Virginia Tech football report card from brutal loss to Clemson
By Scott Roche
Another week, another frustrating one for the Virginia Tech football team and their fans. Saturday afternoon at Lane Stadium, the Hokies held a 7-0 halftime lead, but surrendered 24 straight points in the second half to lose, 24-14. After falling to 5-5, let's grade the latest outing for Brent Pry's team.
Virginia Tech report card vs. Clemson
Another week Hokies' fans show up, sell out Lane Stadium, and their reward is the product they got for three and a half hours Saturday afternoon. Outworked, out-coached, out-schemed, lack of adjustments and just overall failure had the fans leaving at halftime and slowly streaming out in the second half. Nobody can blame them. They deserve so much better than what they are getting.
Where do we begin? By now, the narrative of lack of adjustments has been talked about, but the game plan on offense left a lot to be desired. The offense struggled to move the ball and led 7-0 at the two-minute timeout, offensive coordinator Tyler Bowen called for trick play with a throwback to Kyron Drones who was dropped for a big loss. That loss took the Hokies out of field goal range and John Love missed a long field goal. Keep moving forward. Defensively, Chris Marve had better days, and Pry? Well, the lack of making sure adjustments were made struck again. You knew that Dabo Swinney and his staff were making adjustments.
The lone blemish on the special teams was Love's missed field goal, but that had to do with Bowen's play-calling. The first Virginia Tech touchdown came when Keyshawn Burgos blocked a Tigers' field goal attempt and true freshman Quentin Reddish returned it 77 yards to paydirt.