This year’s scouting reports on Virginia Tech’s 2021 recruiting class are going to be a little bit different.  In the past, it was me (Chris Coleman) going at it alone.  This year I’ve enlisted the help of Brandon Patterson, who is a better evaluator than me.  Brandon is going to review each player, and then I’m going to give my thoughts. 

We’re not going to do a full article on each player like in the past, but we’ll take a position-by-position look at the 2021 recruiting class.  I’ve also avoided doing ETAs this year.  This season, Virginia Tech and all schools will have two classes worth of true freshmen in their program since last year didn’t count towards eligibility.  For example, Tech will have four true freshmen defensive ends on the roster this year.  They’ll have five true freshmen tailbacks.  They’ll have three true freshmen tight ends.  It’s basically two recruiting classes in one, and I have no idea how it’s going to shake out over the next couple of years.  I expect the Hokies, and everybody else, will have lots of attrition as a result.  That, and the continued use of the transfer portal, make it borderline impossible to come up with realistic guesses for how quickly most players will see the field.

Everything in this article is written by Brandon, unless otherwise noted.  And with that, I’ll turn it over to him. – CC

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Hudl clips are rarely constructed as visual resumes for coaches to review; instead, they’re an extension of social media with friends, family, and fans as the intended audience. Which is great for players—I wish I’d had Hudl back in the day—but it’s almost context free entertainment when trying to evaluate a player. A player’s highlight clips are usually a compilation of what a player considers to be his most entertaining plays, as opposed to his “best” plays. He’s likely not going to show you a play where he IDs the right defender in a tough situation and then makes a solid block, or he battles a high-star P5 prospect to a standstill, but he will post clips of him running over a third-teamer at the end of a rout if the angle’s good enough to see the de-cleating.

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