Virginia Tech returns to Lane Stadium on Saturday with a problem it can’t keep kicking down the road.
The Hokies have played well enough for long stretches to win their last two games, but the closing minutes have kept biting them. It started on Oct. 2, when John Love’s 36-yard field-goal attempt with three seconds left sailed above the left upright.
Lane Stadium celebrated anyway, before the officials waved it off. Eight days later at Cal, Love missed twice more and Virginia Tech lost on a touchdown with 18 seconds left.
That’s been the theme for Virginia Tech: enough good football to stay in games, not enough clean football to finish them. The kicking has drawn the most attention, but it’s only one piece of a bigger mess.
Georgia Tech visits for Homecoming on Saturday at 3:30 p.m. The Yellow Jackets are 2-3, 1-1 ACC, and they beat Virginia Tech 35-20 in Atlanta last October.
The Hokies are 4-2, 1-2, and still lead the series 12-9. They should handle this matchup, especially with Georgia Tech’s lone win over an FBS opponent coming last week and its run defense ranking among the country’s worst.
But Virginia Tech hasn’t exactly been living in the “should” column lately.
Turnovers buried the Hokies against Pitt before the final kick even mattered. Virginia Tech gave the ball away four times, and Pitt turned those mistakes into 14 points without committing a turnover of its own. The penalties piled up at Cal, where the Hokies were flagged seven times for 88 yards, including back-to-back 15-yard penalties on the Bears’ winning drive.
Then there’s Love. The fifth-year senior opened the season by making his first six field-goal tries, but he’s 0-for-3 since then from 36, 55 and 39 yards. After the loss at Cal, coach James Franklin said he could look elsewhere for his placekicker.
One area that has held steady is the passing game. Ethan Grunkemeyer has done his part after following Franklin from Penn State, completing 73.1% of his throws for 1,734 yards with 12 touchdowns and two interceptions.
The run game, though, has not matched that level. Virginia Tech ran it 64 times for 178 yards across the two losses, a 2.8-yard average.
That imbalance showed up in the loss at Cal, where Jeffrey Overton Jr. carried 10 times for 67 yards in the first half, then got only two more attempts - both in the opening minute of the third quarter. He didn’t touch the ball in the fourth quarter.
Virginia Tech had a 14-13 lead and the ball late, but punted it back, and Cal answered with touchdown marches of 79 and 75 yards.
This feels like the night to lean harder on the ground game. Georgia Tech is giving up 183.0 rushing yards per game, which ranks 117th nationally, and Duke still managed 159 on the Yellow Jackets in a loss. With Overton and Marcellous Hawkins Jr. available, Franklin and offensive coordinator Ty Howle have every reason to keep feeding the run.
Virginia Tech’s defense has its own swing skill. The Hokies lead the ACC with 19 sacks under defensive coordinator Brent Pry, the head coach the program fired in September 2025. Twelve of those sacks came against VMI and Old Dominion, and Virginia Tech has managed just one sack in each of its last two games.
That matters against a Georgia Tech team that has shown it can finish drives. Down 25-21 to then unbeaten Duke with 2:40 left, the Jackets went 61 yards and Trelain Maddox punched in the winning score from a yard out with 54 seconds remaining. Alberto Mendoza, the younger brother of 2025 Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza, went 23 of 30 for 218 yards.
But Georgia Tech has also let games slip away late. The Jackets blew a 20-10 halftime lead at Stanford, and their last two possessions ended with a Mendoza interception and an intentional grounding penalty that left them facing a nearly impossible fourth-and-45. Even after the win over Duke, Mendoza didn’t sound interested in pretending the group had arrived.
“We’re nowhere near where we need to be, by any means,” he said.
For Virginia Tech, the path is clear enough: get pressure, force a stop, and take the game out of the fourth-quarter roulette that’s burned them twice already. If Pry’s front rediscover the pass rush it showed in September, the Hokies have a shot at the kind of finish they’ve been missing.
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Virginia Tech Heads Into Georgia Tech With Two Troubling Questions
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James Franklin also used the session to address the issues that have lingered most visibly on game day. Penalties remain a point of emphasis after costing the Hokies too often, and the special teams job is still unsettled as the staff weighs options at kicker and punter. John Love and Nathan Totten are among the players under scrutiny, and the competition is set to keep running through Friday as Virginia Tech tries to settle a few things before heading into Atlanta. [Read more 🡒]
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Three Hokies are already listed out on the initial report, while others remain in the gray area as the week moves on. Georgia Tech has its own concern as well, with running back Justice Haynes tagged doubtful, and the rest of the week now becomes a waiting game for both staffs as they sort through availability ahead of a matchup that already feels important. [Read more 🡒]
Virginia Tech's Season Suddenly Hinges On This Brutal Stretch
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For Virginia Tech, the challenge is not just stopping the slide, but doing it against a slate that appears to get more difficult by the week. The upcoming matchups come with varying win probabilities, but several of them look like true toss-up or worse scenarios, which raises the stakes for every possession and every mistake. There is still a path forward, but after the last two results, the margin for error has shrunk and the pressure on the Hokies response only keeps growing. [Read more 🡒]