you know talk to wells last year don't have that anymore so.

50:56 Yeah, I don't know what the right answer is there. That's a great point. And I think that would be okay if you had a experienced offensive coordinator and an experienced quarterback coach. But Bowen is neither right now. Yeah. So it's kind of that double whammy and as someone that has been on the been on the sideline and been in a booth and in a game situation talking about you in the booth. I hated being the booth. I mean, I'm an energy guy. I I need the energy of the sideline to kind of get in the right mindset and like get hyper focused on what I'm seeing being in the booth. It was too detached from that for me.

51:36 And I feel like with when you got a inexperienced quarterback, you got an inexperienced coordinator and and he's inexperienced at coaching the quarterback position. Any way that they can engage more dynamically on the sideline, I feel like would be a good thing in terms of both Bowen's growth and drones growth. I'm I'm with you on that and I think it's you'll make really good points across about he needs to be down there. But the question is who do you put in the booth then you're going to have, you're going to have. Right now there's only one guy up there, Cuz Fontel's on the field, Crook's on the field and Stew's on the field. And I see it. Four of the offensive coaching staff members are on the field. It's only Bowen and probably an analyst up in the booth. If you bring him down, who goes up? It's not.

52:24 It's got to be. It's got to be. Brooks. It's got to be Brooks and I don't know how often Brooks has been up there, but I will say this and and you know Coach Pride, if you listen to this, we still love you. Please come back next year. But let's be realistic though. We have seen pride make changes. He's not afraid to do something different. We saw it in the offseason. We've already seen it this season because remember last year, Glenn and Bowen were in the booth, then Glenn came down later in the season. Remember that, that to his credit, he will make the changes and then you just have to decide who goes up.

53:05 Because right now, if y'all look it's Fontelle is effectively the guy getting the huddle, calling those first set of plays and sending them to the field. He's the juice guy. He's also getting getting the calls in. But the other thing is you see a lot of times and y'all follow a lot of football. Usually the wide receivers coach is up in the booth to effectively see what's the backs, coverages and to see what routes or should we rerunning into. So we'll see how that goes. All right. Anything else? Brian, you already mentioned your anything else y'all we're not prepared for. Tally went positive there. As positive as you could be after losing the Marshall, I'm laughing at comments here. So.

53:49 Yeah, I was reading that too. And Jerry still let it, man. Listen, we we we can't fire somebody every 15 games. Y'all y'all got to put that in your head. Where's the money coming from? Where's the? Because if you pull him out right now, if you can pay 23 and a half million dollars stroke to check, get him out, nobody'd have a problem. Are we still? Paying for Are we still paying for Winte? We're still paying for Winte. That's why I thought so. If you got 33 million, stroke it to the athletic department. We can get rid of pride. Yeah, shit don't work like that. You can't just fire, fire fire fire, by the way. We don't have Tennessee booster money. Tennessee didn't even do that shit.

54:30 They gave guys three years at least before they fired him. Y'all this ain't mad and this ain't college football on your PlayStation. You've got to look through the lens of if it goes really bad this year, he's got next year to win a lot of games and that's it. But I think we also this year and he turns it around this year by the way and ready. All love, baby. All love. All love. We we get heated. No we get heated. We won't our program to be good because we've seen it good. And I think the other thing, so we'll say this real quick just to kind of piggyback on that, you know, when we talk about this whole coaching thing like. I love what Dion's doing in Colorado. That's not something that you can replicate in every scenario across the country one.

55:17 Of 1, Even when you talk about bringing in a former player, like highest profile possible, it's Dion is Dion. Dion's always been Dion one of one. There's like he's one of one and there's only like maybe two or three other guys even in that category that. Took the path that he took to kind of get there, right? So hold on, hold on. You want to talk about Dion? He started coaching high school football over a decade ago. He started coaching high school football. He did from 12 to 13. Then he went to Trinity Christian, which I believe is a pretty top notch where he was an OC. Wagon.

55:59 Then he went to Jackson State. Dion just didn't jump into Colorado. Dion took this as his path. Deon started this in 2012. Did everybody know that? Did everybody know Deon was coaching high school football in Texas for damn near 8 years where he took to Jackson State job? Nobody did. If you did, you ain't been paying attention. I'll go on a small a small tangent here just so people understand how, because they talk about the culture and stuff. And I guess I got to be the black spokesperson for this. So a lot of people have hitched their wagon to Deon because. High talks, high dresses, things that he does with his team, how outspoken he is, which beyond coaches like he played. He's prime time.

56:45 He's the only person who can do that and get away with that. There is a lot of black coaches out there too, and I want to say a lot as in millions, hundreds, thousands, 20, but I'm saying there's a lot of good black coaches out there. You talk about Locksley, you talk about. James Franklin, You know those guys are undefeated right now. You know when you talk about black coaches being at big time programs, I say all that to say, the thing that bothers me about Dion is that I feel that and I don't want to mess this up. But he's put a target on his back. He's put a target on his team's back and now they got to live up to it. You know, I know they only won one game last year, no games last year.

57:32 They won three. Great job. But going and getting Curb stopped by Oregon didn't look good. And then now you got USC that you got an answer to and you're a 20 point underdog and that. And then you know he goes and he says, well they better get me now because it's the worst I'm going to be. I've heard that before and his name was Justin Fuente. That comment didn't doesn't resonate that well with me. So Dion has a lot of work to do with his players and his team. If he wants to go to that next level and start to, you know, win those big time games and things like that, Kudos the deal for what he's doing though. All right, all right, y'all let's just talk real quick because we've got two more things before we hit break here. What can we do better moving forward? Brian, I'm going to let you leave this because we we've been talking about 70 a lot.

58:25 Yeah, you got to get Brody at left at right tackle there. Get Brody Meadows at right tackle. I know he's mostly played guard so far in the season, but there's a when we when we look at the 2D, Brody's listed as the backup left tackle, OK, but the the 2D means Jack shit for an offensive line. You're really talking about your five starters plus two guys that you're comfortable with, maybe three at the most that you're comfortable with playing in the game, so. Given where the depth chart is and where Brody's played, they're essentially using him as a guy that can be a kind of a swing tackle. Swing guard can jump in either of those spots when needed. Get him at right tackle, get Parker off the field. He's got lazy feet, he's not graded and run blocking.

59:08 Get him off the field. He is a big, big, big time hindrance to both the running game and pass pro at this point. And and really disappointing because you know by all accounts had a really good spring and good offseason and then you know we we see a couple things here there and now the you know the the wheels falling off the wagon again. So yeah, get Parker off the field. Get Brody Meadows in there, Mike. What you got, man? Just play some complimentary football for the love of God like it doesn't need to. Be thanks, Coach Brian. It doesn't have to be that God damn difficult. Like just run the football, stick with it when it's working. If the passing game's working, stick with that. Run fits.

59:57 Clean it up, wrap up. It doesn't. This does not have to be as difficult as we're making it, and it's not. I'm so sick of hearing the talent excuse too. Like I, I, I will look last year, yes, go last year, yes. Go play Florida State. Talent issue? Fine. Go play other, you know, go play NC State later in the year. If you want to talk about talent issue, that's fine there. The teams that Tech's played so far through four games, this isn't a talent thing. This is a coaching thing. I mean these are, these are four, these are four teams that you know could be had. It wasn't like Virginia Tech was going into these games, the two touchdown underdog.

1:00:40 Right, so. Rutgers is probably the only team that is close to us in terms of talent. You might give them the slight edge beak at home. We shouldn't have got waxed the way we did waxed the score ended up looking a little bit better than that game actually went for much of the second-half. I mean it was we'll come back at the end there. But yeah, Tally, what about you? Was one thing we got to do better moving forward. I was going to say it earlier, but you got to give Tooten. You got to give Tooten more run. I did say that part earlier. I don't know man, Malachi just he doesn't look the same as as I remember him looking with just how he's running.

1:01:23 So I don't know why we keep trying to go back to him. We haven't seen Chance Black, we haven't seen Bryce Duke. So if we're not going to see them, you got to tell Tooten. Look, man, if you're tired, just fall down on the field. Because you're getting the ball 40 fucking times. If we if we if. If we are moving the ball, you running it. That's what's happening. Give him the ball, man. Give him some runs. Yeah, where has Chance black man? I feel like. I feel like he's been walking for. Nowhere right now. He's not been on any. I don't think I've seen 28 on the field at all this year. Now, where's David Cunningham when we need him? David could pull up and tell us if he's had the staff. David, if you're out there listening tonight, throw us in the chat or text one of us.

1:02:06 All right, we are a third of the way through the season at one and four, obviously, if y'all can't tell, we went on an hour and 3 minutes. We're pissed about the record, we're pissed about all the things happening, right? Y'all are pissed. We see it over here in the chat. Y'all are pissed and there's people out there not responding that are sending Dms, Twitter, Facebook. Everybody's pissed right now. So I wanna ask y'all this and? Who do I start with last time? Ron. Mike, I'll start with you this time. What's the one thing in the next four games? You have to see I've harped enough on the run, fits. Offensive, offensive, offensive identity.

1:02:48 What kind of team do you want to be? I get that you have injuries at receiver. You had an injury at quarterback that changed the Staffs thinking as far as you know what they can and can't do, right, We got to see some sort of offense by daddy, right? Jalen Lane. I think it's starting to get healthier. Jennings is going to be out a while. But drones is the guy, right? I mean, Wells can get healthy, but in my opinion, drones is the guy. So what kind of offense do you want to be under Kyron? Drones. Because you got to figure out here in year two when you're rebuilding, it's not going well. You got to figure out, at least on the offensive side, if Kyron Drones is going to be your quarterback moving forward. That's what you got to decide this year. You got to figure that out.

1:03:29 If, if you're not going to come out, if you're going to lose every game, the rest of the schedule, you at least got to figure out who your quarterback is going to be next year. Because we already have an inexperienced offensive coordinator, we have an inexperienced defensive coordinator and we have a first time head coach. We can't miss on quarterback too. You got to figure out who your quarterback's going to be. So we got to figure out offense by Daddy over the next four games. All right, Tally. What about you, man? What do you got to see the next four games? I just say making adjustments quicker. You know, I think I see some adjustments on defense and. Even offense in the fourth quarter, we've seen some adjustments, but those adjustments have to be made a lot quicker than they've been being made. And it's like it's not stuff that's hard. You know what I'm saying?

1:04:12 I don't even say that. Those two words that might keep saying bum, bum, you got to do those. Like when you see those are gone, you got to go talk and have those and correct them. If somebody can't do that on the field, let's go to somebody else. I'm okay with playing all freshmen and losing every game. I I'm Okay with Kyron drones losing every game. If we're trying to figure out what we're doing moving forward, you know what I'm saying? If we're putting in offensive lineman that are freshmen and they're getting blew up because our seniors again blew up, Okay well at least we got some run for next year. We can, we can talk about the the youth movement, but I need to see those adjustments being made much quicker than they are in the games that we can at least have a chance to win. Take a look.

1:05:00 I said it on Twitter or X or whatever the fuck we're calling it now. Twitter You tweeted it. I'll say it again. I need to see four quarters of competent coaching and play execution. If you get beat, you get beat. But when you are not executing and when the coaches are not correcting, when the coaches are going away from a game plan, that's working. Then that's not competent quarterback play. That's not competent coaching. That's not competent execution by the guys at the trenches, the guys at the linebacker core. I need to see four quarters of that, win or lose, get your ass beat. Whatever it is, I I need the product to look like it's supposed to.

1:05:47 And to Mike's point earlier, you know the offensive identity. I felt like we had some of that against Rutgers. That was kind of if we could. Take steps off of what that is. I could live with that offense because at least I know what it's trying to do. But could, but. But we could probably live with the offense that we saw on those, what, four to five drives? At Marshall, it was like power runs, taking shots, quick slants. It's like a little screen or two. OK, that's what you are. You're almost like a jab, jab, monster throw. That's what you are. You're not just slinging haymakers all the time. All right, I got one before we go to break here and mine is it's kind of going to hinder what Tally said, make the right personnel decisions regardless of winning or losing. If a senior or junior is just not cutting it, what's Pete saying there?

1:06:45 Pete, we do something good. Hold on. I'm gonna. Mess with him right here, Pete. We're punting the ball. Good. Peter Moore is booming the hell out of it this year. He's. If Peter Moore was kicking like he was last year, we might have lost a few games by more than one score. So for the 13 yard point, he did what last? Week. Oh, you talk about the killer. He said. He said 22 punts this year that have just been like, uncharacteristically short, you know what it was. And then the rest have been fucking boom sticks. Yes. Bad time, yeah. Those two punts too, it's like he was trying to kick him as deep as possible and like it land at the three and then zip back and you're like. Still inside the 15, he'd boom the shit out of it, but make the right personnel decisions if there's juniors and seniors not doing it.

1:07:27 Cuz right now I did the I did a data dive. Y'all offensively, snaps counted. 50% are red shirt. Sophomores are younger, 50% are juniors. Defense is 5347 with the older guys, and that's an older guys with a lot of them on the line. And y'all know they do not rotate as much as they do other players. You've got to make it right. Brian's already called for Meadows to write tackle. I'll, I'll go one up on you, Brian. We've mentioned a few times on this program and I don't know if you've been listening to it. Mike put Jack Hollyfield at center. Kate more back out to guard. Yeah yeah you can't. The the more experiment at center is a, He's a. I don't think it's a disaster. I think he's OK, but he is a dominant right guard. If, look, I I will live, I will live with having a young guy at center because at least at that point we'll have a good right guard there.

1:08:19 You go right because right now we don't have a good right guard or a good center. So at least get one position right? Yes, I heard. I've, I've heard you guys talk about that. You're around the money. By the way, this is a buddy we went to high school with. We got, we got. Who's in the comments, man? Who's in the comments? Baby, Yeah, I don't know, Mario. Mario we didn't know. We didn't know Mario for since we were in, since I was in 7th grade. Since Brian was in 7th grade, a long, long time ago. All right, y'all. Before we get in to know the enemy and we discussed the pit Panthers, we are going to take a pause from our digital partners. I can probably save you a lot of money and I can take a lot better care of you. That's pretty much it. My name is Jeremy Counts and I'm a pharmacist.

1:09:01 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 and 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. 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.

1:09:43 Some of those options save people a lot of money. What motivates me? 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, on site, 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 right, we are back. And now we flip our attention to Saturday night. Lane Stadium 8:00, ACC Network against the pit Panthers also one and three coming in and I take a look here. We got to know the enemy.

1:10:30 And we're going to talk on the offense first. Always like to start with the offense first because it's a lot more to discuss. And Brian, let's talk about the scheme. We got Frank Signetti, someone we're very familiar with, running that offense up the pit. Yeah, I mean, you're looking at pro style scheme, got some RPO elements mixed in there. But it's, you know, pretty straightforward Pro Style scheme. They they definitely thrive on explosive plays. They want to stretch you downfield. They want to hit you with the big gasher in the running game. They don't quite hit the home run the same way they did last year and that's part of the reason why they are one in three and not coming in at least at 500 or better because they're not hitting those explosive plays, especially in the passing game. Alrighty and and it is something they they also lost their home run threat at running back.

1:11:19 And we know that very personally from last year. But let's talk about the quarterbacks first. Cuz right now, not a controversy per se, but if y'all didn't see that UNC game build Your covers got the shit knocked out of him in the second quarter of that game, he was Koed for that game. Christian Delu, the three star who was originally committed to Penn State. Someone tech flirted with. In the offseason did come in, he did not have a good game against UNC at all. He threw 2 picks, he threw 45%, he looked not good at all and you know Jakovich isn't having a good season also this year, just over 50% passing, 4 touchdowns, 3 interceptions. And the the worst part about this, I don't know if y'all have been paying attention.

1:12:04 He's their second leading rusher, like in as far as the temps go. And I know Phil's a big kid, but and you know Phil was an elite guy coming out, he's and he has not lived up to those expectations. So, Brian, I know you're going to talk about them a little bit. Is there a lot of similarities between these two? Guys, some. I mean, obviously Christian's not a big body quarterback like Phil. Phil Phil's definitely like that. Ben Roethlisberger. Light type quarterback, big body, little wiggle, decent quickness. But he he has a big arm likes to take the shots down field, shows accuracy at at most of the levels of that those those shots are pretty accurate but they just haven't had the separation of the playmakers outside to to really take as much advantage of that this year and really been inefficient because of that and but he had settled in a little bit in that UNC game before he got the shit knocked out of him. All righty, Mike.

1:13:08 Who you expecting to see Saturday night? I mean, based on that hit, I'm expecting to see Vayu, which I think would be good news for Virginia Tech, actually. Because if you could find a quarterback that has looked worse than Phil Jarkovic, it's Christian Vayu, at least in limited in a limited sample size, Jarkovic's been really bad. I don't know if it's his wrist from two years ago or what. He does not look right, you know, throwing the football. It just does not look like it did in 2020 when he kind of burst onto the scene for BCI don't know what happened, but he is just not even close to the same guy. So doesn't inspire a whole lot of confidence. You know, rolling him out there. Bayou just didn't look comfortable against North Carolina through the two picks. Very low completion percentage did not look good. I would expect to see Bayou.

1:13:57 I haven't seen any sort of like practice reports or anything like that. So I don't know what your Kovic situation is, but I think either way, you know, if Pitt goes out and throws for a million yards in this game, it's an indictment on Virginia Tech's defense, right? We talked about the secondary and the fact that Tech hasn't. Tech hasn't been stopping the run, and that's why the past defense is ranked how it is. We all think there's talent, the secondary, no question about it. But you know, this is one of those games where pit's going to try to throw it a little bit here. And if they're completing passes deep down the field with these quarterbacks, with how they've looked so far, it's bad news. Big time, Big time. And you know talking more about the you, you know he struggled with that ball placement and decision making, not as efficient with the deep ball as as Jacobic was at his height.

1:14:43 Really not, not even in that ballpark with what we've seen from him so far this year, which is significantly diminished. But I think from from Jacobic's standpoint, I think a lot of it's starting to get mental like he does not handle a pass rush very well anymore and I think. Between the injuries to the wrist, the injuries he had last year and getting really beat up behind that really pretty awful pass pro from that BC offensive line last year, he's he looks kind of shell shocked. So he just doesn't seem like the same type of quarterback. You know he showed some willingness to run early in the in that that second-half they really went away from the, especially after he put the ball on the ground with that that snap exchange. I'd say he's decent athleticism, probably a little more athletic kind of getting out of the pocket then maybe a Grant Wells but not the the kind of the top end that you would see from from a guy like drones kind of getting outside there. So he he will run, but he didn't run very much very effectively in in the second-half there after he had a couple couple decent attempts kind of start that that second-half off. Tell any questions you think you want to add about the quarterback situation up a pit we will see this weekend. We need to worry about who the running backs. All right.

1:16:04 That's all I want to hear about. Here we go. He he what a great segue. Tally knows how to do this like he's been doing a few years. Professional, professional, professional and. You know, so, he said. Fucking quarterbacks. Let's hear the running backs. They worry. About yeah, Tally. What what did what did what did Mike say? 58 1/2 yards a carry on 2 carries. We ain't worried about throwing the ball. Rodney Hammond Junior is the guy we want to worry about. A Virginia kid from Norfolk class in 20/21, he was an 87 ranked guy. He was a top 15 player in the state on the composite top 2247 and you know his career he's been there, you know, for a couple years.

1:16:44 He was sitting behind Izzy about a condo. That's the name I'll never forget in all my years. Had a little run last year. But Brian? Just me looking at it and looking at the data, they haven't really decided like if he's the guy because everybody on that back field is going to get a little bit of run. Yeah, everybody's been getting a little run. He's he's an interesting back. He's he shows pretty good vision between the tackles. I think the thing that probably stands out the most is that he's he's very much that type of back that's going to fight for those extra yards, especially for a guy his size hard to bring down. Not as explosive at the second level as we saw from Izzy last year, so in theory we shouldn't be giving up 300 yards rushing to to to a player this year.

1:17:32 So in theory, but I will say Hammond is probably better out of the backfield catching the ball and making stuff happen in space than that Izzy was in on that regard. So look for him to catch a a few balls out of the backfield. He's done that a couple times this year. Remember looking at the tape last year, the West Virginia game where he had a big reception bill for a touchdown in that game. So he's got that capability, but it's just it's if we can get our run fits, we should be all right, which is I'm not very confident about. I'm not confident at all Mike Tally. I'll get anything from Brian here. Anything y'all want to add about Rodney Hammond or any of the running backs down at Pitt? He's a good player.

1:18:18 Just tackle. Just tackle him. And that's the point. It's just tackling cuz we're hearing right there what Brian said. He's not the burner. Ali is a burner. You say what you wanna say, Racine. Holly is a burner. He gets upfield, he gets the gap, he can go. I'd be interested. Listen for Fleameister and Carter. Those are other two guys have been getting run in their backfield. They only trail Hammond by about 17 carries. So if you do the math over four games, that's only about four different carries a game. And I know Hammond's biggest game came against you and see where you got 89 yards on about 15 carries. And they've historically been kind of a ride with the hot handed running back type team. You know, we saw that Hammond was kind of the hot, hot hand against.

1:19:05 Yeah, some of the tape I watched last year with with with Pitt, they rode him a couple games. I know a Band of Canada was banged up one of those, but they they have a willingness to ride whatever is working in the running back game. So you know, if if it's working, they're going to keep that guy and unless he needs to come off for a blow all. Right, let's flip next and let's go to. Con Kanata mumfield boom nailed to Curtis. Yeah, really. Usually I screw those up completely. So you know a 6 foot, 175 pound wide out came to pit fight of the transfer portal I believe from Akron, right? They come from Akron, they came from Akron and so far this year leading the team 16 receptions.

1:19:57 He only has 183 yards. Yep, it was Akron. Thank goodness I got that right. Got 500 yards last year over about right about 60 receptions. So he does look like he is there, sort of. Is he their number one Brian or is he just a part of the offense? He's their number one wide out, but they have, again, they haven't had a ton of success in the passing game so far this year. So he's kind of more of their stick mover, not really consistent deep threat. Again, they haven't really established that this year the way they have in the, you know, the years past when they've been a little bit of a better, a better passing team and he does most of his eating in that kind of short to intermediate range.

1:20:41 They'll use them on screen slants occasionally see a dig here and there so that that's kind of his bread and butter. So he's mostly a guy that they're going to use to move the sticks. The next guy we're going to talk about is kind of the guy that they've taken most of the shots with this year. Who's that tally? So the next guy is there tied in Gavin Bartholomew. He was a three star, a three star athlete out of I'm not even going to try to say the name somewhere in PA class of 2021. One second here I had it pulled up. Like Brian said, they've been using him and kind of taking shots with him. He is right at about. 216 I believe on yardage this year, getting it pulled back up here, right? So he's he's on pace for somewhere around 700 yards receiving.

1:21:37 Yeah he's a big big target at 65250. Big, big tight in he's yeah, 9 receptions, 260 yards having right at 24. Yeah, right, At 24 yard a catch and. Yeah, willfully. Yeah, one touchdown already. And again from last year, just, you know, going over his year to year. Last year he had 21 catches for 283 over the whole season and two touchdowns. And this year, he's already got 216. Yeah, and some of that is the fact that the the wide receiver group has dropped off a little bit. Some of that is just he's developed into a better player. He's like a slightly bigger Kobe Flaner. I don't want to bring up Ghost of Bowl Games Pass, but kind of reminds me of that in terms of the way he plays and the way he likes to get up the scene.

1:22:37 They use him a lot at the scene. They'll throw those kind of slot fades, deep crossers, tight in wheels, that that's really his bread and butter. That's where he's been getting a lot of that yardage. So definitely more of a big play threat than the typical stick move, stick mover, red zone threat that you see from your typical tight ends. And I'd say he's deceptively athletic that when you look at him on tape, he doesn't look like very unassuming in terms of his athleticism, but it kind of it, it jumps off the more you watch. Absolutely. All right, let's quickly hit their offensive line. And Mike, let me hit you with this before Brian breaks into it. It was announced yesterday all ACC tackle Matt Doncavas is out for the season.

1:23:20 Killer hat. I mean, how big of a loss is that for Pitt right now? Big deal cuz they have a pretty good offensive line. It's a killer. You lose an all conference lineman at those. Those aren't easy to replace, right? I mean, we're talking about the Virginia Tech offensive line and. There's nobody, there's nobody sniffing that, right? So it's true. Yeah, it's it's an absolute killer and and Pitt does have a pretty decent offensive line. They've gotten better as the seasons gone along too. And you know, we could talk about the issues with Jacobic and everything else and and the run game issues. That has kind of been with him. It's kind of been fits and starts this year. But I chalk that up more to play calling than the actual offensive line. The offensive line is pretty solid. Yeah, that was my take away to looking at them. I mean, they're not elite.

1:24:07 You know, Kyle was definitely the the most elite on that line. But it just as a unit, they're not really that elite, but very solid across the board. They do really well to get to the second level, which you know, doesn't really bode well for some of the problems we've had with run fits. If they're getting to the second level, getting on our linebackers, we're back to having a former wide receiver being the guy that's coming up to make that play that's going to stop a potential touchdown. So spooky hours a little bit there, but you know, definitely the guy was going out. That's going to be a big knock to them. We'll see how that impacts pass pro, we'll see how that, how that impacts their running game. So definitely a big loss. So we'll see if that that turns out to be something that, you know, rears its head in this game.

1:24:53 Before we flip over to defense, Brian, what do you think it affects more with them? You watch some of the tape the last few days. I mean, because you're talking about them getting to the second level. I sit here and think, if you've got an elite left tackle, a lot of guys don't have to think right. Those interior guys don't have to think about anything. It's like he's got it. I don't need to worry about him and it makes it easy. I know you play with a really good left tackle at Sydney and I know for you it was just like, get the fuck up field. Yeah, I mean, Jared, Jared Stearns was locked down, so I didn't have to worry about him. But I'd say it hurts more on the pass pro, especially if you're rolling Christian out there instead of Phil because you're already having a quarterback that probably isn't fully comfortable in the pocket. It didn't show that in the game against you and C very uncomfortable with the pocket at times. So not having your all conference left tackle out there definitely doesn't inspire any any additional confidence. So I feel like that's going to be where the you'll see the impact the most, but it'll definitely impact the run game as well.

1:25:59 All righty, all righty good deal. All right, we're going to flip over to the defensive side of the ball now and let's talk about this defense led by Randy Bates. Brian cuz I I read what you put in here and I'm, I'm sorry man. I I got I put my own little notes in there just to, like, make sure I talk the right amount of shit. Go ahead, say it. All right, so, so, so we got, we got Randy Bates. I mean, he's the coordinator, but obviously this is the Pat Narduzzi invented attacking 4 three defense. So something that all of us are familiar with.

1:26:41 And obviously Pat Narduzzi is very excited that he was able to put something like this together for everyone. But they do love bringing the pressure to rush the quarterbacks and confuse the offensive line. You're going to see a lot of man and man outside. We're used to that. When we play pit it's going to be you're going to have to win those one-on-one battles if we're going to be successful in the passing game. They will give a big plays because of that aggressiveness, you know. So if we can catch them in a in a bad blitz, we can catch them in some mismatches and man coverage. We can take some advantage all. Right. Let's talk about some of the players on this defense. Let's talk with Day on Hayes.

1:27:22 A6 foot three ��265 defensive end top 200 play when he got recruited by 247 back in the class of 2020 out of Pittsburgh, PA out of Westinghouse and you know so far this season for Mr. Hayes. 8 tackles, two sides, 2 pass deflected. All he's looking past deflected and talk about it with defensive end, because that means they're not just here, they understand. You you see, it's about to fire. Just get your hand up. What you say say that again, Tally? Get them hands up. Get them up. So Brian when you when you took a look at him, what did you see and what can we do? And dear Lord is he going to be on seven knows side. I mean talent wise I mean he's a balanced the end and he is going to be on seven knows side most of the time unfortunately balanced the end.

1:28:17 He's really good against the run good as a pass rusher so that's a really good edge doesn't get fooled often on kind of those backside contain rolls that you might see. So you know we ran we finally ran something we already ended around last week. I don't think he's going to be be fooled on that he's going to sit there read and be in the right position to make that play. They do something interesting with him though they like when they go nickel he kind of turns into a roaming linebacker depending on what the the defensive front call is. He'll kind of work in there standing in the backfield, blitz B gap, blitz A gap, sometimes blitz out around the edge. So they kind of use them a little bit differently there in those nickel sets. So that's really interesting to watch. And you know, in terms of tone setter, I mean he got out there and forced to fumble early against you and see the kind of set the tone for that team and you know, put them in contention in the first, first half before Phil went down and you and see kind of ran away with that the second-half. All right, good deal there.

1:29:21 Obviously if there is a change this week on that side, it would be interesting to see because it does sound like it would be a good test if there was a new offensive lineman out there. I want to talk about one of the linebackers next prime that caught my eye on the stat sheet along with who he is and that is Solomon Deshields, 6 foot tall, ��230 linebacker. Out of Millville, NJ was a mid three star when he came out back in the class of 2020 and so far this year 21 tackles, 3 tackles for loss in a sack. Where are we seeing him line up?

1:30:01 You know they they obviously have lost some linebackers the last few years. Who's he wrote. What's he effectively doing there? Yeah, he's their outside linebacker essentially the will in this, in this type of defense. He's a he's a he's their blitz specialist. He's the guy that they're bringing on a lot of those blitz calls really good and pursuit attacks the gap really well, unlike some of our our linebackers that we've seen this year so far. So he does a pretty good job there. Good and run fit responsibilities. Where he can get lost is when he asked to cover in the passing game, especially in zone. Not very good there. So usually that's why you see him on passing down. They're trying to bring him as that fifth or sixth guy coming off the edge on the pass rush.

1:30:51 All righty. Good deal. There Again, it's one of those things we're gonna talk about in Keys in a little while here. What do we do against this team? What do we do against this team and you hear somebody like him struggling in coverage, is do we have to mix it up with the past? But Tally, we got one more guy we want to talk about, someone I'm sure is familiar to everybody. Or of us sick? Obviously should be near and dear to a lot of hokey fans. Donovan McMillan, He came out of high school, went to Florida. A lot of hokey fans, for some reason, thought we were close to getting him. Then he goes to Florida, doesn't work out there and guess what?

1:31:33 He transfers. A lot of hokey fans went down that road again and thought we were going to get him when he transferred from Florida. No, he didn't. He transferred to Pitt. He is a PA kid. He's from there. He was a four-star guy coming out of high school. Offers from all over. You know Georgia list goes to Florida, list goes on and on of all the people that wanted this kid. Very talented, says This year he's got about 32 tackles. What I thought was interesting, I mean he's 6 to 210, so a bigger safety. What I what I thought was interesting was in that West Virginia game he had 18 tackles, 9 solo and 9 assisted. So the reason I say I find that interesting is. Are they getting to that second level? Is he coming downhill?

1:32:31 How is he getting in on all these tackles, Brian? Yeah, man. Let's start by saying, you know, DMC is the one that got away, man. He's the one that got away. I feel like we've all been chatting. I think when he was getting recruited in, he was one of those infamous silent commits that didn't quite turn out the way we wanted it to. And you know, I had dreams of dropping DeLorean means every time this kid made a big play and I didn't get to do that. So I'm very disappointed. But really good player, man, Great in pursuit, covers ground really fast.

1:33:14 They use them a lot as kind of that middle third in the single high, kind of the half field safety in their primary coverages. So there's a lot of Cover 3, Cover one, Cover 6. So he kind of plays that role for them in those and those coverages and I'd say he's better against the run, but he's still very active, sorry, better against the past, but he's still active in run support. So just a solid all around player and really I'd say elite in kind of playing that deep third coverage. All righty. So. Brian, let's ask this like Tally was talking about here before we get to hokey keys. Is it downhill?

1:33:54 Is that where he's making his tackles or is he coming up in the box? Or is he just, is he all over the place or they let him free roam especially so thinking about you know what West Virginia does, you know they he's coming up and making a lot of plays in those passes and in the run game. So it's more in the passing game that shot a quick passing game, he's coming up and making those plays there. So that that's why you're seeing a little bit more volume pick up against a team like that. I am very sorry, Brian. We are over here chuckling. You can take a look at the private chat now because we we, we were reminiscing back from three years ago in 2020 with with with DMC there. All right, all right. So that is pit lot of players you should know.

1:34:36 Obviously we can't cover them all, but we're going to get to the Hokie keys now. As always, we have 4 Hokie keys. I'm going to let our guest, Mike McDaniel lead us with the key. He felt most important this week. Let drones cook in the running game. Let him cook I. Agree. It does not have to be. I've mentioned this earlier tonight. Does not have to be difficult. If he's running the ball well, downhill, let him run the ball. All right. I I understand. We don't want drones to run 2530 * a game. Totally get that right. I think he ran it 2223 times against Rutgers. Probably a little too many, right? If you get him in that. 13 to 17 range, right where last week. I think that's his sweet spot.

1:35:25 But a lot of those came later in the game, right? Real good early on. Went away from it, came back to it off and saw some success. Let him run the ball, let him get comfortable, set up the passing game. Doesn't have to be hard. All righty. There we go. Let let drones cook. I tally. What's yours this week, man? I'm gonna, I'm gonna get. Jump on what he's saying as well. Whatever's working on offense, stick with it. I mean, don't overthink it. Whatever's working, keep doing it. If Drones is killing him with his legs, let him kill him. If we're throwing short passes and we we're thinking and dunking down the field, let's keep doing it.

1:36:09 You know, let's not just say, OK, we did this, that worked. Let's see if this will work. No, we ain't got time for that. Continue doing what works offense. There you go. There you go, Sigla. What's yours, man? Yeah, I mean, I don't want to beat a dead horse here, but live at those explosive run planes, man. I mean that. That's what we got to do. We got, we got to have the safety's coming up in the right fits of the run game. We got to get more tackles for loss from our defensive line so we can put them in down in distances that hurt them. So they can't gash us in the run game on 3rd down and get those big runs that not only move the sticks but also we're putting them in scoring range or they're putting points on the board if they're not already scoring on the run anyway.

1:36:55 So that that's what we got to do if if we can limit the explosive plays in the run game. I think we're we're what we're showing is that we have the ability we're not consistent. We aren't doing, we aren't doing the right things all the time. Yep, we're not doing the right things all the time. All right, I'm going to throw this one out for y'all because of of kind of what Pitt is. Pitt roughly ranks in the atmosphere of NCAA college football. They are directly in the middle when it comes to from 33rd downs. They're about 41%. And I'm going to be honest, if we can kick them to 41 percent or less, that's going to be a key get them off the field.

1:37:40 Every two or five times there's a third down or three of out of five times you're going to win this game doing that. If we let it become like it did last week, where early Marshall went like five or seven, they came back to Earth in the second-half, but they didn't need it in the second-half. They didn't need it in the second-half. Y'all are cracking me up too. Seeing all the sorry, sorry, y'all, don't know. We we've we've all been in, we've all been together for close to four years now. So there's a lot of stories in this chat, so. Me. Get them off the field on 3rd down. Stick them to their average. We'll put it below. If it starts creeping above, we're going to be in trouble. All right, so now we've got our prediction and our big screeners. Mike, you'll get to pick the big screeners too.

1:38:22 You can just have some fun because you know you never make picks, but you never make picks. Big streamer segment is presented by prize picks. Prize 6 is a daily fantasy app where you can make entries based on players projected outcomes this week. Thursday night, my first one. Sam Laporta, The young rookie tied in with Detroit. It's at 42 1/2 receiving yards. Take the over. He has been lighting it up. Green Bay at Derek Card doesn't go out Sunday. They do not win that game. My second one because he's on my fantasy team and he needs a touchdown this week and he's playing one of the worst teams in the league. Justin Jefferson is a touchdown or no touchdown. He is going to score a touchdown this week. Remember, prize picks will match any deposit up to $100. When you sign up with our code BC picks, that's BCPICKS. Or use that QR code.

1:39:18 If you're watching us on YouTube tonight, click it right there. It'll take you right to it. Or the boundary corner page back slash BC picks. All righty, we'll start with our hokey predictions first. Mike again. You're the guest. What are you feeling on the game Saturday? It's about time that a Brent Pride coach team steps up and just figures it out. We can all agree. Please. I think it happens on Saturday night. I can't believe I'm saying this. I think it happened Saturday night. What's informing me of this?

1:40:01 The spread makes no sense at all. The pit. This pit team. Listen, listen. This pit team is not very good. It's better than Virginia Tech, right? Why is Pitt only a 2 1/2 point favorite? And don't tell me it's because they think Christian Bayou's going to start a quarterback. This thing opened at 4:00. What makes makes zero sense. Pitt has had a lovehate relationship with going to Lane Stadium and for some reason ACC Network decide this is going to be a primetime game on Saturday night. Give me the Hokies outright 1716 Virginia Tech. A very ugly, low scoring, disgusting, gross game spread makes no sense.

1:40:49 Give me the Hokies on a rock. Fight alrighty. Let's see if we're as optimistic as Mr. McDaniel is down here. Tally, who you got? Yeah man, Mike made some great points. You know, like he said, the spread makes no sense. I was looking at it. I'm like, man, that's that's kind of crazy. So guess what I did? I picked pit because our coaching staff is not making no sense. Pit to the wind pits going to cover 2417 pit. I mean, it's already up there. I got Pitt too. I'm going. I'm going to cover, too.

1:41:29 I got 2720 Pitt. I I can't trust our run defense to not allow big plays yet. And I still need to see the offense put four quarters together. And I'm at a point now in this season where, until I see it actually happen, I have a hard time picking Virginia Tech. So Pitt. All right. Did you get Sheldon's? Yeah. What's he? He's also saying that I don't think we got the score from him. But he said Fitz winning the game. I'm I'm I'm sorry we're going all against you. Mike here. But I'm with them. I'm fading the Hokies until I see a lot more out of them. I do think it's going to be ugly. I'm.

1:42:13 I'm with you. I'm not as high scoring as these two guys are. I think the Hokies cover, but I think they lose a heartbreaker 2120. I'm not even like an optimist and for some reason I just have a feeling about this for some reason so. We hope you're right it. Might be Daniel. Gut feeling. I got to see if that plays out, man. It's gone for and against me, so we'll see. It is what? Curtis Curtis, you said you think the score is going to be 2120. 2120. So you think the Hulkies cover? I think they can cover, but we're still going to lose. It's going to be all some screwed up ass play, probably knowing our luck, just the way everything's going this year. All righty, We got more big screeners because, you know, we're at a point in our lives. We can curse and be mad at our team and throw shit after the game, but we can still watch other games. I did last week, Had had some Scotch, had some Scotch after the game.

1:43:06 So let's start with the first one here. Tally, you leading us off Tally's? He's definitely watching USC Colorado. I think that's a high noon kick. Oh yeah, I talked a little bit about it earlier, man. These people smell blood in the water. Dion, you better get your team right because Caleb Williams is coming in there and he's definitely going to cover and they might score 60 points. It's my opinion that that Colorado offensive line has not been good. Everything that Shador Sanders has done, it's kind of been him making plays in my opinion. I think that are most sacked team or one of the most sacked team in the nation. Which is crazy because they're higher than us. But again, no knock on Colorado.

1:43:53 They are building a team, but I think USC is going to smoke them. All right. Brian, what you got? I'm taking the Trojans in this one too. What I saw against Oregon against a competent rush that also has a back end that can cover. Was not very pretty. I think we're going to see a little bit more of that. I don't think it's quite as lopsided as that Oregon contest, but I think it definitely covers that 21 1/2. So give me the Trojans. All righty, go ahead, throw Shelton's up there because me and Shelton are on the same page. Colorado is not going to win this game, but they're going to cover y'all.

1:44:36 It's Lincoln Rally. His teams don't play defense. They eventually going to get in the shootout, by the way. It's 73 1/2 over under over. Oh my God. Over. Oh my God over. This game's going to be like, Tally, you ain't wrong. I think UFC gets to 60, but I think, I think Deon ain't far behind it. Like 45. The game's hit 100. Yeah. You got any picks on this one, Mike? I like Colorado to cover because of exactly what you just said, Curtis, the the USC defense man. If if Lincoln Riley ever fires Alex Grinch, who gets a real defensive coordinator, US, he's going to be cooking with some guys, I think. We'll see. I think it's just a Lincoln thing. I think.

1:45:17 I don't think you know what, I don't think Lincoln Riley knows how to do y'all what. I don't think he knows. I play complimentary football. He just wants. To all the time. What makes you say that? Wherever he's been, he has some of the most impressive defensive talent and he cannot stop anyone. Hey, hey, we need a 6 minute drive here. We're up two touchdowns. I'm going to try scoring 3 seconds exactly. I'm going to go to my game next Friday night. Two teams the Hokies will see, which are NC State and Louisville. This game is down at Carter Finley Stadium on Friday night and we got a home dog here. We got a home dog.

1:46:01 And I think this is going to be a fight. I think this is going to be the best Louisville, the best defense Louisville has seen all year. I think Louisville has flaws on the defensive side of the ball. We saw that against Georgia Tech. When you give a 28 points to that dreadful Georgia Tech offense, it says a lot about you. So give me NC State. I think NC State takes the win and the cover tally. Oh, tally. OK. Yeah, I think, I think you, North Carolina State. We'll win and cover here as well. A linebacker, man. He's something else. Another another one that we almost got him. Peyton, Peyton. Luke, Peyton Willis. Wilson.

1:46:43 Peyton Wilson. Another almost, man. We almost got him like that dude is a baller. I think that they play some defense in and go in and win this. What we got there with Brian? I got the Wolf Pack pulling this one out too. I just think. It's gonna be enough defense to slow down some of what Louis was doing offensively, and I think they'll be able to pull it out. NC State, always solid defense. Defense is going to win you that game, I think. All right, so Sheldon's up there. He's going. Louisville faded us. He faded us. Mike, are you famous? Are you with us? No. NC stayed out. Right Defense.

1:47:24 This is the first good, like real good defense. Louisville's play. Yep. And we already seen Louisville's offensive flaws, so he's going with us. And we already said that, you know, Louisville is playing probably the easiest schedule of any ACC team this year. So up to this point, yeah, it is so. It's so bad, all right? By the way, one team that kind of has not played an ass schedule is due. They've knocked off Clemson. Now they get a chance to take on the Golden Domers in Bryan's. Big Screener of the week. It'll probably be on his 52 inch point point. Which one? Which one's he going to be on this? That one right there. I got, I got the 50 fiver here, I got another 52 are up here, so it'll be on the 50 fiver. 5 1/2 point line. He says Duke, I'm going with Duke. I I mean, I don't think, I'm not sure that Duke wins this out, right?

1:48:17 But I think this is a field goal. Last minute taking the lead game type of situation for Notre Dame. I think this is going to come down to the wire and it's either going to be a a field goal late to break a tie or a touchdown late to to take the lead back from Duke. Alright, I'm gonna be nice. Mike will throw yours. What do you got on this one? I am I man. I want no part of this one. Notre Dame in a let down spot after we saw what happened last year, right? Notre Dame lost to Ohio State and bit him in the ass the following week. Marshall. Yeah. Mike says he's not. Are you making a prediction or you just throwing this one off your board? Notre Dame. OK, Notre Dame, they're they're, I mean, they're just, they're better.

1:48:58 I'm just gonna go with Notre Dame here. Tally, Tally, Tally. I'm going with Notre Dame and the only reason that I'm going with Notre Dame is because I wanted to go Duke. But I have been horrible at picking, if you go back and look over the weeks, so I just went with the opposite team I was gonna pick. Well, I feel in my gut I'm going the opposite. Way I'm going the opposite way because. My gut ain't treating me nice. Lately, Sally said. He's fading himself. Exactly. Who Sheldon got on this, and I'm with. I'm with everybody else. Brian, give me Notre Dame 5 1/2, and it's not so much that I don't think Duke's a good team. But yeah, we saw a Clifton game. Clemson should have probably beat them by 14 points. You turned the ball that many times over inside your 10 yard line.

1:49:45 You're going to lose. I don't thought Nader name gets that Mike you put a good point they are in a bad let down spot. But the way that game I mean even a worse let down spot because legitimately 10 off 10 defensive players missing a defensive lineman exactly where Ohio State ran that ball on literally the last play of the game. But I think they bounced back by the way game day is in Duke and now game day the only spot they have not been is what UVA. It's like 2 spots now. Like it's every A/C school, but UVA now has gotten a visit from game day after the day. Alrighty. Another I think this is going to be this might be the funnest game of the weekend.

1:50:29 Kansas, Texas, Texas is a 17 point favorite. Mike, we're going to let you leave this one, man. What do you think with this crazy game which I think is this in? Make sure here. This is in Austin, this is at Royal Texas. This is a this is when you're 5 stars. Just pull away. Kansas is very well coached, but there comes a point in time where you're not going to be able to defend Texas for four quarters. Give me. I mean Texas has been really impressive. So and Kansas is a good team. They're four and oh, they're a good team like Texas. They should have the attention of this Texas team.

1:51:10 All right, What's Shelton got on this? This is the one he wanted to pick. He's going Texas. He's with you, Mike Talley. I'm going to go Kansas. I'm going to go Kansas for the same reason that I went Notre Dame, because I seen Texas. I thought Texas. I think I was the only one that picked Texas against Alabama. I thought Texas, you were a great team. I thought they were going to go in and win. I think they're going to win this game. Hell, they're probably going to cover. That's what my mind says. So I said fuck it, let's go to Kansas. The opposite bets of every of Jonathan Talley this week. Listen, I'm going to Kansas here. One reason y'all know what's next weekend? What? Let's go to the Texas State Fair. It's the Red River Shootout Oklahoma last time in the Big 12.

1:51:54 I think they overlook Kansas a little bit where this is a tighter game. Mike, you're right. Five stars prevail in the end by like 10 to 13. But I think Kansas can cover and I think this is going to be an entertaining, high scoring game. Yeah, that's fine, Ron. I'm going K U2. Kansas is going to have a back door cover there at the end. What's the score then? Give me, give me like 4228. I got you. I got you. That makes sense. That makes sense. All right. Next game, Last game. This is none of ours, but we just always choose one extra game.

1:52:37 Friday night, 9:00, Utah. Oregon State in Corvallis, Utah. The hottest team in the PAC 12. By the way, this will not be a high scoring game. This will be a lot of hitting. 1716 There's Mike right there. 1716 Who? 1716, Oregon State. Utah's quarterback issues finally kept. I want to call them issues. They've They've won every game they played. The the the quarterback situation finally catches up to Utah. Alrighty, they cover though they cover prime. I've got Oregon State here.

1:53:17 I think this is going to be, as Mike said, a game where the quarterback catches up with them. I think that. Oregon State can generate just enough offense against that really good Utah defense to kind of stretch out that that 3 1/2 to about 6 points. All righty. I'm next on this one. I'm next on this one. I'm going to go Utah. I like Utah. I think Utah's the better team regardless of quarterback situation. We don't know. It seemed like that, you know, cameras. And it's close to coming back. If the game was Saturday, he probably he is a chance he probably would be back this week but I think Utah grinds it out.

1:54:02 I think Mike, you're not far off on that 1716 score. Stay up till midnight Friday night gets 2TV's going state. Put the other one on. Brian will have his Braves on the TV as well on Friday night watching these sipping a little drink. Tally, who you got? I got Utah winning, man. I think Utah's just. I would take them straight up money, line, close game. I think it's going to be a close game, but I think I just watching Utah at the beginning of the season, you know, play this Florida, I think they're just going to be a very physical team and they're going to win the game. All righty, Shelton takes, he's around with you and the Beavers. So the going with the home Beavers there.

1:54:43 Listen, Mike, it's been fun, man. We love having you on. Awesome time. Yeah. I appreciate it. Guys, great insight, man. I I vouched for it a little bit a couple weeks ago. I said let me come on at some point and go on a little rant. You guys let me do that. So I appreciate it. Anytime, man. Probably, man. We gotta let everybody get their rants out. Now everybody's gonna be messaging us. Hey, Mike Guest, can I come on too? Well, you gotta know how to rant good. Mike knows how to rant good. If Y'all didn't notice, he had a four. And a half minute rant on. Fits coherent. Coherent You have income. I have getting coherent rants. All righty. I don't think anything's broken. I've been keeping up with Twitter here myself. So that's wraps up this episode of the Boundary Corner podcast, brought to you by Main Street Pharmacy in Blacksburg with our guest, Mike McDaniel. I'm Curtis Wilson.

1:55:33 I'm Brian Siegler, Jonathan Talley. Check out our website boundarycornerbd.com. Listen to all of our episodes, check the merchandise shop, check the BCP pic section to get get that code to get some free money. That's on us. If you click that code, they'll double you up. Why you there? Follow us Twitter Follow us Facebook, Instagram. Mike left. Y'all. Know why Mike left. Mike's got to go record his own show now. Mike is the busiest man in Okie podcast land. We were not lying. We were doing 2 podcasts. Two started after 9:00 PM. This would go in for two hours.

1:56:15 We went to Night Boys always, always y'all all on YouTube. Y'all y'all are with us. A bunch of y'all every week. Click subscribe please. We ask you for that. Always we let Jason Long play us in Play us out Check Jason Long use us out jasonlongmusic.com out where people link to all the music on Apple, Spotify and his YouTube and Facebook pages. As always, we thank Y'all for listening and let's go. OK.