Virginia Tech’s final four games carry a lot more weight than a typical November stretch. The Hokies are 6-2, already bowl-eligible and idle this weekend, but what happens next will go a long way toward defining James Franklin’s first season.
Two of those last four matchups come on the road against ranked opponents: No. 19 SMU on Friday, Nov. 6, and No.
1 Miami on Nov. 21.
The other two are home dates with Stanford and Virginia, both sitting at 4-4. Virginia Tech is 3-2 in ACC play, which puts the Hokies fourth in the league behind Miami (5-0), SMU (4-1) and Wake Forest (4-1).
They still have two shots at the teams ahead of them.
That road trip to Dallas feels like the hinge point. SMU has been nearly untouchable at home, going 24-2 over its last 26 home games and 11-0 in ACC home games since joining the league in 2024. The comparison with a shared opponent doesn’t exactly inspire confidence for Virginia Tech, either: SMU beat Cal 59-20 on Oct. 24, two weeks after Cal topped the Hokies 25-20 in Berkeley.
Still, Virginia Tech’s defense has a real chance to make this interesting. The Hokies lead FBS with 77 tackles for loss, including 13 at Clemson, and senior defensive end Aycen Stevens is sitting atop the ACC with eight sacks after entering 2025 with none.
SMU quarterback Kevin Jennings has put up 2,062 passing yards, 19 touchdowns and five interceptions in seven games, but Virginia Tech doesn’t need a perfect night to slow him down. It just needs enough disruption to force those second-and-12 situations.
The schedule break helps, too. Virginia Tech gets 13 days between Clemson and SMU, while the Mustangs have only six after their trip to Syracuse on Saturday.
The concern is what happens when SMU gets after the quarterback. The Mustangs have piled up 145 sacks since the start of 2023, the most in FBS, and Clemson brought Ethan Grunkemeyer down six times.
Franklin said the open week gives his staff a chance to get some offensive linemen back. If that happens, the Hokies have a real chance to hang around.
One area that has not traveled well for Virginia Tech is turnovers. The Hokies have only two interceptions in eight games - one by cornerback Thomas Williams in the opener against VMI and one by safety Quentin Reddish against Georgia Tech on Oct.
- Against FBS opponents, Virginia Tech has picked off just 0.44% of passes, which ranks 136th nationally.
Franklin pointed to that issue after the Pitt loss, saying, “Not only do we need to do a better job protecting the ball on offense, we’ve got to create some turnovers on defense,” he said after the Pitt loss. Virginia Tech forced two turnovers against Georgia Tech, then none at Clemson, where neither team turned it over.
That makes Jennings a key name to watch. He has thrown two interceptions in a game twice this season, at Florida State and against Louisville. If Williams is back - Franklin had expected him to play against Clemson before he missed that game - it would matter.
The other big individual chase belongs to wide receiver Brown, the senior transfer from Duke. He has 51 catches for 685 yards, which accounts for 30% of Virginia Tech’s receiving production. He needs 315 more yards to reach 1,000, a pace of 78.8 per game, and he’s averaging 85.6.
The numbers say it’s doable, but the distribution tells a different story. Brown has three 100-yard games: 109 against VMI, 147 against Pitt and 182 against Georgia Tech.
In the other five games, he has totaled 247 yards, or 49.4 per game. He needs one more explosive outing, and Stanford looks like the best chance.
The Cardinal are allowing 35.5 points per game, the most in the ACC.
That prediction would still mean making history. Ford is the only Hokie to post a 1,000-yard receiving season, and he did it twice - with 1,164 yards in 2015 and 1,094 in 2016. Both times, he needed a 13th game, once in the Independence Bowl and once in the ACC title game.
My call: Brown gets to 1,000 against Virginia on Nov. 28, becoming the first Hokie to do it in 12 games.
And it all starts in Dallas. If Virginia Tech wins there, the Nov. 21 trip to Miami stops being just another measuring stick and starts looking like an ACC title game with the stakes turned all the way up.
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The next few games will say a lot about how much margin Virginia Tech really has, and the key figures on both sides of the ball will be under the microscope. Ethan Grunkemeyers growth at quarterback, the pressure coming from Stevens up front and the ground games ability to hold up against better defenses all loom large now, because the Hokies do not have much room for slip-ups if they want November to mean more than just making the postseason. [Read more 🡒]