One Stat That Proves Virginia Tech Football's 2024 Season Was a Huge Disappointment

Ever since the Virginia Tech football team won six of their last nine games in the 2023 season, including a Military Bowl win over Tulane, expectations were high for the Hokies going into 2024 with the retainment and transfer portal additions they got. There was chatter around Virginia Tech for the 12-team expanded College Football Playoff. 

It didn’t take long for things to go south for the Hokies and head coach Brent Pry this season beginning with a stunning overtime loss at Vanderbilt Labor Day Weekend. From there, they hovered around .500 and needed again to beat Virginia Thanksgiving Weekend just to become bowl-eligible at 6-6. That’s not what anyone was expecting when the season began.

There was a lot of heartbreak throughout the season for the Hokies in terms of losses as they went 0-5 in one-score games. That is more of a reflection of the coaching staff than the players. Did some players underachieve? You could make the argument, yes, but the blame for losing all five one-score games starts at the top and Brent Pry knows it. However, just how much of a miss this season was for Virginia Tech can be exposed with one stat.

Virginia Tech SP+ shows how much a swing and miss 2024 was

We heard all off-season about the amount of returning production that the Hokies had and where it ranked going into the season. That was one of the reasons why there was a lot of hype around the program. According to Bill Connelly of ESPN, the Hokies returned a ton of production going into the season which had them in a position to have a huge season.

Following Championship Weekend and the release of the College Football Playoff field along with the other bowl games, Connelly released the latest SP+ rankings and the Hokies finished No. 24, the highest 6-6 team in the country. Virginia Tech’s SP+ was 12.7. What is SP+?

"It's a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency. It is intended to be forward-facing. It is not a resume ranking that gives credit for big wins or particularly brave scheduling…simply a measure of the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football."

So what does that all mean? It means the 2024 season, which was expected to be in the rebuild under Pry where the Hokies stated the program was inching much closer to being a national brand again, was a huge disaster. Instead, five one-score losses had them 6-6 rather than 11-1. Truth be told, 11-1 would be a massive stretch for this season’s team to achieve, but 9-3 or even an 8-4 campaign, a two to three-win increase from last season would have sat well with the fanbase.

Instead, many factors went into another 6-6 season, and with all the transfer portal additions over the last couple of days, it’s hard to envision the Hokies winning the Duke’s Mayo Bowl over Minnesota. Win or not, the 2024 season has been a swing and a miss in terms of taking the next step, and finishing in the Top 25 of SP+ supports that.