Week Three

0:13 Music. Welcome back to the Boundary Corner podcast, along with my partners, Brian Siegler, Jonathan Talley, our contributing writer Miranda Wilhelm, Ian Curtis Wilson. Jonathan Talley is unfortunately been ruled out for tonight. He's a little bit under the weather, so he will not be joining us.

1:03 Tally, get better, man. You know, we miss you here, but as always, we are brought to you by Doctor Jeremy Counts down at the Counts Family Pharmacy. Your friendly neighborhood pharmacy set three O 1 S Main St. in Blacksburg. Drawing was delayed on the PS5. It should be taking play this week. Jeremy let me know. Just a ton of transfers and stuff happening probably with the stuff going on with the pharmacy with the name change. So if your student family member register for that, don't worry, it's coming. Again, let me know if y'all need to send it to Curtis. I've got his address, I can get you hooked up. He's good for it.

1:46 I'm good for it. Yeah, I'm really good for it. Well, let's start here tonight. We have for the first time, join us and she will be joining us off and on through the season and in the offseason. Miranda, how are you tonight? I'm so good. Thanks for having me in general and tonight Crash in the boys party Crash. In the boys party, yes you are. Hey, we got to pump it up a little bit, right? Miranda, you're going to hang out with us while we do tell the truth Tuesday. You've obviously got to jump off and take care of some things after that, but let's get to know you a little bit. So first of all, you are Tech alum, correct? Yes. What year did you graduate?

2:27 2008. Oh wow, y'all remember those years? It was so, so many good years. I was there just. What? What? What years? Where are you? Living the dream there. O4 to O8. So like. First year the ACC Brian rant. I mean, it was a dream. Oh God O 4 Brian. That O four team gives me chills. Memories. Oh gosh. Yeah, oh man, I love that O Four team. Man, I love that O Four team so much so. OK, well, hold on. So we're going to get to know a few other things about you. So O4 to O8, who's your favorite hokey? Because that's a tough one. I mean there are some absolute studs during that period. Like football hokey in that time period in. That time period.

3:21 I the only reason I'm going to say Ryan Randall is because in like, whatever, I forgot what year it was. I tweeted him because I saw him driving down in North Carolina and he like tweeted me back and I thought that was super like cool because I was like, he doesn't need to tweet some random chick. So, and he like ushered me into hokey football experiences. So he just kind of set the tone. He was such a class act and yeah. All right, Brian Rail, that makes sense here. Now go back in the memory bank. First of all, what was like what? What was your first game? 1st. Or pre student.

4:02 First year or very first game at Lane was Western Michigan. We walloped them and I was like, man, I chose a good school like and I chose them for football. That I was oddly enough between JMU and Virginia Tech and I was like, I'm going with the football school. Little did I know like years down the road we lose to JMU, but whatever. I think we beat them by like 60 some points if I'm not mistaken. That game I. Feel like that was right because I think that was after the USC game. Yes. It was after the USC. Game. I moved into my dorm the day we played USC and watched that, yeah, we lost to them.

4:46 And then we came out swinging at home against, you know. I I still the USC game that OPI that was not is still to this day. Oh, it's it's the what if OPI this day I was hammered in my apartment in Longwood. Yeah, throwing things when they call that penalty. Hey, while, while we're, while we're here, let's we're at a decent little pivot point here. Let's go ahead and shout out Ethan, Ethan, Ethan tweeted at us today. He said he was going to be here. He's here. Welcome aboard, also as always. Lavar love you Lavar. Who else is always in the house? We we can't forget Kevin drones.

5:28 Can never get Kevin drones. Kevin Kevin. Oh man. And a lot of other good stuff going on here. We got Thomas in the house. Tib Tib and senior year was the O4 with #3 being alive and this is. So great. We were right in the midst of our college career at that point. So that was, that was a good year. But actually I, I'm, I'm sure I've told this story, I don't know if I've told this tomorrow, but Brian's brother Brandon was my RA at Hammond Sydney. So it was that was that was always a pretty fun interaction there anytime Brian would make the trip down to Hammond. Sydney, that's so cool. Wow.

6:10 Very cool, very cool. Miranda, before we get into, you know, tell the truth Wednesday, you do some other ventures out there and I definitely won't. You've obviously got your Twitter handle up there, which all of you guys and girls who are out there tonight following and watching us follow her on Twitter. So she's we are we are pushing to try to get her into the press conferences. We've been working on that. Hopefully soon she'll be there, maybe asking some questions, but you do some other stuff obviously related to football. So go ahead, pump that out of what you do where they can find your writing when it comes to the NFL stuff. Yeah, so I've been contributing to a site called Draft Countdown for this is my third season, just a weekly content, sometimes a little bit more.

7:02 The whole site is kind of centered around the draft, but they wanted somebody to, they wanted a psycho fanatic like me to come on board and kind of bridge the gap because all they centered everything on was like prospecting and all rookie stuff. And they were like, you know what, let's kind of bring it all together. And you know, even before I got into college and college football, like NF LS kind of been my bread and butter. So that's yeah, you can find my stuff at Draft Countdown every Sunday usually. And and then the draft. Draft season is pretty crazy. You got to you got to rip your team and let us know how your quarterback's doing.

7:46 Oh yeah, what's? What's the issue on the? Yeah, he was not practicing today, which is not surprising, but the coach is doing the thing. Lafleur is like, you know, there's he's not, he's not ruled out for set for Sunday. And I'm like. Yes, he is. Like don't. Play him. On an injured MCL, that's. Yeah, they threw the doubtful label on him in the in the fantasy apps. I'm like, he's not fucking playing. Just go and put that he's. Going to play until October. Let's just put that that's. What I'm thinking, yeah, yeah, Week four against the Vikings, that sounds reasonable. So anyways, that was kind of a blow. Week 1, you know, looked forward to football for so many months, then I was like, well, could have been worse so. I I have him in both of my fantasy leagues and thankfully I've got a decent backup in both of us. I've got two in one league.

8:42 And I've. Got Baker in another so if Baker keeps up his week 1 performance I think I'll be OK. Baker looked good, granted it was the commanders so I don't. Know it was. It was. It was the commanders. That is true all right, well, now let's get to it y'all, because we do have to tell the truth tonight about what happened in the Hokies. I mean let's just say it 3114. When is a winning week versus the Marshall thundering heard? So let's start with what went well, and I'm going to start this because a lot of people were hub dropping and pissed off. We will be almost 17 if y'all remember what happened last year when we played them. Everybody go back in your memory banks, go on the line and find we did not beat this team last year. We did not beat this team last year. So get your heads out of your asses about a 17 point win. We lost to this team last year and to get a three score win, was it the prettiest 3 score win? No, it was not.

9:43 That's an improvement. If you lose to him last year and you beat him the next year, it's an improvement. I am very sorry. I'm a little bit. I, I see that buddy, you're fired up. And when we look at, when you look at the way the game went, it was kind of a mirror of last year's game where we came out firing. We were running the ball well to start the game and then went away from it and the offense fizzled. And then we never really got our footing back. And we kind of played a reverse of that, right? We kind of came out a little uneven, but I will say we didn't get a lot of points of it. But in the first half, the ball was moving. We just couldn't put drives together. It wasn't like Vanderbilt, where at Vanderbilt it felt like we never got anything going that entire first half.

10:28 Offensively, the ball was moving. We just weren't able to put those drives together. We weren't able to put three successful plays together often enough in that first half to really put points on the board. And then things kind of flipped again like Curtis alluded to in the second-half. And you know, we're out there. You know, if if we play in the second-half, if we play every quarter like we play in the second-half, I think we'll we'll be a pretty damn good team. But we just haven't put four quarters together yet. Sean, what do you think about that man? I mean. Tell us your halves right? Like first half you look like, you know, you can't, you can't run the ball at all and you're in a dogfight with a team. You should be, you know, kind of running over. And then, you know, second-half they start, they start pounding the ball and kind of breakthrough there. So I'm kind of I'm kind of half and half with Curtis. Like, yes, I I think you should always, you know, a three score win.

11:17 You should, you know, never take winning for granted. They got the job done. You know, they look mostly pretty competent, especially on defence. At the same time, there was, you know, there was room for improvement. Some things could have done better. You know, I think I think this upcoming week will be a pretty good, pretty good test to see how they can handle a, you know, opponent that they should they should take care of business of. But yeah, I mean, you know, you don't it's a 3 score win. So you don't want to be too mad, but at the same time, kind of, you know, focus on on things that can can go better. I'm sure we'll talk about that tonight. Absolutely, Miranda. Anything on just the win in general? Well, kind of like what Shelton just said. Like tale of two halves, obviously, yes, that's exactly how it went down. And I almost kind of attribute both to coaching to some degree. They came out sluggish to me.

12:05 There's a little coaching in there. You're not setting your players up for success, you know, coming out the gates, but they're able to come out the half very adjusted and established the run and just look like a whole new team. So you got to give them credit there for do what they needed to do at the half. And so it's a little bit of a weird day, but like you said, a wins a win. When's a win? And you're right, it is a little bit on coaching of because now we're seeing this whole this whole we are a slow team out the gate. When this thing got rolling last year, with the exception of playing three of the best teams in league, the other games it was hot out of the gate, super hot out of the gate. And we only had really 4 second-half possessions. We score on three of them.

12:58 But to everybody, to your point, Miranda, they the adjustments in on halftime are working now. Shelton, Brian, I'll throw it to y'all. What are y'all or actually all three of y'all? What are we seeing? What? What is coming out of the half? Because it's clearly something. Is it just somebody hidden them, you know, over the shoulder with a whistle? Like get your head in gear, go play. I'm just not convinced that this staff is doing a great job of making adjustments on the fly. I think they need to see it, look at it, take some time to to calculate and then they come back out and they look different.

13:40 So that's when you have games like like last year, I think with with ACC opponents, the things we saw with ACC opponents, especially common opponents that we play every year that we've got a decent amount of tape on. We looked very prepared to start the game. You you think Pitt, you think EBA, you think Wake, you think Boston BC. Yeah, so game, you know, we've got a lot of tape on those teams, even with some of the tweaks they have. We we kind of know what to expect there. I think, you know, we're probably a little lucky in that a lot of the opponents we're getting out of conference this year are common from last year.

14:20 I mean, you, you get ODU, you, you know, you get, you get Marshall, you got Rutgers coming up. So Vanderbilt was really the only wild card there. So maybe that bodes well long term. And I think when we looked at Week 1, looking at the offense, we didn't throw the ball well. We came out throwing the ball out the gate, but what we didn't do a good job was protecting. I think they were playing a lot of for shell, playing a lot of zone making Kyron hit a lot of tight windows there. So, you know, I think they had a good game plan to kind of slow us down out the gate. And I think it until we got really leaning on that rushing attack, we weren't really able to get those sustained drives in the first half and that was a big factor. Yeah, I think, I think often times in in sports discussions, there's a tendency to conflate poor effort. I have no doubt in my mind that the guys in this team, you know, came out ready to play.

15:23 They want to win, they want to execute. But sometimes you just don't. And it's it just boils down to lack of execution and and, you know, a delay in in the coaching adjustments necessary. I agree with Brian. I think for whatever reason, the staff seems a little bit slow to make those adjustments. I don't know why that is. But you look at the first half, you know, Marshall played a lot of cover three. They dropped guys in zone. They forced Tyron Jones to to read the field. You know, I thought sometimes it was a case of poor communication on the protections. Now maybe that's an issue with Braylon Moore in the offensive line being being kind of sometimes the guys weren't getting open and sometimes it's just a numbers game. Marshall's dropping too many guys that we didn't have anyone open, you know, in the 1st place and they, they couldn't get a really good push off the ball trying to run the ball. So it was a combination of factors. You know, I think, I think there's a lot of a lot of blame to go around, you know, and, and certainly drones has to, you know, keep keep progressing.

16:17 But yeah, I just, it just seems like the, the staff, you know, really excels at halftime when they can look over the iPad and, you know, they got 10 minutes to go over all their notes and, and just, you know, talk about everything collectively. But for some reason, when, when it's kind of on the fly, when they're, you know, in the midst of the heat of battle, they, they, they just aren't seeing those those adjustments. So whatever those are, I mean, we'll see if they can if they can get better at that. But I think I don't think it's a question of the players wanting to come on me, you know, play hard. I know they want to play hard. It's just they're they're not set up in the right position and right away. And it's just taking time for the coaching staff to put them in those in those positions to be successful. You got anything on this, Miranda? No, I 100% agree and just goes back to like, I, I don't know if I said this here, I said it to Brian before the show, but like, you know, he mentioned, yes, we were, we were doing things with the ball in the first half, right. The blame goes around a little bit. You know, you come out a certain way, that's fine. Offensive line was a little shaky. We went one and nine on 3rd down in the first half. That's not good, but again, that's doesn't fall on one person, right?

17:34 And we didn't make those adjustments that we needed to. So we didn't score a lot of points. Luckily, our special teams and defense was. Present. Absolutely. That was. Shout out to the defense and definitely shout out to the special teams with Jay Lane because even though I'm I've got that in another category for another reason in a little while, Jay Lane that that was an amazing run back there. Was, Oh yeah, doubt about. That it. It was, it was set up well, but that was just like an immense individual effort by him getting in the end zone there. So one of the better run backs that that I've seen on a punt. So, and, and really something that kind of got us out of our, you know, I, I think a lot of times there, there's some mental aspects there, right?

18:21 Because you come out, you don't have a good first half against Vanderbilt, you come out, you're, you're, you're getting some yards, but you're not able to put drives together. You're not able to put points on the board. That starts to play with your mentals a little bit. So kind of getting that first half touchdown off your shoulders a little bit. That was so huge. I think for their, their confidence going into the rest of the game. And I think it really kind of showed you get that monkey off their back a little bit. Yeah. All right. Well, let's talk about these three guys next, because when the second-half happened, when we started running the ball, it became super effective regardless who was in the backfield between Tugboat Tooting.

19:02 Yeah, I said tugboat. If y'all didn't see the chain, go check that out. That's all time chain, all time chain. And then Malachi Thomas with some good runs, PJ Prelude also with some good runs. All four guys average in their carries over 4 1/2. A carry with Bashel and Malachi over 5 1/2. So, Sheldon, what's the numbers on these guys? PFF grades for the game? Because clearly, you know those three guys. 193 combined rush yards. Yeah, well, Malachi Thomas only got 10 snaps, but he was really well graded, 77 per PFF. And then Tooten, you mentioned 113 yards on 22 carries. He was around 65, which is kind of right, right around average, but you know, did well statistically. And what he did really well was was for seven missed tackles. So he's now up to 10 missed tackles for us on the season, which is top 25 in FBS, kind of similar short as last year. Just his ability to, you know, to to break away from. From defenders, you know, not I mean, if you if you leave the country in that stat, it's it's kind of like, you know, your your online should be doing a little bit better. But you know, we we kind of know that we know that we know that he's got that in him.

20:14 So not going to knock knock him for that, but it's still still a pretty impressive accomplishment. So, and, and Curtis, we were talking about this earlier in the week, but looking at the team stats for Vt rushing wise, 64% of the yards were after contact. And I mentioned that's that to you. Vt of the season ranks 99th in yards before contact per rush. So overall, they're not doing a great job of, you know, getting getting running back to that second level before they get touched. And so that's why we see tune having to keep, you know, breaking, having to keep, you know, getting getting missed tackles for us. So, yeah, I mean, I, I think you've got a, a situation where the O line is, you know, a little bit underperforming a little bit and you're kind of have to, you know, rely on the on the running backs to make plays happen.

21:00 And they certainly did that on Saturday. Yeah, Miranda, let me get your take. Because when we come out half it's it's 10 seven. It's it's not the best feel in the world. It's like it's a 3 point game when you saw that opening drive, boom and then boom. And then what was your thoughts on that? Like sitting there, I'm sure you were drinking a cold one or a cocktail and you just saw this and it just we the ball just kept moving. Well, it's like what I know you especially preached. We did what we needed to do and we're like, hello, look, it's it's working more of that. And I don't care who gets the ball if we're confusing them that way, do that.

21:44 I mean, obviously Basil is the guy, but everyone's been serviceable. So I love it. I'd love, I'd love to see more of it. Yeah, I think that's the big thing is that we we've, we've seen that the the running game can be consistent, right? And we saw some things, yeah, we started to see some bread and butter, a little bit of identity in the in the second-half there outside outside zone was looking pretty good, pretty consistent. A lot of split zone counter was hitting pretty well. So we were, we were kind of getting into those bread and butter plays. The only thing that we haven't got into, and I know Sheldon's talked about it as well as, you know, that toss we still haven't quite gotten.

22:30 The. Seal on that. The, the seal is not there. And the couple times I mean, it's just our tight ends not getting out there to, to kind of wall that, that outside linebacker or that safety to, to, to open up that lane. But if if we get that working, I think we might be on to something. OK, they need to go watch. That gives us a little bit of variety with how we can attack in the in the rushing game. They need to go watch the 49ers and how we did that with Jordan Mason on Monday night on the short side of the field with those tosses. I mean it, yeah. Everyone can learn from. Shannon Perfect Lane I. Mean. Yeah, seriously. Like when you see that, though, because I think to Sheldon's point, we saw that last year, We saw that little pitch toss work last year to the outside. And again, what does that do?

23:17 That puts linebackers on skates Because now if they see something like that, their first intuition is to take the outside step. And if you do that fake and then you go inside zone, it's like, well, they're dead. They're going to be on skates. You're going to be out of position. All right, couple more things. I want to go to defense because we we got we got to keep the best one for last. What a bounce back from Minnesota lane. I mean, he got torched by Vandy and this week Shelton. I didn't know, were you able to get the PFF stats on him? So I don't have the actual grade, but I can tell you his coverage when when targeted. So Marshall went after him eight times.

23:58 They were one for 8 for 25 yards in interception and two pass pass breakups. So he was. And. The and the one catch was the Moss play that probably was a offensive pass. Pass. But still a hell of a catch. I know I saw. When I saw that, I I told my friends that was the greatest catch I've ever seen live, like ever. That's right, I don't know how. That yes, I was like, I was right. I was near the plate too. Like that. That was just insane. That's so cool. So, so like, like now we, we, we, we go to Week 1 and it's like we're specting the duo Dorian Balls.

24:39 Mansour gets torched. I mean, Brian, did you get, I don't know if y'all got to watch the tape or anything like that. I mean, was it just, and don't get me wrong, Christian Fitzpatrick and their other guy, they're not small human beings. They're not. I think Fitzpatrick who mossed in his 64 like 220. He's a massive human being to be a wide out. But did it did like was it just technique? What did y'all see or read or whatever and say? How did he have such a good bounce back game? Comfort and confidence. I mean, he looked a lot more fluid and in his movements and he looked like he knew kind of where things were going.

25:20 I don't know if the the preparation was different this week. I'm not sure what what exactly flip switch from a confidence standpoint, but completely different player this week and, and played with a lot of swagger that we're kind of accustomed to. So it was good to see him kind of get back into that, that vein and and play with that confidence because, you know, playing playing corner, you got to be confident. If you're not confident playing corner, you're a liability. 100% All right, one other defenses stat I want to go to real here and y'all may have looked it up. Do y'all know how many past deflections we had against Vanderbilt?

26:00 It wasn't many. Less No 2, they counted yeah, 22 pass deflections, 2 pass deflections. They went 600% better this week. We had 12 pass deflections, most Phillips, Kalai Lawson, Kalai Kalai Lawson led the way with three, most with two, Jalen Jones with two, Mansour with two, Dante Lovett with two, Caleb Spencer with two. So that makes me feel a lot better because it tells me we were in the right position so many more times this week. Obviously the the man sore in most the interception combo was perfect because they were exactly where they were supposed to be. They're exactly where they're supposed to be. Somebody said, well, man sore looked out of place. You look where most was.

26:51 No, that was a zone concept. Clearly where they were because why is most going to be underneath? Why is he going to be coming over top? Probably a cover 2 concept of some type, but it was perfect. So going forward, do we hope to see this more or how can we see this? Why such a flip in y'all's opinions? I think that, you know, just looking at the way that that they were attacking us, I think we looked a lot more prepared on defense for the offense that came out and, and what we were expecting as far as how they were going to attack our defense. We we got kind of what we expected.

27:32 I think for I'm not sure what was going on with the defense against Vanderbilt, whether it was, you know, rotations not being what they wanted to be, whether it was just not truly being prepared scheme wise to approach that shotgun triple option look. But we did not look like a prepared defense. We looked a lot more prepared this week. We we looked like we were, we knew what was coming at us and we knew how to adjust to that. So that's the big difference for me. And I think when you have that, when you have a offense that you can actually pin your ears back a little bit more and go after that lets you play more man, you can mix up your man a lot more.

28:19 And, and I think that's where our bread and butter is, is when we can go after the pass or play a lot more man, We, we look a lot better as a defense. Yeah, I mean, they definitely, they definitely seem more confident and, you know, obviously Marshall runs the air raid. So, you know, expect him to throw a lot more. But I just thought they're more aggressive, more confident. And you know, with with Elaine, honestly, I was, I was never worried about Monsoor for a second. Like, you know, he he he had two years of a really good body of work, played one board game. You know, he's been a he's been a baller since day one. So you kind of figure out he's going to have a have a bounce back and credits to credits to PB on on Hokie Twitter for this stat. So the 9, the 9 PB us for the Hokies were the most since 2016.

29:03 That was Fuente's first season against Miami, so pretty, pretty impressive. Pretty impressive streak there. All right, Miranda, you got anything on this, Anything on the past breaks UPS, anything you saw while watching the game Saturday? Say I'm just echo everything and to me it just you come out with swagger, you know, turn around game after. And like Brian said, maybe it's a matter of just true. You have the tape. You played this team last year, you were just more prepared to be in the right place at the right time and it wasn't. You didn't have to make those on the fly adjustments, but whatever it was, it worked. So more of that.

29:49 All right, I'm going. I'm going to answer this question real quick here. They had 20 more passing attempts. Robbie been the only passing ball 16 times. Marshall went 436. So obviously more opportunities, but seriously 16 to 3036 is not a six 100% gain on that so. Don't fucking remind me. Yes, all. Right. Let me go real quick, last one, and we'll pitch it to Miranda. Give me your exact feelings on the Steven Gosnell catch. Oh my gosh, I I was drinking a lot of beers and I, I think I was sitting down and I like slammed my beard down and just went insane. And my parents, I think my dad was like outside grilling or something and he like runs his eyes like what happened? And I was like, we have to rewind this. And then of course that pictures. It should be in the Louvre.

30:54 I mean, it's beautiful. It was insane. It was so freaking clutch. He, he had to work so hard for that. Like, that's not a given catch to anybody. It's, it was lovely. Dare I say, what a guy. Cole Esque. Danny. Cole Esque. Dare I say oh. Me Shelton, he's a dog man. Where where were you? Where were you in relation to where that was? Because the. So I actually, I actually, yes, I was on the closer to the, to the north side, closer to the student section, about 5 hours or so actually. I could not see Steven when he landed on the ground. So I was kind of waiting on the reaction from everyone else. I saw him, I saw him die for it, but didn't see him at the catch. But yeah, he's, I mean, we got, we got to find a way to get him get more targets, man.

31:46 He's just, he's a, he's a dog. Yeah, we, we've got, we've got a very good problem right now, which is how to feed all of these dogs on our unit. Because we, we have a bunch of them and we got a a handful of them waiting in the wings too. So we got plenty of mouths to feed. So it's a very good problem to have. I'd like to see us do a little bit more of it, especially if we can get the running game going early to set them up for some big plays later in the game. So 100%, by the way, Steven Gosnell leading the team and receiving yards right now at 126. Who had that on their bingo card after week two? I mean, I I love the guy with I don't think any of us had that on their on. Our bingo card. Nope, not at all. Maybe I would have had them on my bingo card for converting third downs because that's what he does all the time.

32:31 All righty, let's go with it. We went well, some a lot of more good things this week, but let's go with what went bad. And I think we're all there and we, we kind of hit it a little bit already and it's just another slow start on offense. Not the first drive, the first drive we get into the territory we need to get into, get down to the 35 and everything stalls. But it was the subsequent after that. And again, Brian, you mentioned a few minutes ago, not until really the J Lane touchdown do we get sparked. So, you know, we're, we've talked about it a lot already. I mean, is this the week that everything changes?

33:13 You, you hope it is right. You hope, you hope it is and you know, you hope that we can finally get past this, this confidence issue. And I feel like it it kind of it's snake bit US against Vanderbilt. We came out, we didn't, we had a couple drives that didn't go well. Then we have the turnover on the tipped screen pass and then it feels like, you know, we're kind of getting in our own way a little bit. And I, I think it's still a confidence issue. And I'm hoping that we've kind of gotten that past us a little bit because we've seen the ability of this team, even with the offensive line struggles we've had, we've seen that they have the ability to put up points and score the football.

33:53 We just got to be consistent and we got to be able to do it coming out of the gate. Miranda, you follow NFL teams. What do you see and what do you read when there's there's a struggle out of the gate with NFL teams? Preparedness, I mean, going back to that and I really would I would look at coaching like why is your team also? Well, let me let me back up because the NFL because I followed the draft so closely and the team in the off, you see that the offensive line can shift a lot, right.

34:34 But like you have a whole offseason and Pry said it before the game opener against Vandy. He said this is like we feel the best about this line. And he he had the confidence out loud. But it doesn't necessarily, you know, crystallize on the field like Brian said, like out the gates. And you just wonder. It's like, do we try something else? At at what point do we try something else? At what point is it because it is Cape? They are capable, but it's inconsistent and that can be frustrating to watch when you have all these weapons that are just waiting in the wings, you know?

35:18 Yeah, it's very true. Sheldon, anything with you? Let's just kind of put the cap on the bat and to think about it. Yeah, I mean, you know, online wise, obviously struggled to run the ball in the first half. Ken Moore did not grid out particularly well at right guard and honestly, lathe Gannon really struggled left guard to being, you know, they had to so much so that they had to kind of take him out towards the end there. But he he graded out a 43 and really and and and run blocking. So, you know, they they made a change there. I also think, you know, like I said, they they struggled to identify some of those edge edge blitzes and blitzes. And I would assume that's probably a protection issue and drones was pressured on 50% of his drop backs.

35:59 So that's not it's not a good number. It's got to get better. I think it just I just think it's, it starts with the protection. And again, part of that's Chiron, part of that's receivers, part of that's O line. Like there's, I mean, there's a lot of blame to go around, but I just think everything was out of sync in that that first half. Part, I just think part of that is establishing the run early and get your quarterback comfortable with those, you know, low hanging fruit, those easy completions, getting everyone comfortable. And I thought they did a pretty good job with that on the 1st drive and then it stalled. And then I feel like they went away from that. They, they didn't get him comfortable in the passing game at that point going forward throughout the rest of the first quarter and most of the second quarter. And I think that was probably where the, where the struggles were is that, you know, you lose a little bit of that confidence and then you're kind of back at square one.

36:45 Because when your offensive line is inconsistent, it makes it, it makes it a lot harder to play quarterback just plain and simple. Because some, because if if you're getting sacked, you're getting chased around, sometimes you're seeing ghosts. There's a lot of things that happened there when when you have a offensive line that's very inconsistent. Let me ask you this, Brian, and this is this is almost an offseason topic. We always hear we're trying to mix and make guys learn positions. Is that something maybe what what we have we don't have the capability to do on the offensive line. If you're a right guard you that's where you're going to play. You're going to learn every step. You're going to learn every play from there versus, well, now you're going to try left and now we're going to put you out at right. Could that be an issue with the offensive line? It's the muscle memory in there with these guys and they just don't have the capability because we understand why you want to do it.

37:34 You want to be prepared if somebody goes down, but it doesn't matter if you can't execute the play. Yeah. I mean, cross training is important and we've, we've talked about on here how important it is to, to cross train, especially the offensive line, having that position flexibility to be able to play guard and tackle. We got a bunch of guys that can play guard and tackle. We got a bunch of guys that can play, you know, right guard, left guard. We got a couple guys that are kind of moving from guard to center. We are really our, our two primary centers are guards that have been kind of moved into that spot, right. So that's part of the problem. I I think if it were me, I would have probably left Kaden at center and, you know, maybe maybe stood pat with that.

38:22 I think what they were trying to do with that is they wanted to get that that Caden Parker tandem back that I think they thought that worked a little bit better. And then have Xavier, who is played admirably at that left tackle along with a younger guy on the left side there. I just think maybe it's still taking time to gel. Things don't always happen out the gate. It's a big difference when you start playing teams with different colored jerseys on. So it does take some time for that adjustment to take place. So I'm not saying that it's not time to look for answers, but I'm also saying let's let's be a little bit patient because as much as we want to win every game on our schedule, those ACC matchups are going to be a whole lot more important than a Vanderbilt or an ODU teams that we, you know, match up very well against from a talent standpoint. 100% all righty, just a couple more things on what went bad, y'all. I know we talked about the good special teams and I feel as far as the punt return goes, as far as the kickers go, they're excellent.

39:38 But this is again the second straight week with a massive gaff and it really gave Marshall life. When we have a block kick and I got a little Miranda, you listen to the presser, I was there not far behind you. Were you a little bit perturbed when Brent Price said or they brought a guy off the edge and we didn't know what to do? He said he said the quiet part out loud. He did. I know. But were you perturbed by that? Because I'm sure in your head, while you're listening, it's like, well, coach, wouldn't you just we haven't seen this. We have 3. Let's readjust, right? Yeah.

40:19 I I, I think that's a trend we're seeing is that sometimes I think Brent is a little slow to take a time out just because there's a problem. I think he sees things a little bit quicker on on defense and I think he's a little more attuned on offense. I think we're seeing that maybe there's a little bit of delay with that decision making when it comes to special teams just because there are different moving parts that he's not as familiar with with that unit. So yeah, that may just be a gap that he's still adjusting to at this point as far as how to make those decisions in game. Showing anything you were there live and actually that happened towards the North End, right? Oh, wow, yeah, yeah, I did.

41:06 I mean, I thought I thought Peter was a little bit slow to. I could I could see it coming from, I don't know, like when they got their rush off, I was like, this does not look good. I thought, I thought Peter was a little bit slow getting the pun off. But, you know, Coach Price said that, you know, they hadn't seen that look before where basically the the guy guarding the receiver bails. And it was it was a great play called by by Marshall. You bail right before laterally and then the second ball snapped. You, you know, go for the punter. I don't know if maybe Marshall saw something on the film that, you know, they felt like they they could get away with that. Certainly possible. But I, I think you should give it a little bit of credit just because from what probably was saying like that's not a, that's not a play call you see very often.

41:53 And they, they talked with some NFL teams like about, about that, that play. And I guess, you know, it happens once every so often. But yeah, I don't know. I mean, I guess you should be prepared for everything. But it seems like they they just don't really see a lot. All righty. Well, let's go to the things we were not prepared for. Miranda, your shot, anything in the game you were not prepared for statistically in game, etcetera. I think and Shelton, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought I had read that we had an we gave up another 4 sacks this week for a second week in a row. Is that right? I can Fact Check once. And it's so again, you know, and I hate to like shit on the online consistently, but I you just can't do that. Like, you know, because I say all these other things like, oh, we couldn't get third down going. We couldn't do this.

42:49 Well, yeah, you can't when you're when your guy is getting, you know, and I know 4 isn't like outrageous, but that's two weeks in a row, 4 sacks. It's just I thought we would come out a little bit, a little bit more prepared than that all. Right, and it was 4. All right, OK. It was 4 sacks. It was 4 sacks. So yeah, Sheldon, you were there. You obviously probably watch some of the tape. We know you do you read up some of the stats. What about you? Anything you want to say? Yeah, not prefer I I would say, you know, I I wouldn't call it lackluster, but I've a little bit disappointed by the passing game. Just seems like it hasn't been, you know, quite clicking and, you know, I'd love to get Brian's thoughts on this, but it seems to me like I Vt is it's been after run ball well to to move the ball.

43:43 I think drones is not a prototypical drop back passer. I think he's best when he's doing RP OS bootlegs, you know, get it out in space, get away from the online, you know, throw down field. It just seems like other teams are forcing him to, you know, kind of sit back in the pocket and dissect zone defenses, you know, cover 3, cover 4, and I think he's kind of struggled with that. So, you know, that's been something that I was certainly hoping for a little bit more there, you know, just because of, you know, what we expected with his development in passing game. It just hasn't quite been there. I think right now it seems kind of off. You look at the targets, you know, some guys aren't getting a ton of catches that you you would normally expect. So I, I certainly think the passing game leaves a little bit to be desired. And I was a little bit underwhelmed by, you know, kind of what we've seen through through two games and certainly on Saturday.

44:31 Yeah. And Sean kind of hit it on the head there. I, I, I think Kyron does a lot better when with the RP OS, when you can move the pocket, get those half field, you know, 1-2 like a high, low read and things like that. I think he does a lot better with those things and, and it's a lot to process if you're, if you've got a full field, you know, 3 or 4 progression read and you know, defenses are in your lap a little bit because offensive line's a little inconsistent. So I think it's the combination of those things where we're we're dropping straight back in those in those, you know, three and five step drops a little bit more than we did last year where it was more RP OS move in the pocket, letting Kyron do what he does best, which is deliver a ball kind of off platform on the run. He is very accurate and and very good at doing those things. I just think we haven't seen a lot of those, but I feel like we get better when we when we start throwing some of those elements in there.

45:33 I think some of those big plays that we saw against Vanderbilt were off of that type of action to to get Ollie Jennings open one time, to get Jay Lane open one time. There's there's a couple of big plays we saw against Vanderbilt. We're off of that. I think we need to kind of maybe get back to our identity and understand that maybe simplifying things a little bit is the way to go because we hope we saw success with that. And I think the other thing with the passing game is that, you know, I don't think we can go another game with with Ollie Jennings registering AA0. You got you got to get him the ball. He is too talented not to be able to get behind the defense.

46:16 And I, and I think they were doing a good job of like not letting us take the top off the the defense. They they definitely were saying if you want to matriculate the ball down the field in the passing game, by all means, we're not going to play a lot of man. We're going to play zone. We're going to make you throw into tight windows. These are not things that I think are our strengths. I think I think we can do them, but they're definitely not our strengths. I think we need to again, lean on the running game. So they have to get out of that look where they can't just sit back and wait on us to do something underneath. So that, that that's my take there. And I think if we do that, we'll be OK. Understood, Understood. I mine was what turn around for the linebackers. That room was we, we in here, we, we, we game a little bit of a shellacking last week, all intentions purposes for good, but they played so significantly better. They were in the right spots with the exception of the one big play, the 69 yard run to AJ Turner. You take away that big run, it was 25 for 70 per run. That's well under that's borderline like like 2.3, which is nothing.

47:29 So just but it's good to see it. That's the confidence growing and that's what I like to see. Brian, we're going to we're going to wrap this up real quick because it is getting late. We don't want Miranda to miss her bedtime. Can't mess with. Them. Ain't the only one, but Brian, one thing you feel we've got to do this better moving forward against ODUN the rest of the season. I mean it's low hanging free, right with pass protection. If, if we can give our quarterback a little bit more time, if we can do those little things better in the passing game with communication of blitz pick up, I think we're going to be in a good position going forward because we know the talent at the skill positions are there. So take take care of your quarterback block for your running back.

48:17 Good things are going to happen. Sean, what about you? Yeah. Well, to to hammer home your point about the rush defense, that 69 yarder was really the one they play that Marshall had. And it goes to show how averages can be misleading because I think, I think Marshall's average yards per carry. 5.7 Right 5.7. Right. But you take that, you take that 69 yarder out and look at it, I think it was, I think it was under 3. So that's why we have stats like success rate, which look at, you know, if you were successful on each play. And I don't think I wasn't quite able to get rushing success rate from that game in particular.

48:57 But you look at run stuff rate, Stuff rate is the percentage of runs that are stopped at or behind the line of scrimmage. So Tech had a 15% run stuff rate against Marshall on defense. That's really good. That was the bottom, bottom first percentile for all FBS games this year. So they were, they were really good. Just, you know, forcing, forcing 0 or negative yardage plays was really helpful. So again, yards per carry averages can be misleading. Sometimes you take out the big gainers, look at just, you know, success rate on a, you know, down by down basis. Tech did a really good job defensively. Miranda, one thing you've got to you feel we have to do better moving forward. Bryant said the word earlier and I'm just going to steal it, but bring the damn swagger. Like not an not an official game note, but like come out. I don't even care.

49:48 Come out cocky. It might bite us in the ass, but get out there like you. We do have the playmakers to be cocky about. Do what we do best. Let's see what happens. We've played this team. This isn't a new team. Like we don't have that excuse. So we believe we're prepared, right? Run the ball. That's right, run the ball. That's our buddy coach Robbie Compton, who's going to be in the head coaching chair as his head coach is going to be out for six weeks with a foot surgery. So Robbie's going to be running defense and running head coach down in North Carolina high school ball. Robbie, godspeed. I'm going to close this out real quick and I'm going to steal this Andy Bitter shout out.

50:31 I listened to Tech sideline the other day. Love those guys over there. And he said it. He's like we've got to establish the identity. And I mentioned to y'all in here a little while ago and to a couple other people. When we established our identity last year, Ali wasn't here, Gosnell wasn't quite there yet. Developmentally, we really didn't have a tight end threat. It was Kwan and it was Jay Lane along with Tutor and drones. RP OS. We ran the ball, read options, we ran, we got them set up. We took shots, we found RP OS, little post, little slants. We've got to establish the identity and this is the week it's got to start.

51:13 Last year took the week five, this year it's got to be at week 3 and I think that is going to be what we said. Put it back up there. What Robbie said just a second ago. It starts with running the ball. Run the ball. Everything else will flow downhill naturally. Miranda, we appreciate you coming on with us tonight. Thanks for having me, that was fun. And we we thank you for joining us because the honest truth, it's awesome. I I read the articles. You were doing a fantastic job. If y'all have not go to boundarycornerbt.com. Check out both of Miranda's articles and little game recaps with some little news notes, her takes.

51:55 It's entertaining. I'm going to say that it it will. Definitely keep. I've got a style. You definitely do. But listen, you take care. We will definitely have you back on very shortly and appreciate it. Take care. All your time with Gary. Bye. All righty. So as you all know, we are brought to you by counts Family Pharmacy, your friendly neighborhood pharmacy, three O 1 S Main St. in Blacksburg. And now we flip over to know the enemy. And tonight we actually have a special guest, one of the first time we've ever done this. So Brian, you've been talking with our our guest tonight, so I'll let you do the introduction.

52:38 No problem, no problem. So as you guys know, we are a college huddle podcast here. And one of the big benefits of being a part of something like that is that you get to communicate with these other podcasts throughout the country, especially when you got common opponents and things like that. It's going to be a big boost for us. And one of the things we can do is get a guy in here to talk about a team like ODU that knows them like the back of his hand, just like we do Virginia Tech. So we're going to welcome Gary Williams on with the ODU Monarchist. Gary, how you doing tonight? I'm doing great, thank you all for having me on. Appreciate you joining us tonight, Gary, and taking a little bit out of time. Gary. Also, we saw you are here in the RVA with us. So that's great to hear.

53:21 We got a lot of RVA podcasts going on. Just give us a little bit of insight yourself how this started with your your podcast and what you do for fun. Yeah, well, I graduated from ODU in the spring of 2009, so I was like just a couple months away from football, restarting there in the fall. You know, I've been fully involved with the team in some capacity since then as a fan, alumni, donor, all that good stuff. But there are our group ODU Monarch is we started as a like a Twitter DM group chat back in 2019. And you know, 2019 for us, that was the one in 11 season. It was not a whole lot of fun. So we're kind of looking for people that were like, all right, we know we're awful this year. We've got stuff to look forward to, kind of like minded people that trying to be a little more positive about ODU football. So it evolved from that to a tailgate group. And then in 2022 we launched a podcast mainly just covering football and men's basketball, a couple of other things. Now we are we have our website as well, ODU monarchist.com. So we pretty much cover every sport at ODUA. Couple different podcasts now, including the official men's basketball show for ODU.

54:32 We are big partners with the Pride of ODUNIL Collective when that came online. So we do a lot of in person events with them, podcast, different things like that, just doing everything we can to promote ODU athletics, our our student athletes. Then the other wing of what we do is is really focused on charities in the 757 every year, usually our last foot home football game, we partner with the Marine Corps to do a Toys for Tots drive. So each year we've exceeded our goals there. The Marines bring out some like armored personnel carriers that kids can play in and we fill it up with toys. We get the F18 flyovers, all that fun stuff. So just kind of looking to serve the community and also, you know, taking care of what we love, and that's Old Dominion athletics. That's awesome, man.

55:17 I'd love to hear that. I'd love to hear how you're involved in the community, how you kind of got a great relationship with the school there. So it, you know, looks like you guys are hitting it on all fronts. So that congratulations on that and well done. Yeah, Thank you. We're still trying to just grow this thing as big as possible right now. Send or reach a bit. Very nice year. Good luck to y'all on that man. Obviously, both of us being a part of the College Huddle Network, we wish y'all nothing but the best. And obviously it's great to have that chance to create these relationships where when our teams play each other, we can get a little insight for the other team. And let's start with that tonight because I want to start with the ODU defense because right now I got a feeling you're going to tell me things aren't going great because from the look of it, you guys are one O 8 in rush defense.

56:06 So give me a little background and what we should expect from defensive coordinator brakes liars 335 defense. And you know, what sort of identity is he trying to establish with that look? Yeah, well, defense is actually the stronger side of the ball right now. I know they're they're lower in those rankings. We played at South Carolina, played against East Carolina and a lot of the points that the defense has given up is because they're on the field so much. Last weekend against East Carolina was really like our almost almost most even time of possession game. But you go look at South Carolina, some of the games last year, our defense is on the field for 3839 minutes a game. So fourth quarter, getting gassed a little bit, but you're going to see some 335, you're going to see some 326, You're going to see some funky looking nickel coverages, 3 safety packages.

56:56 You're going to see a lot out of the defense. You probably won't see the same look twice either up front or back in the secondary. When Blake Tyler originally came to ODU, we actually ran a 425. We're actually in pretty good shape with that. We kind of have adjusted based on personnel, but you're going to see a lot of blitzes from a lot of different places. We blitz a lot, whether it's from one of the linebackers, safeties, corners. We try to vary it up quite a bit now. South Carolina ran the ball pretty well against us. If you look at the total yards, they're still around like 3.1 yards per carry. We did probably our best job defensively stopping their kind of power run, power option looks. I think they went into that game saying we're in the SEC, we're bigger than you in the trenches and we're just going to run all over you.

57:43 They were doing OK with that, but we were able to kind of get a lot of stops on on 3rd down South. You know, both of the touchdowns South Carolina scored were off of fumbles and they started inside our 10 yard line. So we're we're kind of going into Saturday thinking we probably should be two and O, we just shot ourselves in the foot way too much. All right. So that that's that's a good amount of confidence and I can appreciate that. And and, you know, as a team that's coming off playing a Marshall team that was really good up front, even if they were a little weaker on the back end. Yeah, telling us that that you were going to have some blitzes and struggling with some blitz pick up. That's definitely something we got to keep our eye on because we've struggled with that so far.

58:26 So we're we're we're talking about, you know, what you do. Let's talk about who does it. What are some of the playmakers on this defense? Yeah, there's a there's quite a few that have stood out early in the season for us. Cohen, no Itala, he is filled in at linebacker a lot for Jason Henderson, who's not fully back yet. I think he had 18 tackles on Saturday against East Carolina. You won't you won't be able to miss him if he's on the field. He has a nice Troy Palomalu flow coming out the back of that thing. But he's usually a weak side linebacker in the 335 or the 326. He's he's on that side. Jeron Manning, JUCO transfer that came in this year. He's back at safety. He's usually one of the three safeties that's back there.

59:08 He is probably our our best guy in the secondary. He can do it all. He's a bigger safety so he can come up and run support, grading coverage. Had two interceptions against East Carolina on Saturday. He's a ball hawk. He he runs fast and he hits very, very hard. So those are two guys to look at. I know everyone probably wants to hear about Jason Henderson. He tore his ACL with about three games left to go in the season. Tried to make a go of it in the South Carolina game, but you could clearly see he was he was dragging that leg. I mean, he's not a super tall guy, but he's really well built and you can actually like see the size difference in his legs from where he's been recovering. So he did not play against East Carolina.

59:48 Don't know if he's going to play on Saturday. I would be surprised. I think with us having a bye week and then going to Bowling Green, we're probably trying to take care of him the best we can because he's likely to get drafted. But also like we're our, our focus is really going to be on winning Sunbelt games and try to get in the Sunbelt championship game at this point. So you know, he's not likely to see him, but I'm sure you remember from a couple years ago when he was a little bit younger out there at linebacker and he's just, he's a high motor guy. He's the heart and soul of the defense. But they've done a really good job in his absence. Yeah, obviously our, our, this is our, this is our other Co host Jonathan Talley, who's a little under the weather tonight. He is right. Henderson is a stud and from our vantage point, we're the opposite of you. We hope we don't see him Saturday at all. Let me throw one other guy out there that kind of caught our eye.

1:00:37 Give us a little insight on Mario Thompson. Mario Thompson, obviously, you know, he's a local kid to us here in Richmond, Went out, played Trinity, you know, Three Star when he came out a couple years ago. Where do we see him on the defense? Because I know he's considered a linebacker, but where's he playing exactly? Yeah, you'll, you'll see him at linebacker when we have 3 linebacker sets out there. A lot of times if we're running kind of that 326, he is the third safety that is on the field, like technically at safety. So you'll see him line up all over. I mean, he got a lot of playing time against East Carolina with Jason Henderson out and he he played really, really well. I think he was second on the team in tackles. I saw him line up with a hand in the dirt outside of the defensive end.

1:01:21 I saw him middle linebacker and I saw him basically at the sticks 12 yards down the field on 1/3 and long. So he's going to be everywhere. I think his speed and athleticism and being a little bit leaner than maybe your prototypical linebacker, he's paid some dividends for him. He had some great stops in the game against South Carolina. I don't think their quarterback wants to see Old Dominion again because Mario Thompson was in his face on a lot of those kind of boundary type runs and quick pops and things like that. But yeah, he's, I mean, he's young, he's still developing. He hasn't had a ton of playing time yet. But our line backing position group is without a doubt the strength of our team. I mean, we were missing Jason Henderson. He was kind of on one leg for the first game and they were still our strongest unit.

1:02:03 So lot to like about him. KOA EJ Green, who's in the second year with us after transferring him from Duke. We we have some dudes at linebacker and rotate them very, very often. All right. So you talked about that strength. Were you going to say Curtis? I will say I was on AC Bates here, Shelton, you didn't have anything data was that was. That you wanted to No, I got I got a couple in the offense, but you can. Got it, he says. He's got his offense and. Stuff together since we're keeping it moving. You know, you talked about the strength of that defense. Where are some of the areas of weakness on the defense? And like So what? Which which area has you most concerned heading into this game on Saturday? Well, I think the three man front is kind of the weakness for us when they don't have someone blitzing in running blaze and things like that.

1:02:53 They do fine. But we saw it in South Carolina, saw it a lot against East Carolina. Third and 10 plus we're dropping 8. We're rushing 3. The quarterbacks back there baking the cake, doing his taxes, plenty of time for the routes to progress and converted all but one first down on 3rd down when we dropped eight in coverage when we blitzed, they only converted one for the whole game. So I think it's more from a play calling standpoint of if, if we're in 3rd and long, we have to blitz otherwise we're not going to be successful. They're they're that defense is at its best when it's very, very aggressive and blitzing a lot may get a get burned every now and then. We got burned on two runs against East Carolina with it. But sending 3 and dropping 8 is basically my nightmare when I see it unfold on the field and I'm just ducking my head until I hear a whistle and I'm hoping it's not because someone's in the end zone. So you're you're not getting home with three very often then? No, no, you're three on five, especially if they're SEC East Carolina had a great front 7.

1:03:52 And I know Tech's defensive front is really, really tough too. So our offensive front is is pretty tough. So yeah, three minute front's not going to get it done. We got at least send one linebacker to make things spicy. Now let me ask this because with that 35 do y'all have a true nose or are y'all playing more of like what is it Brian? Probably like a 2 shade eye trying to make it off like off centered inside there. Yeah, we're, we're usually off center. We don't necessarily have a true nose tackle. You know, Denzel Lowry is probably that guy. Where's #8 up the middle. He's had some pretty good success there. But typically we are shading to one side or the other because usually someone's either firing from a gap or firing from the outside, from the linebacker, the secondary. So we're trying to create the that leverage on the offensive line.

1:04:40 Yeah, usually that's more of a one gap, even though it's a three man front, it's usually one gap versus A2 gap with the 335 S. Most of the time there's going to be a shade situation there. But yeah, so I mean, I mean, that kind of wraps up what we want to talk about on the defense. I appreciate that, Gary. Let's flip it over to the offense. You got offensive coordinator Kevin Decker running that up tempo offense. What can we expect from that offense and kind of what are some of the bread and butter calls in that offense? The offense is a bit of a dumpster fire right now. They have been terrible in the first two games. Even though it's a good competition, we're just not not doing the right things back there. It is a very up tempo offense.

1:05:28 You will not see us huddle when a play is over. We're going to the line immediately and if you're not set, if you got the wrong personnel, we're going to snap it with 3536 seconds on the play clock and go. If you don't like the look, then we'll kind of back off and snap it around about 25 seconds. So a lot of plays it's going to move quickly. This is basically the same offense that they run at Tennessee right now under Josh Heipol. It's very much a spread. You will we will have a receiver on both sides of the field outside the number on pretty much every play. We're we're going to make you defend the the whole width of the field there. But really, truly it's a running offense because the idea is to spread them out, get mismatches and leverage up front and be able to run the football.

1:06:11 That's when we were at our best last year is when, you know, we were, we were able to do those things and move the ball down the field. I, I don't feel like the offense has ever fully clicked and I don't know if that's personnel or what it is. We have a lot of problems up front in our offensive line as well, but when it clicks, it goes fast. I mean we're talking 3 plays, 75 yards, 22 seconds have come off the clock and it's a touchdown. We'll go 3 and out the next 6 drives and you're always just waiting for like that one big chunk play that's going to bust it open. That's why I feel like we've been in so many one possession games because the defense has been strong and the offense hits those big plays every now and then to just keep us right in the game.

1:06:52 I think you asked about bread and butter calls, ton of RPO looks, a lot of RPO alerts. So you truly have the the run pass option there. You're gonna see a lot of interesting delayed routes on the outside where we run. We usually run like stacks. So for four Y, we've got 2 receivers, cleat de cleat on the outside the numbers. So you're going to see a lot of funny things with that where it looks like a screen and then it's slant and then it's go and the other guys running kind of a wheel route. I had some really weird route combos that happened out there. So we run a lot of that. Where we've been struggling right now is we have no short intermediate passing game over the middle. So East Carolina, they put six in the box even when we had four wide.

1:07:34 They just trusted their single coverage and that they would get home to get pressure before the ball could get out. And that's what they did to us all night. And it killed us in the running game from that that way because we were outnumbered. And then it killed us in the passing game because the online cannot hold up the pass block. I imagine we're going to come with a very similar road map because that, that's what we like to do anyway. And that kind of plays a little bit into, into what we do well. So I, I expect a lot of that on our side, trying to play as much man as possible, trying to get after the quarterback as much as possible. And, and we'll, we'll we'll hopefully hold up in the in the rushing attack and, and keep that in check. But yeah, so you, you got the bread and butter. Shelton, do you have anything on on the offense as far as the team is concerned that you wanted to throw in here? Yeah, so, so I was looking at the the stats for Grant Wilson at quarterback.

1:08:24 It's kind of funny you mentioned the the lack of the intermediate passing game. You know, statistically ODU doesn't throw deep a ton. They do go over over the middle a lot. And and those intermediate throws are just not being very efficient with them. So I assume, you know, that's kind of a kind of a major problem. But for Wilson, you know, he had a pretty decent game against BT last year from what I recall, PFS stats not great, not very kind to him so far, kind of right around right around 43, which is, which is rough. And he's also been pressured 30 times, which is the most among all Group of Five quarterbacks thus far. So I guess I'd ask you what have been the weak spots for him this year And and do you think the O line has maybe made things a little bit more difficult for him?

1:09:08 The other line's definitely been a problem, just protection in general mixed with some play calling. A lot of our routes that are even intermediate and deep are longer developing routes. They're keying off another receiver, sometimes their choice routes, things like that. So he has been under pressure a ton, he has been flushed from the pocket a ton. And really like our our short game that we've hit is usually like quick curls, quick hitches to the outside, kind of some tunnel screen action too. That's where we've been like, that's our short game for the most part. We do run a ton of deep crossers. So you'll see you guys come from the outside, the numbers all the way, the numbers on the other side. You know, I think Grant, he had fumble problems at South Carolina.

1:09:52 Both of the fumbles that were there were the ones inside our own 10 that led to those touchdowns and really why we lost that game. He was a little bit better protecting the ball I think against East Carolina, but almost more of not risking throws, which is problematic in our offense. You need to take those deep shots when you get them. But really like all all the difficulties he's having stem from the offensive line we faced. 2 good ones for sure. Kyle Kennard at South Carolina is one of the best edge rushers I've ever seen in person in my life. I mean, he was blown past the left tackle like he was standing still. But we, we've got to clean up that pass protection because he just, he, he is getting pushed out of the pocket in under 2 seconds in most spots. So he's not even on 2nd read before that happens. But his status for Saturday is actually very, very much in the air right now.

1:10:44 Yeah, we were reading about that. Are we expected if he can't go, are we going to see Colton Joseph or are we going to see somebody else further down the depth chart? I got a tiptoe around this one because I know the answer and I'm not telling it. There we go. OK. I respect that. I'll give you a rundown of who's behind Grant. So Colton Joseph red shirt freshman is from California dual threat guy, a little bit bigger than grant big arm ton of confidence we've seen in in spring ball hasn't looked great, hasn't looked great in practice, especially with past accuracy and decision making, which this offense is very much all right. I've got to know what choice my receiver's going to take because they have 3.

1:11:26 So you have to be In Sync with your receivers and know your timing. He has not played in a game for us at all. Who if if it's not Grant, it will be someone who has not taken an FBS snap in at least two years. So got that I've got Quinn Hennikle is a true freshman. He just joined the team in summer camp. Probably not likely to play, but he's like if you clone Grant Wilson, they look the same. They got the same bill, they move the same on the field, they run the same style of offenses and things like that. He's an option. And then Emmett Morehead, who was a transfer of this offseason from Boston College. Emmett played some at BC, got hurt and didn't play much after that. Both of the all three of these guys are are dual threats. Colton Joseph is probably the faster of the group. He kind of runs like a deer and he is a lot stronger than he looks.

1:12:16 So if you're a, a corner that's 165 lbs and you go for the big hit on him, might wake up looking for your mouthpiece because he's a he's a big boy. So you'll have to wait and see when the first offense comes out who is in at quarterback because I I will not be not be the one to let that cat out of the bag. I can appreciate that, Curtis, what you got? Well, we'll know it's six O clock. Let's talk a little bit about y'all's running game. Obviously it it's been a little bit of a struggle this year, but it looks like you guys are leaning pretty heavy on Aaron Young, who's leading the team in Russian. And how's Bryce Duke going? That's a former Hokie that transferred to ODU this offseason.

1:12:58 How much PT is he getting? And you know, just a little bit about the running backroom. Yeah, well, I'll start and stay on the injury theme. Devin Roche was really slated to be our top running back. We were going to rotate a lot of guys, but he was he was the bell cow. He is the elusive back, super fast. You will lose him in a crowd and then he's in the end zone. He's super quick. He got a nice welcoming down there in Columbia on the opening kick off. Some guy just tried to go can opener on his on his shoe with his foot still in it. So he has not touched the field since then. Don't know his status for Saturday, but imagine similar to Jason Henderson by week coming up at Bowling Green. Probably not likely. So Aaron Young is has carried the bulk of it.

1:13:39 He he can be elusive as well. He's a little bit more of a power runner. They run a lot of inside zone with him, a lot of inside zone counters with some some pulling tackles and we're able to do that hard nosed runner. We've seen him take some snaps in the Wildcat, some of our goal line sets. He's been doing great. Bryce Duke, I've talked to him a time. I think I talked to him like a week after he committed to ODU and and interviewed him. That's actually on our our YouTube channel for ODU monarchist. He's gotten some playing time, hasn't found a lot of success yet. He had a he had a rough fumble on a a kick return against East Carolina that that hurt us on Saturday. But I think he's just still getting a feel for this offense and trying to figure out the O line in front of them, which I'd say everyone's trying to figure that out right now. But I think where he's going to be most useful for us is when he's lined up at running back and then goes out to the slot. Able to do a lot of stuff in the short passing game here too. Yeah, he definitely had some success with us in the passing game, whether it's like a pop pass or or stuff like that where we could get him the ball in space between the hashes and let him do some damage there.

1:14:50 So he's definitely a threat from that standpoint. Before we flip it over, Shelton, do you have anything else on the running game for for OD you want to throw in here? Not too much. I know they're they're per rush averages aren't great Duke around 1 and young around 3.6. So yeah, I mean, we just know it's you know, they haven't done much on the ground this year. Again, small sample size strength this casual. You played a really good South Carolina team, or at least what I think is a solid South Carolina team. So I was going to have to kind of wait and see how the rest of the season plays out. All right, so let's move it outside. I know you've already talked a little bit about what they do from a receiver standpoint. A lot of choice routes.

1:15:33 Some of those you know, delay routes, who are the guys that are catching the passes out there outside the hashes. Yeah, Deonte Vines is probably the first one that comes to mind. He's transferred in from Iowa last year and we may already have more offense than Iowa had all of last season. Even though we've been off awful. He's he's getting to stretch his legs a little bit with us. He is, as of summer camp, the fastest player on our team, which is impressive because one of our other wide receivers was a track star at South Carolina before coming here and and playing football. He does a great job of getting in space. I think he's probably the best on in our receiving corps of being able to read defenses and make the best decisions in his choice routes so far. So he's definitely one that to, to watch out for there. Isaiah Page, he's been with our program for quite a while. Small, he's like 5657 small, small guy, but man, he is fast and he is elusive.

1:16:30 Like if, if you're not in front of him, he's he's blowing past you. He had a, a big game against South Carolina. I kind of, you know, we, we took the, we got the opening kick off in that game. We ran 2 plays, fumble at the seven and then South Carolina scored on 3rd and goal. So you can just feel the momentum just fall right out of it. We get to kick off first play, Isaiah Page busts his corner, corner falls down and he just goes for like an 80 yard or 75 yard touchdown pass. So he has that big play potential. He is also a brave soul because he's the one that will stand all the way on the other side of the field and catch a screen pass without looking at the cornerback screaming down on him. So tough guy. He was a little banged up at South Carolina. He played the full game when we had E come to Norfolk, so I really like him, but Kelby Williams played a good bit for us last year.

1:17:19 He's going to be more of your your far outside receiver. I think he only had two snaps in the East Carolina game and one was a a touchdown pass on kind of a busted play and he just kept going on his deep crosser and was wide open. So a lot of guys there, no one's really stepped up to be the number one. Like we don't have the Ollie Jennings anymore. He would be like the clear number one guy. But I think that actually makes us a little more dangerous in the way we run our offense because you can't just say top corner on top receiver and shut it down. Makes us a little bit more dynamic in the receiving core. All right. Well, that, that's good stuff. Let's talk about some of those areas of weakness. And I think you've already really highlighted this pretty, pretty good, but talk a little bit about what you see going wrong with that offensive line and what's maybe holding that offense back from taking that step? Yeah, well we plugged in a lot of new guys on the offensive line.

1:18:13 We have 3 new starters there. The one you want to watch out for the most are left guard Zach Barlev was a transfer in from Illinois. Great guy. Like if you think of Midwestern offensive lineman, like he is the the stereotype to AT super nice but mean as hell when he's on the field. So we've had problems that left tackle with basically just not having the footwork and the speed to take care of an edge, not being able to identify stunts that are that are breaking back to the inside. I had some issues at right guard, but I think we've we've shored those up with the new person plugging in there. I doubt you're going to see the same old line that we saw at East Carolina or South Carolina. I think there's some some changes that have been made there.

1:18:55 So you're going to have more new on the field. So I'm glad this game is in Norfolk and not Blacksburg so they can actually have a conversation with each other. Yeah. Like they're they're getting beat on the outside. And when we adjust to kind of protect, all right, we're not going to let the edges beat us around the corner again. They come with a blitz right up the middle and blaster center right off the ball. So just really in in the past protection, they're struggling. We should have run the ball better against East Carolina, but we didn't have a single situation on the inside zone where the the running back actually bounced it to the outside. We should know to do that because East Carolina did that exact play to us twice for two of their touchdown runs. But everything was just a gap, a gap, a gap all day. And it was driving us bananas sitting in the end zone watching it and seeing it all kind of unfold in front of us. So there's that.

1:19:43 And then just the the route concepts being called are not matching the pressure that we're getting. You know, the easiest way to beat a blitz is to throw the receivers in the vacated area, right? We didn't do that once even though ECU was totally fine showing us exactly what they were going to do on defense. So offensive line and our offensive line protection problems are causing receiving problems and vice versa. So hopefully they're getting that worked out this week, potentially with a new quarterback. So that's a whole new wrinkle to this. I'm sure we'll see some new stuff, but. Yeah, potentially out starting quarterback, potentially out starting running back. Our our top tight end who is like the go juice for our running game who kind of does a lot to clear holes for us. He hasn't played a snap yet this season. I doubt he's going to be back on Saturday. So we've got a ��300 offensive lineman, occasionally we're an 83 and line up at tight end if you want to see something real fun all.

1:20:38 Right. I do love seeing big boys outside so I I hope we see at least a little bit of that. Always fun to hear that. All right, one last question before we let you get out of here, Gary. Again, check out Gary ODU Monarchist. I'm sure they've got a great preview episode for the Hokie. So if you want to wonder what the ODU fan is thinking about our Hokies, check out Gary's podcast over on College Huddle Network. What ingredients could lead to another Monarcho upset of the visiting Hokie Hokies this Saturday? Well you already know there's some voodoo sprinkled in Norfolk when y'all come to town. Like, weird stuff happens, you get weird games, you get a guy who's now a pastor throw for like 500 yards.

1:21:20 Elevators. Breakdown elevators. Breakdown. Yeah, let let me just comment on that. If you understand what the weight limits are in an elevator, that will not happen to you. All right. Believe it that I I think for ODU on the field, the defense is going to need to repeat the performances they had against South Carolina. You all run somewhat similar offenses with a little bit better you. You all have the better quarterback at that position. So we need to repeat performance of that to let our defense keep us in the game. Offense has to either hit two to three big shots down the field for touchdowns or actually develop a short intermediate passing game.

1:22:00 If we do one of those two things on offense, I think we're back in, we'll be in our, our 14th 1 score game of our last 16 games. So we'll, I think that'll keep us in it. So just keep playing tight defense and at some point the offense has to click with whoever is going to be under center. But that, that's kind of the, the key thing. And you know, weird special teams play would would help as well. Oh no, you'll never get those down there. Yeah, let's not snap another one to Williamsburg this time, please. Oh my gosh. That had some distance on it, I will say. Worst snap of that, actually, I'm going to go back. That might be the worst snap I've ever seen in my life. I I feel like my kids play in the court in my cul-de-sac here.

1:22:41 I've seen them snap the ball better than that one. And Brian, me and you, we threw things in this. This is my man cave. We threw things when that happened two years ago in this very room. So. Yeah, I I still couldn't believe it. Like that's, that's the farthest I've seen the snap go. So like now I know how far along snapper can actually snap the ball down the field. It's not caught. There you go. Appreciate you coming on with us tonight, Gary. Like I said, go ahead and shout out your your socials. Go ahead and shout out your your website and let the folks know where they can catch you. Yep, at ODU Monarchist for pretty much all of our social handles, ODU monarchist.com.

1:23:21 Come take a look there. We've got a lot of interesting stuff there, some good previews. We'll have some other stuff coming out on there as well leading up to game day. But appreciate you all having me on. It was a lot of fun. Are any of you coming down to Norfolk this weekend? We will not be there this weekend, but we're hoping for good things for the Hokies. We've got to got to get that monkey off our back at some point down there in Norfolk. 100% appreciate it, Gary. Yeah. Thank you all so much. Thank you. All right, again, we appreciate Gary taking a little time out of his evening to join us, give a little bit more insight on the ODU monarchs. Again, check him out. Check that out.

1:24:02 Siegel went over there a little earlier this week. I've had a little conversation with them. Correct, Sir. No, no. You didn't. I thought you were you supposed to. We we, we were talking, but we never, we never got. Going we'll still go listen to those guys because clearly I I'll give Gary all credit here, man, looks like Gary knows his stuff. Very focused. So probably got a got a lot of breakdowns of what they're looking at with the potential with the potential of what could happen to them with the Hokies coming to town. So again, thanks Gary for that. And now, boys, let's flip it over. We got to talk about the Hokie keys and Shelton. What is some of your keys to a Hokie's victory this week? Yeah, well, I thought about this question earlier today.

1:24:44 I feel like it'd be the most cliche thing ever to say good up to a good start, but I guess it applies. I'll say, I'll say this. I'll say I want to see this team dominate the line of scrimmage. I mean, we've seen through two games now. You know, they didn't they didn't dominate the line of scrimmage against Vanderbilt. They did for one, but not the first half. You know, I just think I want to see them just, you know, come out and punch, punch. Oh, do you right in the nose. You know, I, I think, you know, if, if Tech is, you know, in a dog fight with a team like, you know, 10-7 after the first quarter or 1710 at halftime, like I'm, I'm not going to feel great. Like I think I, I think how you, how you look matters even, even if you win. And I just, I want to see this team really dominate.

1:25:27 I have a stretch where, you know, you score 2-3 touchdowns in a span of 1/4 and you know, you shut up the other team. Like we just, we haven't seen this team really dominate and just bludgeon their opposition for for a long period of time outside of that one Trish against Vanderbilt. So yeah, just just win the line of scrimmage when there's one on 1000 trenches. And I think that's going to be the the recipe for. Success Real quick, I want to throw tallies in here. Basically, Tally says we've got to beat the road aggregations and I understand. I think every single person here understands what that means. This current coaching Staffs Rd. record is not great. Let's get one on the board. Let's get the momentum going for winning the game on the road. That is from my buddy Tally who is out tonight. Especially on a spot where we have the last couple trips. Not, not.

1:26:15 Shit to bed. So it's a good. Fortune man shit to bed. There is nothing else to say. It's shit to bed. We've shit to bed the last two times down there. Yeah, What about that? And that that kind of goes to my point, like we need to beat up on little brother, right? I mean, we, we said it and we've talked about it. We we are the flagship football program in the state of Virginia. What we should do is any, whether we're playing with however you feel about this road trip to Norfolk. And I know a lot of people don't like it and I get that, but we should not have a problem going down there and handling them for four quarters. I'm not saying we're going to put up 50 and shut them out or anything like that, but we should easily handle this game for four quarters.

1:27:01 Yes, we should. Yes, we should. By the way, whatever you said was absolute facts. You spoke to Lavar there for me and I felt like Gary. I said it to Gary and I'll say it to you all again. OU is the 102nd ranked rushing defense in the country. They're giving up almost 180 yards a game. The rushing offense, we want a quick start, run it down their throats, run it down their throats. The second is their rushing offense. Well, you know, obviously they're missing a starter. The guy who's starting is effectively the backup. Yes, you do have Bryce Duke, but still they are not.

1:27:42 They're getting 100 yards a game. So for our defense, play sound, don't play down. That goes back to what Brian said and John, kind of what you're saying to go out there and just beat them up, go play mean. And I always like this. And I know Tally, I think Tally coined this a couple probably last year. Go make them when it turns through the third quarter. I don't want to be here anymore. That's what I want to see. I want to see literally head saying like, man, they going to make business decisions throughout the game and it's going to be stepping out of our way. So there it is. And now we have to do, we always put our names on it.

1:28:23 We always make our predictions. I got a little text from Mr. Talley a few minutes ago. Tally's feeling a little bit of a heartburn for this game. He does think the Hokies wins, but at a 2817 clip. So put that on the board for Tally. Shelton, what you got? I'll take Hokies 31 to 10. I think they're they're going to come out pretty aggressive. Just this is a big opportunity where you know you have a chance to smack these guys in the mouth. If we do that, I'm feeling a lot better about where we are as a program. If it's dogfight, man, you're you're coming to next week thinking like, oh, we don't know what this team really is yet.

1:29:05 So I think they'll I think they'll cover. So yeah, give me, give me Hookes by three touchdowns. I've got 3 touchdowns as well, but I've got a little bit more scoring going on both directions. I've got this one coming out to 3817. I think this is the week the offense puts the pieces together and goes up there and score some points for most the better part of the four quarters that we're going to watch on Saturday at six PMI think that ODU gets a a touchdown late to kind of make it make it an interesting little more interesting contest there. But I think we're able to close it out, put it away. 3817 is what I got. 3 touchdown victory for the Hokies.

1:29:52 All right. I'm actually not far from any of y'all whatsoever. I am at Hokies win 3820 and I get a feeling what what he said about some of their problems with their rush defense, with their blitzing. There's going to be some opportunities one-on-one if we can pass track, get the ball out quick. I think it's going to be actually kind of a role reversal of what happened with Marshall. I do think this is the week we come out quick and 3820, but I think it's one of those games as we sit in the third quarter, it's like this game's over. They can't do anything against us. They're they're not going to be able to come back from this lead we have built up in the first three, 2 1/2 quarters. 3820 Hokies. All righty, we are gone.

1:30:42 It's time. It is time Week 3 of big screeners presented by the Counts Family Pharmacy. You know what we're going to do next year? We're going to let Jeremy make picks and pick a game. What do you think about that? Oh shit, can't wait for that. All right, Is he going to make a video every week like Jason? Oh, that'd be. Awesome. About about half bottle into a Jameson's all. Righty. But hey, probably starting next week, Blacksburg on the Rocks is probably going to be the lead in for our show, man. It is. That's the plan if we can get our crap together over on our side of the house. But got to get got to get the kids sports schedules in line here and while in right now.

1:31:28 Is what it is. Can't do much about it. All right, So we got big screeners, big slate of games this week, some good games, actually just so many games. We actually missed a couple like we do not have Alabama, Wisconsin on here again. We are put that on the board. Put put that message up real quick. It was 39 points. It ain't like that thing went to 50. So get your head out of your ass. Again, again, we said it on Twitter when when he when he said, hey, you should, you should have, you should have took the over. I'm like, bro, you said hammer the over. You said you didn't say squeak over the over.

1:32:09 You didn't say smoking heaters in the parking lot. Hoping this hits and over. And it hits 37 with about 8 minutes to go. So yeah, but we got hey. If if you were betting you made some money, so good on you, yes. Exactly. Good on you. Alrighty. But by the way, that is now the third time in the last 14 games that Iowa's hit the over. Statistics say bet the under. All right, so let's go to big screeners. Brian, you're up first. Where are you heading to for your big screeners game? Let's go to K State, baby. This is an interesting game for me. You got Arizona busting into a new conference. You got K State pretty good season last year. I kind of think both of these teams are a little over ranked at this point.

1:32:59 So I'm not really exactly sure what to expect from him, but it's, you know, it's 7 1/2 points there for K State. I'm going to take that. I think K State wins this by about 10. So give me K State here. This game is Friday night 8:00, so definitely 1. You can just sit down and enjoy without looking at 50 other games. And I am right with you Brian. I am laying that 7 1/2. I think the war that they got down at 2 lane last week where they barely squeaked by the Green Wave. I think that woke up Kansas State. I think Arizona is going to tumble to earth. Remember it was the Jet Fish program last year. Jed's up at Washington now and going into the little Apple of Manhattan, KS.

1:33:45 I think the Wildcats win this one pretty comfortably. What about you, Sheldon? Yeah, I'm taking Arizona to cover. I I Kansas State was in a dogfight last week with Tulane. I agree with Brian, both teams probably overrated and I think it's a Friday night game and sometimes weird stuff happens on Friday nights. So I'll take the cats to cover all. Right, the Cats to cover Friday 8:00 Kansas State 14. Arizona is number 20. I am driving this week. Let's go down to Winston Salem. Hey, we got to get the other three in here. Bud. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Tally Arizona. Sorry, man. When nobody's here, I forget. You're good. Hey, rarely do we have three of us here now read off the other 3.

1:34:30 So hey, I'll let it slide this time. Tally's got Arizona, we got Miranda riding with K State, and Jason is also riding. With Kansas State, but we're all on the Wildcats this week. Here we go. All right, now let's go down to Winston Salem. Lane Kiffin and Jackson Dark come in to visit the Wake Forest Demon Deacons, who are basically coming off an absolute choke job versus the Wahoos last week in UVA. What a line. This is 23 1/2 points. That is a monster to lay. So Brian, I will kick to you first. Are you laying that many points?

1:35:13 Give it to me, baby. Wake to me answered the questions that I had of can this team run it for four quarters? Can they keep up with the team that can throw it, throw the ball around a little bit. They showed me they could do it for a little bit. UVA came back in the end, pulled the upset there. Wake had had a couple problems on offense that kind of turned that game late. I think Ole Miss is just going to be too much for him. I think it's going to be about a 28 point win. SO4 touchdown victory for the. Ribs, all right. And again, with this being my game, I'm taking Ole Miss as well. I think that offense is going to probably score every time they touch the ball.

1:35:58 I think it's going to be an entertaining game. You like offense between Clawson's mesh and then in Lane Kiffin's offense. Buckle up. Probably a big over in this situation, but I'm with you, Brian. I think it's eventually Ole Miss being the deeper, being the more talented team. They slowly pull away at the end and it's probably going to be about 28. Sheldon, what about you? Boy, 23 1/2, that's a lot of points. I think Ole Miss wins comfortably, but I think Wake Forest can score just enough to cover. All righty, what else we got? Tally is riding with you again, Sheldon, I think. I think he's fully subscribing to. If Sheldon's got them, I'm rolling. He's jumping in the car with.

1:36:41 Sheldon, I was. I was good last week. Yeah, yeah, we didn't. You didn't put that up. I threw it at you. I threw it at you. Let me I I can, I can pull it back up here in a second. Pull that back up. I felt good about last week. Actually, most of us had good. Nobody did awful last week. Nobody did awful. Last week, All right, Miranda riding with Wake as well. Jason with me and Brian laying a lot of points. Saturday night 630 on the CWI. Wonder if they'll have the chopper down at Wake Stadium this week. So that will definitely be on the second screen here in the Wilson Man cave. All righty. What did Tally go? Oh, no. Shelton. Shelton, Shelton, you're up next. Shelton, where are you going? I'm going to the site of game day. LSU and USC EI think it's to be a pretty interesting game. Kind of an upstart South Carolina team. They've got a really good pass rush, defense looking pretty solid, but LSU good as well.

1:37:37 I'm taking LSU in this one purely based off vibes. I think South Carolina is going to be a little bit too hyped up with college game day being in town. I think they're in for they're due for a let down game, so I will take LSU. I'm riding with LSU as well, Sheldon. I, I, I've just, I'm not sold on South Carolina being more than a six or seven win team in the SEC. So I, I think this is a game that circumstances the line where there weren't a ton of compelling matchups. Like the, the best ranked matchup you had this week is for a team that just joined a, a conference that, that you that we let off with there.

1:38:20 So there wasn't a lot of history, wasn't a lot of super compelling ranked matchups. I feel like this kind of fell in their laps a little bit. But I I like LSU in this one. Probably at least 2 touchdowns. All righty, this one is ABC 12. I will have no shot of sitting with it watching this one because I will be at the baseball field at about 10:00. My cousin and his son are going to absolutely hate me. My cousin is a South Carolina alum. His son is a sophomore down there. I told him like he's telling he's got to go. Like he's just got to go. It is one of the most unbelievable experience you've ever been to. But unfortunately, when I make a bet, I got to do it the right way, not where the heart is. LSU wins big, and here's the big reason why. The defense, you keep a Lincoln Riley offense under 30 points, you're doing good things.

1:39:14 And I don't think South Carolina's got anywhere near that type of offensive talent. You know, 21, I don't know, 2427, you know, 14, something like that. We got Shelton on there. We got his LSU pick. Tally. Literally Tally is just riding with Shelton. Miranda throwing her throwing her money behind the the Gamecocks there. She's she's on the Shane train this. Week and then we got Jason riding with the Tigers. I do have an update here for us on how we did last week.

1:39:54 I got four out of the six. Curtis, you also got four out of the six. Tally 4 out of the six, Sheldon, five of six. Good week for Sheldon. Miranda right on right on the 50% there. Three out of the six. Jason the The Gambling guitarist, only two, two, only two. He he did get the money picked though, So he did get the money. We'll give him that. We'll give him that. That is correct. All right, Even though Tally's not here. Tally's taking us out to Columbia, MO, where the This is a rank matchup. This is where I thought they were going to go. This is where I thought game day was going to go was Columbia, MO, not Columbia South Carolina, but you got a rank match up with BC and Missouri. 1245 SEC Network.

1:40:50 Mizzou is laying 17 points. What do you got on this one, Brian? You know what? I've I've liked what I've seen from BC and I think for this one, for me, with that Bill O'Brien LED BC team, it's not so much that I think they're going to go down there and give Missouri a ton of problems. It's that that 17 is too damn big for me to take with the way I've seen BC play so far. So I'll take BC and that that 17. Yeah, I'm with you. I'm it's, it's more of who the coach is right now at BC with Bill O'Brien. I don't think he's going to let his team get blown out by that much. And obviously we saw them have significant success against FSU, so I think they do have some confidence going down there. I don't, I don't think they can pull the upset, but I do think a lot closer than the 17 that the experts think. John, what you?

1:41:48 Got I, I am. I am with both of you guys, I think. I think Mizzou is actually legitimately they are a top ten team for sure, no doubt. But that 17 was just a little bit too much for me. You're good. You're not 17 points good, by the way. Just go boom, boom, boom, boom boom. This is the consensus pick this week. Everybody's ride with the Eagles, man. Everybody's ride six complete. Soaring personalities. Soaring with the fucking Eagles. 6 completely different career paths. 6 completely different locations. We're all riding with the Eagles. Lay the 17 and hold on. All righty Miranda, we should have let her announce this earlier. She is going down to the swamp with the the Florida Gators in the Texas A&M Aggies.

1:42:38 Aggies. Is that up there Brian? I don't see. There we go. Aggies are a A4 point favorite. So, Gators getting points at home, something you rarely, rarely see. Brian, where are you on this one? There's a reason for it. That Florida team has looked like dog shit so far in the 2024 campaign. And I think it continues. And I think this is a game where we figure out if, you know, Notre Dame is thrown out one great game and one dud or whether A&M is just not that great of a team. I I think they're going to prove that there's, you know, they're a little bit more than than that first game showed. So I'm going to take A&M to win by about a touchdown here. I'm, I'm, I'm with you.

1:43:31 I'm definitely going to lay the points here, give Florida the four points just of where they are vibe wise. I think A&M yet they lost to Notre Dame. I think still, I think Elkos are good enough to coach to turn them around. I think this is the one that it doesn't set the chair on fire, but they're dumping the gasoline on the chair after this week for Billy Napier. I think I think A&M wins. Give me something like a like a 27 to 17 game. Like it's one of those it's probably not going to be in doubt the whole way for A&M. So, but probably entertaining 2717 Gators Shelton.

1:44:15 Yeah, I like A and MI, just think I like Alpho. I think they've just got too much talent on that roster not to start, you know, putting it together eventually. So I think this will be the start of a start of a good run for them all. Right tally, Tally's rod. With A&M and then we got the two Gators on the tail in there with Miranda and Jason. They're saying home game in the Swamp with the Gators given 4 points. Looks like they're riding with that. They're riding with the swamp effect. They're riding with the swamp effect all righty, so our gambling guitarist this week is taking it to Tallahassee. Well, since my baby left found new place to dwell.

1:45:19 Welcome back to another week of guitar licks and gambling picks. I'm Jason Long. We got the dub last week when the Vols rolled over the Wolfpack. Looking to keep that street going down in Tallahassee when Memphis takes on Florida State. Now, Memphis might be the home of the King, but the Seminoles are the ones who have been living in Heartbreak Hotel lately. Haven't started the season. Oh, and two. And things don't get easier this week when Memphis comes to town. They're probably the best team they've played yet. It's possible the Tigers head back to Bill St. Three and oh, so I'm taking Memphis plus 6 1/2 on the road this week against Florida State. All righty, there is Jason.

1:46:31 Obviously Jason with his rendition of Heartbreak Hotel by the late, great Elvis Presley is going Memphis. Give him the points. Brian, you riding with the guitar man are you? Are you pushing him off to the side? I'm going with the Fighting Silver fields out there in Memphis. You have to, right? You have to, right? You can't. I mean, you got to tell a little back story here. So when I was a a young buck just starting college, there was this this very, very young assistant on our on our team working with the DNS freshman year out there. I got to play a lot of scout team, got to know him pretty well.

1:47:12 And that guy's now the head coach of the Memphis Tigers, Ron Silverfield. So really good guy, really good coach. And even at the young age of I think it was like 21 or 22 at the time, he was had just either just graduated or was was graduating that year from Hamden. Sydney was already a very good coach and and we see where his careers went since then. So give me them Memphis Tigers. Yeah, and I'm right with you on this. Give me the Tigers as well just because of what we have seen from FSU the first two weeks. They just had a bye week. That's all good and well. But if DJ you still a quarterback and they had haven't fixed any of those issues, take the points because I think Memphis could win this game outright and send the Seminoles to O and three. When I when I pick games, I tend to favorite teams that have dealt with some adversity, especially early in the year. You know, they're they're kind of frustrated because I think they're going to bounce back.

1:48:12 In this case, I think MSC would definitely bounce back. They will cover. I think they win by a pretty comfortable margin here. So I got the noise. I think they're going to, they're going to come out pretty pissed off. They heard the noise, they heard the criticism and they're going to respond on Saturday. All right, and Tally and Miranda got on the bus with Shelton and obviously us Halifax boys are riding together tonight. So there's big screens. Let's put the big board up there. Yeah, there it is. There it is. There it is. Who who did the best tonight, Y'all, y'all, y'all drop a comment in there. Hit us up on Twitter. Let us know who you think has the best big board heading into the weekend. Well, this is great, Brian.

1:48:56 It's it's it's the Shelton tally combo and against me and you because look at that board exact same minds. The question is, which great minds? This week we shall find out. From and, you know, and, and maybe Miranda comes out on top because she's the only one I think with a couple left field picks compared to, to most everybody else there. So. She pivoted on a couple of them and so we will see. All right. Anything coming across the wire, Coming across the Twittersphere, coming across the Anything in the last few minutes, last few hours here. Hey, we're all set, man. I think we're ready to punch it. All righty. Well, that does wrap up this episode of the Boundary Corner podcast brought to you by Counts Family Pharmacy in Blacksburg. I'm Curtis Wilson.

1:49:45 I'm Brian Siegler. And I'm Sheldon Mott. We are a part of the College Huddle Network. Visit our website boundarycornervt.com to listen to all of our episodes. While you're there, don't forget to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, any of your favorite podcast Forces were there. As always, we let Jason play us in Play us out. And this year, we're letting our buddy Jason Long give us a little musical adventure in his gambling pics every week, which we have loved. I've known Jason since the 4th grade, y'all. So I've known him about as long as I've known Siegel. And Siegel, you've known him as long as you've known me. So he's our boy.

1:50:27 He plays and plays his out. We love him. So, as always, let's go. Hokey. The.