Virginia Tech barely beat a pesky Duke team this past weekend. The score was 14-3, and is misleading at that, because it took an INT with 1:43 remaining in the game for Tech to get its second touchdown. Let’s go down history lane:
2004 VT beats Duke 41-17
2005 VT beats Duke 45-0
2006 VT beats Duke 36-0
2007 VT beats Duke 43-14
2008 VT beats Duke 14-3
This is, arguably, a better Duke team than VT has seen in years. Duke has won games that it has normally lost this year, and if you go strictly by numbers, their record stands at 4-7. In the past three seasons, I think Duke has won two football games. Historically, they’re due to get better, and with their new coach, they probably will.
If their “star” quarterback hadn’t been injured on Saturday’s game, Duke would’ve won. That offense is a different offense with an athletic quarterback who can make plays on his feet when he has to. And we’ve had difficulty defending that kind of guy this year.
Lots of fans have been complaining about the offensive coordinator this season. Before I give you my opinion, let’s just look at a little graph I put together:
With the exception of scoring offense, you can see the trend and its direction.
Granted, part of this is player turnover – this year we have an extremely young team who scored its first passing touchdown (to a wide receiver) this past weekend. That means in ten games, we have had one traditional offensive pass touchdown. We have young running backs, a senior quarterback who has never been that great, and a sophomore quarterback that is turning out to not be so great. But there’s talent there.
People have been calling for the offensive coordinator’s head this season. I can see that, as the offense has gotten worse year after year – and our offense kept us from going to the national championship last year. Last year, at home, we only put up 10 points against one of the worst defenses in the league – had we won that game, we would’ve then lost in the national championship.
So the criticism has been loud and often this year. Tech has lost a handful of games this year because they’ve simply failed to score points. They’ve been in position, they have the talent, but they just can’t get it done. It basically boils down to play execution and coaching – they’re not executing and it looks like they aren’t coaching. Frank Beamer has gotten so tired of the criticism that this week, he’s barred the coaches and players from talking to the media.
My feeling is that our time on the national scene is waning. We had a few chances when we had one or two players that could win a football game on their own merits. Our offense is so miserably bad now that we’re going to have difficulty recruiting offensive talent – pair that with bad coaching, and that means there’s no hope on the horizon.
Our defense will always be good – but so long as we cannot score points, I don’t know how that matters.
So this week we play UVA for the ACC Coastal title – a pairing we’ve kind of backed into with sub-par offensive performances. We don’t deserve to win. We also don’t deserve to win the ACC, should we make it to the championship game. And God forbid we make it to a BCS bowl – mark my words, we will get shut out if that happens.
