Virginia Tech doesn’t have a mystery on its hands. The Hokies have two games worth of evidence now, and it points to the same two culprits every time: turnovers and penalties.
That’s why a team that led at halftime in back-to-back losses is sitting at 4-2 instead of being in a much better place. Coach James Franklin’s team gets its next chance Saturday at 3:30 p.m. when Georgia Tech comes to Lane Stadium.
The latest frustration came at Cal, where Virginia Tech briefly reclaimed the lead for 57 seconds before Jackson Brousseau, making his first start for the Bears, drove Cal down the field and finished off a 25-20 win. It was the second straight week the Hokies lost after taking a halftime lead.
The week before, Virginia Tech opened fast against Pitt and built a 14-0 lead, then was ahead 24-14 late in the second quarter. Pitt answered with 21 straight points, and the Hokies’ last hope died when John Love missed a 36-yard field goal wide left as time expired in a 35-33 loss.
Franklin pointed directly to the season’s recurring problem after the Pitt game: “We’ve been flirting with this turnover thing really all year long,” he said. “We haven’t been getting turnovers on defense, and because we didn’t get it fixed, it came back to bite us.”
That line fits the numbers. Virginia Tech has lost seven fumbles in six games. On the other side, the defense hasn’t forced a turnover since Sept. 12 against Old Dominion, a four-game stretch without one.
The offense has also lost its grip on the run game. Through four games, the Hokies were averaging 177.8 rushing yards per game. Over the last two, they’ve managed 178 total rushing yards, just 2.8 per carry.
Cal made the contrast obvious. Jeffrey Overton Jr. ran 10 times for 67 yards in the first half, then got only two carries after the break, both on the first two snaps of the third quarter.
He didn’t get another handoff the rest of the way, even though he stayed involved as a receiver and caught a 27-yard pass on the drive that put Virginia Tech back in front. The Hokies simply stopped feeding him.
That left Grunkemeyer with the burden. The redshirt sophomore has carried plenty of the load, including a career-high 434 passing yards against Pitt. But after opening the season with no interceptions in his first four games, he had a hand in all four Pitt turnovers: two interceptions, a strip-sack fumble and a botched handoff.
Virginia Tech has already shown it can lean on the run the right way. Against Boston College on Sept. 26, the Hokies ran for 223 yards, and Overton’s 76-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter won the game. That kind of balance has to last four quarters, not just the opening stretch.
Penalties have become just as costly. Franklin has been talking about them since the opener, when he called out “the pre-snap penalties and the post-whistle penalties” after an 11-flag night against VMI. After Pitt, he was still saying the same thing.
Six games in, Virginia Tech has been penalized 45 times for 416 yards. The mistakes have hit at the worst possible moments, including four penalties for 41 yards on one Pitt drive and back-to-back 15-yard flags on Cal’s go-ahead march.
Seven lost fumbles and that many flags aren’t random. At some point, they become a discipline issue, and that means decisions about playing time as much as speeches.
The defense has held up against the run. Pitt ran for 104 yards and Cal for 82.
But the pressure has not been there often enough, especially in the losses. Virginia Tech had just one sack in each defeat.
The sack total looks decent on the surface at 19, but 12 of them came against VMI and Old Dominion. Against the four Power 4 opponents on the schedule, the Hokies have only seven.
That lack of pressure, paired with the empty takeaway column, is how a backup quarterback making his first start ends up throwing for 321 yards. Playing safe hasn’t protected Virginia Tech. It’s left the defense without the kind of disruption it needs.
Georgia Tech comes in at 2-3 overall and 1-1 in the ACC after a 28-25 win over previously unbeaten Duke. After that, Virginia Tech heads to Clemson on Oct. 24 before its open date.
Franklin is 1-2 in one-score games at Virginia Tech. For a program coming off a 3-9 season, 4-2 is not the end of the world. But when both losses came in games the Hokies led late, the frustration is obvious.
They don’t need a new identity. They need to keep the one they already have after halftime.
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Georgia Techs latest outing featured a strong showing from running back Trelain Maddox and quarterback Alberto Mendoza, reminders that this is not a soft landing spot for a team looking to stop a slide. Still, projections lean toward Virginia Tech, which adds some cushion to a game that should tell a lot about whether the Hokies can turn Homecoming into a turning point instead of just another pressure-packed Saturday. [Read more 🡒]