Anemic Offense, Untimely Mistakes Keep Virginia Tech Searching For Answers In 2024

Raza Umerani

Editor-in-Chief

November 9, 2024

BLACKSBURG — Virginia Tech entered this season riding a tsunami of momentum. After an offseason featuring key returns and additions out of the portal, why shouldn’t it have? 

Talks of an ACC title or a College Football Playoff berth floated around both local and national media landscapes, and Tech looked destined for a return to the glory that had eluded it for nearly a decade.

Fast forward to a chilly November evening at Lane Stadium. A 24-14 loss to No. 23 Clemson highlighted by a lifeless offensive showing from the Hokies (5-5, 3-3 ACC) mixed in with plenty of mistakes and missed opportunities — a trend that has dragged the team down all year — proved that this program still has quite a long way to go. 

Not just from those ambitious goals, but from being a team that can match up against any competition with a pulse.

“Too many mistakes, untimely penalties, dropped balls, busted calls defensively, turnovers,” Tech head coach Brent Pry said after the game. “You just can't beat a good team making the mistakes that we made this evening.

“The goal here at Virginia Tech is always going to be to get to the championship game. We’ve clearly fallen short.”

Fallen short, indeed.

Saturday’s loss to the Tigers (7-2, 6-1) was simply another chapter in Tech’s now-lengthy book of not being able to pick itself up off the mat against quality teams. Pry is now 0-5 against ranked ACC opponents, with three of those losses — tonight and last year against Florida State and Louisville — being largely uncompetitive.

It took the Hokies 58 minutes and 17 seconds to score an offensive point with a garbage time touchdown drive serving as the proverbial lipstick on a pig. That was their 13th drive of the game; in their previous 12, they ran 45 plays for 167 yards, with only 31 of those yards coming on the ground (1.6 yards/carry at the time) despite Clemson not exactly having the run defense we’re used to seeing out of them. 

Star running back Bhayshul Tuten — albeit clearly limited with an ankle injury — toted the rock just four times and didn’t pick up a single yard. With backup running back Malachi Thomas being a late scratch with an undisclosed injury, no other back touched the ball. 

“We’ve got to be able to run the ball,” Pry said. “There's not a lot of teams out there that can have a high percentage of success on third and seven-plus. We’ve got to get some third and shorts and third and mediums to give us a chance to sustain drives. We didn't do that.”

All the while, quarterbacks Kyron Drones and Collin Schlee combined for a drab 42.3% completion with an interception apiece before the final possession. Drones — who, like Tuten, was clearly limited in his first game back from a lower-body injury — also fumbled earlier in the contest. With Schlee coming off a hard hit to end last week’s game in Syracuse, Pry noted that neither QB is particularly healthy at the moment.

So, what do you get when you combine an already thin running back room with a thin quarterback room going up against a stout defense littered with NFL players? You get that dreadful offensive output: the team’s worst since — you guessed it — last year’s 34-3 drubbing in Louisville. 

To add to the frustration of the offense’s hibernation, the Hokies played well in the other two phases in a first half where its offense didn’t breach the redzone. 

On that note, the one time they did get it deep into Tiger territory, a failed trick play in which Drones threw it to the opposite sideline to Ayden Greene, who then tossed it back to Drones, who was immediately pummeled took them out of field goal range, resulting in John Love missing a 55-yard kick. 

Tech got key stops on each of Clemson’s first two drives — first a jump-ball interception from Jaylen Jones inside the five-yard line, then a fourth-down sack for Cole Nelson at the 36.

On the Tigers’ third drive in which they were gifted great field position following Drones’ fumble, Keyshawn Burgos leapt in the air and blocked Nolan Hauser’s 45-yard field goal attempt straight into the air. True freshman safety Quentin Reddish settled under it like a centerfielder, then cut to the sideline where he raced 77 yards untouched for a touchdown — the first half’s only points.

Tech went into the break up 7-0, and probably knew it was lucky to be ahead, particularly with the breaks they had gotten. But, sooner or later, the law of averages comes into play. 

Clemson scored touchdowns on three of its first four possessions in the first half, capitalizing on many a Hokie mistake. 

The Tigers’ first score was pretty straightforward — Cole Turner did something not many receivers have, burning Dorian Strong for a 29-yard touchdown up the seam.

Tech got a shot of life as the ensuing kickoff — which was pushed back to the 20-yard line after an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on Turner, who taunted Strong after the score — was returned to the 40-yard line by Thomas Williams. But, two Hokie holds pushed the ball all the way back to the 14. The offense proceeded to go three-and-out.

Clemson’s next score was much less ordinary. Two plays after a first-down strip sack by Keonta Jenkins — which the Hokies were unable to fall on — Mansoor Delane had a free run at Clemson quarterback Cade Klubnik for a big sack to flip the field. 

While he laid a good hit and wrapped up, neither were good enough to get the quarterback on the ground. Instead, he broke free, rolled to his right and found a wide open TJ Moore — who had no one in the same zip code as him — for the go-ahead 41-yard score. 

“That's a crucial point in the game,” Jenkins said. “I got the sack. We pick up the fumble, it can be a turning point in the game. And then finishing on the sack with a deep pass to [Moore] for the touchdown. It’s just another crucial point in the game where the game could be changed. It could be a 14-point difference right there. So I think we’ve just got to finish all those plays and come up with those plays and give ourselves a chance.”

Two possessions later, the Hokies notched their biggest offensive play as Da’Quan Felton skied high and snared a Drones deep shot for a gain of 30 up the sideline. The two tried the same hookup on the very next play, but Clemson defensive back Ashton Sampson had other ideas, making an incredible one-handed interception to spoil Tech’s attempt to tie the game.

10 plays later, Clemson was back in the endzone after a methodical 93-yard drive that elapsed almost six minutes. 

From there, the rest of the game was merely a formality.

Even banged up, this is another disappointment in a season which has had plenty. Tech once again had their lunch money taken by a ranked team; Clemson held the ball for 13 more minutes, racked up 150 more yards and went 9-for-19 on third down. Despite four sacks and the aforementioned interception, the Hokies defense struggled situationally, allowing star back Phil Mafah to go for 128 yards on 26 carries. And their offense was colder than the November air with three turnovers, a 2-for-14 clip on third down and no rhythm or life in sight.

Maybe that’s what this Virginia Tech team is. We’ve seen its ability to beat up on bad teams. We sometimes see its ability to beat solid teams — which it will need to do to go bowling with Duke and Virginia left on the schedule after an open week. We have not seen its ability to beat truly good teams or win close games. Instead, we see the same story play out time and time again with seemingly no answers to the endless questions in sight.

And until the Hokies find those answers, lofty expectations and hype should stay far, far away.

“We’ve got to clean some things up,” Pry said. “We have to get healthy. We’ve got to be at our best. We’ve got two-game season left.”