Who needs to emerge for the Hokies to improve over last season?
Upwind of uva: When you’re 3-2 and heading into the heart of your schedule, there are no shortage of candidates who need to step up their game. Focusing on new players – i.e., in their first year as significant contributors, as opposed to young players – expands that list even more. In an effort to avoid rehashing old news I’ll skip over the most obvious choices (Michael Brewer, and any and all of the Hokie RB corps). Offensively, I think three players are important to building a consistently effective offense: Wyatt Teller, Bucky Hodges and Cam Phillips. On defense, I am looking at Nigel Williams and Ken Ekanem to be stabilizing forces.
I think Teller’s ability at left guard is the single most important offensive opportunity for growth. The offense simply has a higher upside when Wang moves to center. If the Hokies want to establish an inside running game we need to be better (and stronger) on the interior line. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we improved in the run game when we moved Wang to center and gave Teller (and Alston Smith) a chance to establish a presence at the line of scrimmage. He’ll only get better with experience, and I think you have to let him go through some growing pains in the short run to achieve this team’s full potential by season’s end.
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