In eight days, the Virginia Tech football team begins what is a very important season for the program for a number of reasons. One of the reasons as head coach Brent Pry begins the season on the hot seat when they open against South Carolina in Atlanta.
After a disappointing 2024 season that began with so much hype and ended with a second straight 6-6 season, which required a win over Virginia Thanksgiving Weekend at home just to become bowl-eligible. With a lot more questions than answers to begin the season, one college football writer thinks that the Hokies could be an underrated ACC team this fall.
CBS Sports Chip Patterson named Virginia Tech an underrated ACC team in 2025
Chip Patterson of CBS Sports listed some underrated ACC teams this fall, and one of those teams was Virginia Tech. Joining them as an underrated team were Duke, Georgia Tech, Louisville, and Syracuse. I'm not sure Georgia Tech and Louisville are considered underrated teams by many pundits, but ok. Here is why Patterson believes Tech is an underrated team,
"Brent Pry made some staff changes after the Hokies went 0-5 in one-score games. Among them was bringing in Philip Montgomery as the new offensive coordinator, and so this is a bet that his pairing with Kyron Drones yields fruitful results for both the quarterback and the coaching staff. Pry says this year's roster is the closest to his vision of the Virginia Tech program since he arrived, so fans are expecting results that are closer to the Hokies' standard."
A fully healthy Kyron Drones is huge for the Hokies this season, but one under-the-radar change is at offensive coordinator, where Philip Montgomery's play calling is going to be interesting. Tyler Bowen seemed to struggle the last couple of seasons at times, and different play-calling may have yielded different results.
There is no doubt that winning one-score games is a must this season and doing that with a winning record is something that will take some of the heat off of Pry. If this is the closest to Pry's vision of a roster, then the Hokies can be an underrated team this season.