Football is back

Spring practice is here and as usual, we will provide a breakdown after each scrimmage on the progress of this year's squad. In the meantime, the revelations about the Fiesta Bowl highlight an issue that we have been bashing on for years and years and years. The BCS is broken. It is completely broken and it brings in less money for the schools involved than it does for the bowl games and their cronies.

There was an excellent write-up on Yahoo that you should read. A playoff can't get here soon enough.

Hopefully that tides you over until our first spring practice breakdown.

GO HOKIES!!!!!

Coach of the Ever

Bud Foster is, in my mind, a top 5 all-time defensive coach in the history of college football. He has helped Coach Beamer build a program up from being a nobody to knocking on the door of the Elite Programs Club. The statistical evidence is there for everyone to see, but on top of that, I'd like to highlight a great post by Kyle Tucker who transcribed Coach Foster's interview with the media this morning.

In it, you'll read some things that we identified at TSF were problems last year that usually you don't hear coaches discuss (i.e. the poor play at rover). And you'll read a frank assessment of the goods and bads of this year's defense.

One aspect that really blew me away is just how few seniors there are in the two deep on defense this season. There are literally two - Eddie Whitley (an all-time favorite here at TSF) and Cris Hill. That is an amazing amount of youth for Coach Foster to work with and given this season and next, combined with the level of defensive talent in the past two recruiting classes, the greatest defensive coach in ever, is bound to do some pretty amazing things.

Here on the eve of Spring Practice 2011, we are getting fired up.

GO HOKIES!!!!!

40 yard dash times

Two years ago we posted a breakdown using the video footage of the 40 yard dash times for various Hokies. Strangely, despite my bitching and moaning (what, that doesn't really change things in the real world?) the Hokies still perform hand timed 40 yard dashes during the Pro Day event with NFL scouts and VT coaches all performing the task and comparing notes to come up with the "official" time for the player. Again, it just makes sense for the players and scouts and all involved to use electronic timing. Consider this - the times that I calculated from the video runs of Tyrod Taylor, John Graves and Ryan Williams 2 years ago were all within 0.05 seconds of the actual time they ran at the NFL combine. And just as I predicted from the video, Taylor was faster than his time. To be fair, I may have been wrong about Ryan Williams, I thought he would get faster and he got a little bit slower - maybe it was the not-fully-recovered hammy?

So again, in the absence of the Hokies using their engineering school as a resource to get this done correctly, I will review the video and post the times of all the Hokies (within 0.033 seconds accuracy) whose performances were captured on Beamerball.

Jarrett Boykin (WR) - 4.6 sec

Mark Carter (DB) - 4.5 sec

Telvion Clark (LB) - 4.63 sec

Ju-Ju Clayton (QB) - 4.93 sec

Danny Coale (WR) - 4.53 sec

Chris Drager (TE) - 5.01 sec

Antone Exum (DB) - 4.6 sec

Corey Fuller (WR) - 4.53 sec

James Gayle (DE) - 4.53 sec

Jayron Hosley (DB) - 4.53 sec

Cris Hill (DB) - 4.47 sec

Josh Oglesby - 4.63 sec

Bruce Taylor (LB) - 4.96 sec

Logan Thomas (QB) - 4.7 sec

Alonzo Tweedy (LB) - 4.47 sec

Ricardo Young (QB) - 4.53 sec

David Wilson (RB) - 4.37 sec

So what sticks out? First of all, the "super-fast" reported time run by Mark Carter must have either been on a different run, or the handtiming was off because he was clearly in the 4.5 range.

Secondly the reports of David Wilson and James Gayle being ridiculous were spot on. Wilson ran a 4.37 which is just blazing and Gayle ran an unbelievable 4.53, which is as fast or faster than any WR that ran. He has the chance to be a terror from the defensive end spot.

One of the underrated runs was that of Logan Thomas. He had such a slow terrible start - I guess it takes a while to get all those gangly limbs going. But he trucked it on home in 4.7 seconds so it's obvious that once he gets up to top speed he really covers some ground. I wish he would spend a few weeks working with the track team - once spring practice is over - on getting a good start to his dash. He has the potential to run a 4.6 second 40 yard dash for certain, which, at his size, would be really attractive to the NFL.

On the disappointing side, I was astonished by Bruce Taylor's run of nearly 5 seconds. I can only imagine it was a bad run, or he was hurt somehow. Either that, or he doesn't lose any speed in his football gear because he doesn't play that slow. Chris Drager definitely made the right move in going back to TE as there are very few successful defensive ends in the NFL that run 5+ seconds in the 40 yard dash.

Well, spring practice is almost here and we are getting excited to see all this speed translated onto the field.

GO HOKIES!!!