When James Franklin took over as head coach of the Virginia Tech football program in November, you just knew that there were going to be changes coming to the roster. There needed to be. There needed to be an overhaul throughout the roster.
That ended up happening with players from the 2025 Hokies roster entering the Transfer Portal and players coming into Blacksburg through the portal. One room that got a major makeover was the quarterback room. Gone from last season is starter Kyron Drones, who used up all of his eligibility, and backups Garret Rangel and Pop Watson, both of whom entered the portal.
Franklin and his staff went to work in the portal and brought in Penn State transfer Ethan Grunkemeyer and North Carolina transfer Bryce Baker. Incoming freshman Troy Huhn is also on board, with Class of 2025 holdovers Kelden Ryan and A.J. Brand. On Wednesday, Franklin spoke about a room that is really young in 2026.
Virginia Tech coach James Franklin speaks on the depth in QB room
Franklin and some of his staff met with the media on Wednesday, and he spoke about a really young quarterback room. In this day and age, with the Transfer Portal, it's very rare to have such a young room with multiple freshmen.
"Yeah, I feel really good about the room in terms of the competition and how it looked before. So, I feel really good about that. But I will say, it's not ideal in terms of how we spaced it out. In a perfect world, we would have got a senior or junior, backed up by a sophomore, backed up by a freshman type of deal. But at the end of the day, this isn't the draft, right?,'' said Franklin.
"It's not like it's your turn to choose and you choose this guy. There's still a recruiting process, and we needed to go out and get the best available guys that we could. I wish they were a little bit more spread out, but again, I am happy with the talent.''
Grunkemeyer is the projected starter, and he comes in off a season where he took over at Penn State after Drew Allar was injured after the sixth game of the season. Grunkemeyer was able to lead the Nittany Lions from what was a 3-6 record through nine weeks to wins in their final three games to become bowl-eligible. They then closed out the season with a Pinstripe Bowl win over Clemson.
Franklin is right, you would like some experienced upperclassmen as either juniors or seniors, but this is the route the Hokies decided to go. You can say that he sent a message to the room that he's happy with the talent, but there is a lot of work to do.