T-Minus 30 and Counting......

It’s almost here. College football fans everywhere have waited an excruciating 210 days so far (as of Aug 6th) since last season’s National Championship game. While September 5th marks the official return of College football, your Virginia Tech Hokies started official preseason practice today. So as we count down the days until the Chick-Fil-A Classic pitting Virginia Tech against Alabama, here’s a few things to be on the lookout for during preseason practice.

1. Offensive Line

I know, I know, everyone wants me to start off by talking about Tyrod Taylor and how we don’t have a sufficient backup QB and how we probably won’t win 9 games if he goes down with an injury, but probably the biggest key to success this season is going to be the cohesiveness, toughness and ability of the offensive line to execute one play at a time, one drive at a time, one game at a time. Each of the past several seasons, much has been made about how much better the offensive line should be. Yet each of the past several seasons the ability of the line to pass block has gotten worse and worse. With 2 possibly high NFL draft prospects (Render & Wang) plus young and experienced talent (DeChristopher & Brooks) and a good amount of depth, the Hokies should be able to provide Tyrod Taylor with the time he needs to make his read progressions, step into his throws and for goodness sake please throw more than 2 passing TD’s this season.
I won’t even go into how ridiculously talented our running backs are and how the offensive line should be foaming at the mouth to have the opportunity to block for such gifted athletes.

2. Defensive Line

Nope, I’m not talking about Tyrod yet. Second thing to watch this preseason is who steps up for Tech to provide some quality depth on the D-line. We’ve actually got some great talent coming off the bench at both the Defensive End and Defensive Tackle positions, but that talent is unproven when it counts the most; although you can never have enough DE’s who can just plain get after the QB. At DE, Jason Worilds and Nekos Brown should be a great combination of stopping the run on the edge and getting pressure on the QB. Backups Steven Friday and Chris Drager (a tight end during spring practice) are great athletes, but have a lot to learn when it comes to playing DE. At DT John Graves and Cordarrow Thompson should be able to plug up the middle and keep linemen off of our linebackers, freeing them up to be playmakers. Backing up Graves and Thompson are Demetrius Taylor and Antoine Hopkins; again, great athletes with sky high potential, but largely unproven in game situations. When you are 260+lbs. going up against 320+lb offensive linemen each snap you are going to need some breaks. And to give them breaks we are going to need depth. Coming out of preseason practice with quality, trustworthy backups is absolutely critical for the Hokies this fall.

3. Please Tyrod don’t get hurt/Who’s the backup?

Ok NOW I’m going to talk about Tyrod Taylor. There has already been so much said about how this is Tyrod’s breakout season, this is his chance to prove himself as a legit QB and not just a running back who throws the ball on occasion. During preseason practice don’t look for the coaches to put Tyrod in a position that he might get hurt, but it is critical that he and his WR’s get plenty of practice reps at game speed to perfect their timing and build chemistry that was sorely lacking last year. But while we will all begin each Saturday morning this fall praying that Tyrod doesn’t get hurt, we also need to be developing a backup QB that could, if absolutely necessary, fill in for T-mobile. Keep your ears tuned in for news about Logan Thomas. A man-child of a true freshman and a freak of an athlete, Thomas is starting fall practice at the QB spot, trying to steal the backup role from Ju-Ju Clayton. While Thomas played QB in high school, he is a very raw QB that makes up for his lack of technique and precision by his ability to just make plays. But we aren’t in high school anymore and Alabama, Nebraska and Miami know how to bring it just a bit more than any defense Thomas faced in high school. So who is going to be our backup QB come Sept 5th? Vote in the poll on the right.

4. Keeping the proverbial nose clean

It seems to happen just about every fall. Things are rolling along just fine until a player or two get a bit big for their britches, think they are untouchable and end up getting busted for any assortment of illegal behavior. Drugs, alcohol, fights etc. Can we please just stick to playing football, sleeping in class and with any other free time the players might have, get really, really good at Madden 2010? Don’t begin to think that Virginia Tech is the only school that deals with these issues. It hits every campus often enough that more should be done to help these kids adjust to the freedom, popularity and benefits that come along with playing big time college football.

So Hokie fans, get your vacationing out of the way, make sure you have renewed your contract with your cable company (and most definitely splurge on the HD cable box and HD cable package) and start counting down the days until college football season begins. I can’t wait……..

What are you looking for out of preseason practice? Leave your thoughts in the comments section.