BLACKSBURG, Va. — Brent Pry has been a fairly upbeat coach so far. It’s his nature to find the positives in anything, and football games, regardless of the outcome, are no different.
So while Virginia Tech’s embarrassing Week 1 upset loss to Old Dominion wasn’t the result he wanted, among the things he pointed out as a silver lining is that the defense, despite the final minutes, played pretty well.
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That lapse at the end was enough to tilt the balance of the game, but for three and a half quarters, the Hokies (0-1) at least gave fans a glimpse at what a Pry-coached defense could be like. Granted, that came against an ODU offense that’s hardly a juggernaut, one that ranked 84th nationally in total yards last year, but when you’re 0-1, you take the positives where you can.
“I thought the kids played pretty good,” Pry said. “We’ve got a high standard.”
There was plenty to be encouraged by defensively. The Hokies allowed just 249 yards, their fewest against FBS competition since giving up 177 in 2019 against Pitt. (If you’re looking for a sign that connects the past to the present, that was Bud Foster’s last game in Lane Stadium.)
Underscoring how unusual the outcome was given the defensive performance, it was the fewest yards Virginia Tech had allowed in a loss since the infamous 6-3 double-overtime loss to Wake Forest in 2014, when the Hokies gave up 234 yards.
ODU averaged only 4.7 yards per pass attempt, again the lowest total against an FBS opponent since that 2019 Pitt game (4.18), and the Hokies limited the Monarchs to just two conversions on 15 third-down attempts, their best mark since Georgia Tech had identical numbers in a 45-0 Virginia Tech win 2019.
Though Pry thought the tackling was a little sloppy at times, Tech got strong efforts from linebacker Dax Hollifield and safety Nasir Peoples, who had 10 tackles and 1.5 tackles for a loss apiece. Overall, Pro Football Focus gave Virginia Tech’s defense a grade of 75.4, which was higher than any game last year, including the Duke blowout (75.1).
That could bode well heading into an ACC-opening matchup this week with Boston College (0-1), which had to replace all five of its starting offensive linemen from last year — guard Christian Mahogany, who was an NFL prospect, tore an ACL in June — and couldn’t muster anything on the ground last week in a 22-21 loss to Rutgers. The Eagles ran it 28 times for 29 yards and were only kept in the game by Phil Jurkovec’s 283 passing yards and three touchdowns.
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The Hokies were fairly sharp in stopping the run in the opener. They held ODU to 84 rushing yards and 2.55 yards per carry.
Much of that was by getting a push up front. Tech limited Monarchs runners to an average of 0.41 yards before contact, per TruMedia, better than all but the Middle Tennessee game last year. Opponents averaged 2.36 yards before contact against the Hokies last season, which ranked 108th nationally.
A total of 36.4 percent of ODU’s rushes went for no gain or a loss, a higher rate than all of Tech’s games last year but Miami (36.7).
“Going into the game our defensive goal is to stop the run,” defensive lineman Josh Fuga said. “And I believe we did that.”
The Hokies also exhibited some of the aggressiveness Pry promised. According to PFF, the Hokies blitzed on 42.1 percent of their 68 defensive snaps (last year: 37.4 percent) and pressured ODU quarterback Hayden Wolff on 47.4 percent of his dropbacks — a higher percentage than any game in the past three seasons. Tech had a season-long pressure rate of 27.4 percent last year.
The D-line spearheaded that effort, led by Norell Pollard’s seven pressures, TyJuan Garbutt’s five and Mario Kendricks’ four.
“One thing that I’ve noticed is that we are going to be aggressive,” Fuga said of Pry’s scheme.
Granted, there were drawbacks too. For all of the Hokies’ pressures, they finished with only one sack — the Jaden Keller play that forced a fumble.
“Yes, we did generate a lot of pressures and only came up short on the back-end sack stat,” Fuga said. “But we made it known that we can generate that pressure and that’s one thing that coach Pry and coach (J.C.) Price have told us: We’ve got to get home and make the quarterback feel us. So I think we did that and we’ve just got to keep doing that during the season.”
Tech was flagged four times for pass interference, including Peoples on a fourth-and-2 play at the end of the third quarter that kept alive a field goal drive. (In fairness, an easy argument could be made that the ball was uncatchable and out of bounds.)
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With the game on the line, the Hokies allowed ODU to march 74 yards in nine plays to score the game-winning touchdown. That included a coverage bust on a 24-yard pass to start things, a fourth-and-2 conversion by running back Blake Watson that the Hokies appeared to have bottled up and a 38-yard pass to Ali Jennings, who turned around cornerback Dorian Strong on an underthrown ball and hauled it in at the 1, despite being interfered with.
With backup cornerback Brion Murray serving a one-game suspension, Strong and Chatman played 133 of 136 possible defensive snaps at corner, something Pry thinks was a factor by the end of the game.
“Armani and Dorian played too many snaps,” Pry said. “You wonder where their twitch, where their quickness is, where their ability to play the ball down the stretch ([is). They played about every snap, and if they get a series off each half, I don’t know if it makes a difference or not, but maybe. We’ve got to continue to build depth at several positions.”
Though the Hokies couldn’t get the stop they needed in the end, simply going through a scenario like that might prove beneficial in the long run.
“I’d say there’s nothing like getting in-game experience,” Peoples said. “This was our first time as a defense all together, so going through that experience is only going to make us better and now we know what to expect. And next time the outcome can be different.”
(Photo: Peter Casey / USA Today)