Virginia Tech’s trip to SMU next Friday has a simple-looking headline and a much messier reality underneath it.
The Hokies and Mustangs both enter at 6-2, but the game in Dallas at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN may come down to whether Virginia Tech can recreate the kind of pressure Syracuse used to push SMU into a 30-27 loss on Halloween. The Orange got to Kevin Jennings four times for 52 yards, slowed Kendrick Raphael to 51 yards on 14 carries, and forced the Mustangs into a night where the offense never quite settled in.
That’s the blueprint Virginia Tech will try to borrow. The Hokies have the front to make life uncomfortable for SMU, but the bigger question is whether that pressure can show up without leaving the rest of the defense exposed.
SMU coach Rhett Lashlee pointed to Syracuse’s approach after the game. “They played a lot of Cover 2, which is a little out of character, and when teams can play Cover 2, and you can’t run the ball, it makes it really hard,” he said.
That starts with Raphael, the Cal transfer who has 692 rushing yards and nine touchdowns. He’s already shown how dangerous he can be, ripping Louisville for 197 yards and three scores in SMU’s 41-31 loss. Franklin described him as a 5'11", 200-plus-pound back who breaks tackles and makes people miss, operating in an offense that does a good job of “making it hard for you to overload the box.”
Virginia Tech’s run defense is built for this kind of challenge. The Hokies are allowing 93.4 rushing yards per game and 3.0 yards per carry, both good for 12th nationally. If they can handle Raphael without extra bodies in the box, that opens the door for the safeties to stay deep against Jennings.
One of those safeties, Tyson Flowers, already has a memory bank on this matchup. As a sophomore at Rice in 2023, he made his first career start against SMU, the same day Jennings entered for one 11-play fourth-quarter drive after Preston Stone was injured.
“I think the thing I remember the most was just him being confident when he was out there,” said Flowers, now a fifth-year safety for the Hokies.
Virginia Tech’s pass rush has the chance to tilt the game too. Stevens, a former linebacker recruit who didn’t record a sack in 2025, leads the ACC with eight sacks and has 10.5 tackles for loss.
The Hokies are averaging 3.38 sacks per game, which ranks sixth nationally. Even in the Clemson game, when Stevens didn’t get one, Virginia Tech still finished with four sacks, including the fourth-down stop that ended the game.
Not every sack Syracuse got on Jennings came from clean line play, though. Jennings also held the ball while trying to extend plays instead of getting rid of it.
Franklin wants the coverage to force more of that. He said the goal is to make Jennings “has to hold onto the ball, work through progressions,” with the pass rush and coverage working together, “rush to coverage and coverage to rush.”
Jennings has been hard to bait into mistakes lately. He hasn’t thrown an interception in four games and 125 attempts since Sept. 26.
Virginia Tech’s own offense has its own problem to solve, and Franklin made that clear Monday. He said SMU is big at defensive tackle, experienced at end, and has had success with “twists and stunts up front out of the bear package,” along with “cover zero, six-man pressures.”
That kind of movement can be a headache for a line that is still sorting itself out. Montavious Cunningham and Brody Meadows are expected back, but left tackle Justin Terry is not ready.
Franklin said the staff is still deciding whether Cunningham, who has played both tackle and guard, fits best at one spot or the other. That decision could also affect Layth Ghannam, a natural guard who has spent the last three games at left tackle.
Franklin also singled out one SMU defender in particular: Marques White, a graduate transfer from UMass who has 5.5 sacks and had three against Boston College.
For Virginia Tech, the answer may have to be the run game. Franklin said the Hokies need to stay on schedule and avoid obvious passing downs.
“It’s gonna be important to stay ahead of the sticks, stay out of third and longs as much as we possibly can,” he said. “The best way to do that is have an effective run game.”
That’s the part that makes this matchup tricky for Virginia Tech. Jeffrey Overton Jr. ran for 209 yards at Boston College, but only 26 at Clemson, where the Hokies averaged 1.9 yards per carry and Ethan Grunkemeyer was sacked six times.
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