Tech Talk Live Notes: Brent Pry And Bill Roth Preview ODU

On Thursday night, Virginia Tech football head coach Brent Pry and the Voice of the Hokies, Bill Roth, joined Zach Mackey and Mike Burnop on Tech Talk Live at McClain’s at First & Main to preview Saturday’s game vs. Old Dominion.

Brent Pry

How’s it been this week?

It’s been good, the guys are ready to go. It’s almost about patience at this point. They’re tired of competing against each other and they’re really ready for an opponent and to go play and I think they feel like they have a lot to prove. They want to go be a better football team and, when you open up at home, there’s an added element. You open up at night and you open up in a place like Lane Stadium, Worsham Field. It just accentuates everything for this group.

The game is sold out too, how about that?

Let’s be honest now. We’re not surprised. I mean, that’s the fan base we have and our kids are really excited. They were talking about it all day yesterday and last night. It’s just so exciting to run out of that tunnel and compete against another team.

How do you get the new guys ready for that home gameday experience?

I think you’re always talking about your focus, your moment. Nothing’s too big, nothing’s too small. Can’t get too high can’t get too low. When we get in that tunnel, I mean, they’re rockin ‘and rollin’ but when we come out of it, I tell them just to soak it up. Take about 15 seconds and soak it all up. Get the jitters and then get rid of it. Because now it’s just like practice, right? We’ve got a 100-yard field and we got 11-on-11. And let’s go play.

You named the captains last week. There are seven of them, but those guys kind of miss out on a little bit of that experience because they have to go down to the field early, don’t they?

Yeah, so do the flag bearers, which is an awesome honor. And those guys wouldn’t trade it. Those captains love it and we’ve got a great group. This was the first time in I don’t know how many years for me as an assistant or being the head coach here at Tech that the top seven vote getters, is everybody votes, our players and our staff. But sometimes you may have four offensive guys get the most votes or four defensive guys and this was the first time that it went one through seven and we had three offensive guys, three defensive and a special teams guy, so it worked out really well. The votes were strong and those guys were top-loaded. I feel great about them, a lot of experience out of a couple of them and in the right mindset, mentality, demeanor, approach out of a couple others.

Have you always done it like that, having everybody vote in the program?

I feel like everybody should have a vote for who you’re going to put out front of our football team. And honestly, I think I know everybody the most. I know the running backs, I know the wideouts, I know the D-line. But I don’t know the D-linemen as well as the D-line coach knows, but I know everybody and I just think it’s the right thing for everybody to have a vote in who’s going to lead our team and they all have their own perspective. So it makes you feel really good when it tops out like it did. And if there’s a lot of clarity around who the leaders are on your team.

How much different do you feel going into year two then year one?

I don’t know if it’s comfort or experience. I’m that second-year player now instead of that rookie that’s got to play in his first game. There’s experience factors of going through things and doing things, and I’ll tell you one of the things that makes me feel the best is the thing that made me the most nervous going into year two — giving up the play-calling and stepping away. And that’s not just on Saturdays; that means I’m not running those defensive meetings. I’m not in there making the adjustments and planning the practice. Chris [Marve] is doing all that. And when I go out to practice and I hear the right thing is being coached in the right techniques, there’s just a trust factor that really puts me at ease. And I know Chris and his staff are doing a great job, so there’s comfort in that. And it allows me to be the best head coach that I can be.

Coach Marve has taken over that play-calling responsibility. Do you find yourself spending more time in different places than you did even a season ago?

You do spend more time in different places. It’s on the offensive field. Today, I was down there with the snappers and the holders and I don’t know that they liked it very much. I don’t know a lot about that stuff. I made sure they got a bunch of reps in. There’s so many other things. It’s talking to the trainers, it’s talking to the docs, it’s talking to our football operations staff, making sure that everything’s where it needs to be and talking about things that are coming up and greeting visitors. We invite a lot of folks out to practice, it’s a two-way street. So we’ve got a lot of people that come out and I want to make sure that I get to shake hands and have a short conversation with them.

Let’s talk about Dave Cianelli. Tech’s track & field coach is retiring at the end of the year. What an unbelievable career he had.

He put our track and field program on the map. Tons of respect when you look at the accolades, the ACC championships, the individual championship, it’s in the hundreds now, it’s like 330 individual champions in the league. And then you look at the national champions, you look at the finishes on the national level, you look at the Olympians. I mean, this guy’s done it all. He’s got to be one of those guys that when you look at track and field and you talk about the best to do it over the last 40, 50, 60 years, he’s got to be mentioned.

Cole Beck is one of his guys, he’s with you now.

He’s doing great, he’s a specialist, and I heard Coach [Stu] Holt say today, ‘Hey, you ten over here, just do this and 9.9 national track time is coming down the other side. You guys just do your job and let 9.9 go get it.’

I know an emphasis you talked about throughout fall camp and throughout this season has been competition. How have you liked what you’ve seen out of your guys in the competition period?

That piece of it has been really good. I think that’s probably been the biggest difference in our practices. A couple of guys stand out to me: Kaden Moore, our center; Norell Pollard. Both those guys were captains and I think they got a ton of votes because the guys know they led the way in the competitive periods. Neither one of them ever backed down and they competed each and every day. That’s what makes us better. And I challenged them. I met with the captains today, which I do every Thursday, and I said we have to go compete like that from the start of the game. From the opening kickoff, whether defense takes the field or offense takes the field. We have got to compete like we’ve done in practice every day. We can’t go out there and just kind of try and cruise and allow things that we got to go go go.

How are you teaching to deal with adversity and have the mentality to play a full 60 minutes?

We’ve talked a lot about focus on the moment, on the play. Don’t worry about the series, don’t worry about the score. Don’t worry about the next play, the last play. How can you do your best in the play you’re in? If you’re worried about other things, we’ve got to be in the moment and then we’ve got to play with unbelievable effort. I tell them all the time, effort can make a lot of things right. And it’s a sign to me of how much the team means to you, and how badly you want to win, the effort you put on film and we’ve got a group right now that’s doing that.

How difficult is it when you’ve got a team coming in like Old Dominion that has so much turnover?

What comes to mind first for me, and what we focused on, is us. We have to go out and execute and play hard and make our plays and play to our potential. Because in that first game, most times, you just don’t know what to expect. It’s been a whole nine months since the last film you’re looking at. Particularly with Old Dominion, a new offensive coordinator, a bunch of new players. We’ve had to dig deep and you never know for sure what you’re looking at is what you’re going to see. But it helps you be ready to make in game adjustments. First week, second week that’s always where making great adjustments probably means the most.

ODU lost some really good players, some talent, their quarterback running back, that big tight end [Zach] Kuntz is gone. They kind of had to reload a little bit.

We had to go back to his [QB Grant Wilson] high school film. He played 12 plays at Fordham last year. So we literally watched his high school film to see what kind of runner he is, what’s his arm strength, like those kinds of things, but I’ve said this a bunch, Ricky Rahne is a really good football coach and he’s a really good offensive coach. We won a ton of games with Rick as our play-caller [at Penn State] and there’s no doubt in my mind that he’s going to have a quarterback ready to play.

Kevin Decker is that offensive coordinator you’re talking about coming from Fordham? How’s it been preparing for his tempo?

It’s tough to prepare for. The thing is, can you get your scout team to go as fast as they need to? Can you get your own offense to go as fast as they need to? If you don’t live in that world, in that tempo world, it’s hard to simulate it. So we’ve got a lot of experience in preparing for teams like this, but particularly in game one. I mean, Fordham was averaging five or six more possessions than the rest of the country all year. It’s not just their offense, they get their special teams on the field, they snap the ball, they just move very quickly. And it’s all about them gaining as many possessions as they can have.

You’re going against one of your friends in Ricky Rahne. How difficult is that? Because you can’t talk ball in the offseason like you probably used to.

Yeah, we don’t really do that. Rick and I went through some unbelievable experiences at Vanderbilt. You take on a team that was back-to-back two wins and you go win six, then you win nine, and then you win nine and you do some really good things. You go to Penn State together with our families and you turn a team that was struggling and had 65 scholarships and you go win, win the Big Ten and go to the Rose Bowl and go to the Fiesta Bowl and the Cotton Bowl and all these things together. So Rick and I’ve been through a lot and I was so excited for him when he got the opportunity at Old Dominion. I wish we could talk more. I wish we were spending more time together and being first-time head coaches and attacking the state of Virginia, doing everything that’s good for high school football in this state, for his program, for our program. But because we play each other here, it does make it tough. It makes it challenging, because on Saturday, all bets are off. And I love Rick and I love his family and I want the best for him, but not this Saturday.

On the defensive side of the ball for Old Dominion, one of their veterans returning in linebacker Jason Henderson. He had 186 tackles last year, eight shy of the FBS record:

That’s a good player. And I coached linebacker for a lot of years and he’s got good reach and good feet. I mean, he’s a good guy you want in the middle right there. He leads the defense. I know they’re very excited about him coming back.

What’s the schedule looking like for the guys for the next couple of days?

We do what we call no sweat Thursday. And with sports science now and all the data, our guys wear what’s called a Catapult for every single workout, weight room, practice, yoga, stretching. They got a Catapult on that tracks through GPS, every movement they make. So we know the total yardage, the total explosive movements, everything that they do. And so the science shows that on Thursday, you’re better off backing way down. Friday, we’ll pick it back up, but we literally track their speed during Friday, it’s called fast Friday. We’re only out there for about an hour but they have to hit 80% of their maximum speed. 

Literally at the tail end of practice, if somebody hadn’t hit it, they’re getting a tap on the shoulder. ‘Hey, you only got a couple reps left and you need to get to 20 mph, 18 mph,’ so we’re tracking that stuff all the time. The sports science stuff is amazing right now. But that was the switch to go on Thursday from an uppers day and still a little contact to this no sweat deal and then picking it back up on Friday, getting short work but good work, and it’s been good that way. Now Saturday with a night game, we’re gonna have a walkthrough and meetings on Saturday. So we’re staying over at the Inn [at Virginia Tech] but we’re gonna bus everybody over. We’re gonna have special teams, defense, offense walkthrough in the indoor for 30 minutes for each segment just to take advantage of that last little bit of time.

There aren’t very many rule changes this year.

The biggest one for everybody is the clock is not going to stop after an earned first down. So if you heard anything about the Notre Dame-Navy game, the first quarter took 30 minutes total, on true time, real time, so you’re talking about a couple of series, a couple of possessions a game, it’s shorter. Now when you hit two minutes at the end of the half or the end of the game, the clock will stop for an earned first down. So it’s a little bit different. It’s definitely quicker, but as a play-caller for Coach [Tyler] Bowen or even Coach Marve, that first down that’s earned within a series, normally the clock stops. Everybody takes a breath. You’ve got time to get your huddle. Not anymore.

You made the guys accountable for the penalties, that was a problem last year.

We’re running sprints even in practice for penalties, and some are gonna happen. They’re just gonna happen and we don’t want the foolish ones. Penalties are gonna occur in a game. It’s the ones that are avoidable that we need to avoid. 

How difficult is it with the new timeout rules outlawing the use of back-to-back timeouts?

You want to save all your timeouts, it’s a little bit different in the first half. But when the game’s on the line in the fourth quarter and there’s two minutes left, you want three timeouts for your offense or three timeouts for your defense if it’s a four-minute defense. So we talked to the staff and we talked to the players about not wasting timeouts, we can’t afford a timeout because we don’t have 11 on the field. We’ve got somebody extra or we don’t have enough or for substitution errors. One of the things you see a lot in college football, a guy will get hurt. And instead of just taking a knee, he’ll try and limp off the field and you’re trying to get somebody out there for him. And then you end up burning a timeout because you’re about to be in a bad place because you don’t have the right guys out there. 

So we’ve educated our guys, ‘Listen, you get injured, go down, take a knee right away. The refs will stop the clock and we’ll be able to substitute for you.’ So trying to make sure we have three timeouts at the end of the game is big, but then when to use them. I mean we’ve got all kinds of analytics, there’s all kinds of subscriptions out there now, all kinds of companies that want your business about when to call a timeout and when to go for it on fourth down. We’ve got a young guy named Jake Schell that was my student assistant at Penn State for four years. He’s our analytics expert. He’s like the mad scientist back there and he’s got it down to the last second when you should call a timeout when you should go for it, all of it. I mean, he’s really the head coach.

Has anything changed with targeting?

It’s called differently in this league than it was in the Big Ten, but getting our guys to understand how it’s going to be called, that’s all I want from our official crew. We’ve got a new group which I’m pretty excited about. That doesn’t mean you’re not gonna see me yelling at him. They want consistency. We just want to know how things are going to be called. We will coach our players the right way within the framework if you just call it consistent, but don’t let us coach it one way and you call it for a couple of weeks that way and then all of a sudden we get a new crew and it’s called a different way. Like let’s just be consistent across the board, and I think this group is gonna do that.

Thursday is always the big day when you name the No. 25 jersey. Who’s wearing it this week?

Very proud today. A guy that’s a team captain, But more so just what he’s doing on special teams right now, his overall commitment to everything we’re about is Nasir Peoples. He elected to come back and spend another year in a program, which I was very happy about and very proud to have him back. He’s a great young man, he’s gonna do big things in football, he’s going to do big things after football. But he’s the ultimate teammate. When we go around our team meeting room and say, ‘Hey, who is your ultimate teammate?’ And you could ask freshmen, old guys, offense, defense. So many of them say Nasir Peoples. So he’s absolutely one of the better ones in the room, just team and work and consistency. That all shows up on special teams. And so I’m proud to have him wear 25.

What about the flagbearers for this game?

That’s always an honor. We take one from offense, one from defense and one from special teams. Ali Jennings will be a flagbearer this week. A young man that moved over from offense to defense, Jaylen Jones will be a flagbearer this week. And then our kickoff specialist I expect to boot it through the endzone each and every time is Kyle Lowe. So those guys will carry the flags.

How stoked do you think Ali Jennings is to come back and play against his former team?

He’s just fired up in general. He’s confident. He wants to play and he wants to have a great year. He’s got a ton of respect for those guys, and I would expect nothing less from him. He’s got a ton of respect for their coaches. The guys we’re going to bring in out of the transfer portal are going to respect their previous institution and coaches and players and if they’ve got a different attitude, we’re not taking them.

The night game will make for a long day for yourself and the guys and that it starts early and doesn’t end until real late into the evening.

Saturdays are a little better because there’s college football on TV. Thursdays used to be you watch The Price is Right or soap operas. The guys can only watch so much game film. We’ve got the ability now that we’re staying in town at the Inn, we can come over to our facility and have a walkthrough and have meetings, the linebackers can be in the linebacker room, che corners in the corner room, the quarterbacks in the quarterback room and really have some good meetings, have a good walkthrough, go back to the hotel for the team meal pregame meal and then come back over to the ballgame. So we’re very fortunate right now that we could do that. We couldn’t do that last year.

Derrick Canteen, one of the guys you got from the portal, is a very mature guy. How comforting is it to have him on the field? 

He’s the lunch pail guy. And I’ll say this, for a guy that transferred in short order, he’s learned corner, safety and nickel, which says it all. He’s a student of the game. You’ve got to kick him out of the film room, he’s always doing extra. He’s been a strong influence on Dorian Strong on Mansoor Delane. He’s been a great addition to our defense.

It will be a night game at home on Saturday. Will you guys get out recruiting a little bit on Friday?

Yeah, Coach [Shawn] Quinn and myself will be out recruiting. We don’t have to go very far. But we’ll be out on Friday night and our transportation will be a little quicker than a car. I might have a parachute on.

There’s a lot of stuff going on. You’ve got responsibilities after the game too?

Oh, sure. That comes with the job. The ACC Network is here. They were at practice today, they’re at practice tomorrow. They released the hype video for the game and they did a great job. They’ve got a new marketing group. Really excited about what they’re doing, how they’re branding the league and positioning us moving forward.

What’s your goal for the week?

I just want us to go play to our capabilities. That’s what I want. I don’t want us to come up short and say we’re a better team than what we played. I want us to go play to our capabilities.

When you run out of the tunnel on Saturday, I imagine it’s been a long time coming.

What you want is your players and your staff to reap the reward of the sacrifice and investment and all the hard work. You want them to go play and coach to their capabilities where it earns a win, it deserves a win. That’s what I want for them. So when you’re in that tunnel, there’s a lot of excitement, there’s a lot of things going on. I’m looking at the girl counting down, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. I’ve got guys pushing me from behind. I want to make sure I get out on cue and don’t trip and stumble, but most of all, it’s about come out of here and let these guys have a great night of playing to their potential of having success, for the fans, the coaches, for the players, for the letterman, for the recruits. That’s what I hope for.

You’ve got a house full of people coming this weekend?

We’ve got some coming. My college teammate, roommate, his wife, who was also a roommate that became his wife. But we do have some good friends coming in and it’s awesome.

Bill Roth

How are you feeling for the new season to start?

When you do it for the second time, and I’m sure the coaches feel the same way too, the first time going through it, it’s kind of a feeling your way around it thing. And, boy, I just love our team and the camaraderie, work ethic, and the potential is really exciting. So I’m eager to go. I know there’s the Utah-Florida game tonight. I’m ready to play football. I hope our fans feel the same.

You do have kind of a real job. How are your students and your classes?

I’m really excited. We have 280 Virginia Tech SMA students this semester. And I’m glad that they are here tonight as our interns and on the field as players. I love it when one of our SMA players is making a play on Worsham Field.

We’ve got a sold out stadium on Saturday, but that group Sports Media and Analytics is sold out. It’s very difficult to get into that nowadays at Virginia Tech. 

The admissions office will not take my phone call. I’ve already been scolded several times trying to lobby to get kids in. It’s exciting. One of my best thrills was when the Hokies won the ACC tournament in basketball. Sean Pedulla is making the pass and we have two of our starters in SMA and our kids are covering it. So it’s a lot of fun. There’s so many great things happening at Tech right now. There’s so much momentum, and it’s athletics, it’s academics, it’s fundraising, it’s Triumph. 

There’s so many amazing things happening and it starts with leadership, right? Whether it’s provosts or presidents on the academic side, in football with athletic directors, amazing head coaches like Coach Pry, and they recruit and attract really talented people. I’m looking around, we have SMA people from Connecticut, from Seattle. They’re coming from all over. And it’s the same thing in football right now. Look at the recruits that have committed that are gonna decide in December for the 2024 team. You’ve gotta be really excited if you’re a Hokie fan and a Virginia Tech fan for all areas right now. It’s just a good time.

How are you preparing for Saturday?

I spent the day submersed in Old Dominion, trying to figure out who these guys are. And I can see why Coach Pry was like we had to go watch the kids’ high school tape. I mean, it’s impossible to get a sense of it. Their stats at Fordham, they’re almost like video game stats. They’re just 600 and something yards and 49-and-a-half points, but that’s not the quarterback. Old Dominion, they’ve got four quarterbacks on the roster, not one of them has ever thrown a pass in an FBS game. They’re really inexperienced, they have 58 new players, their best defensive player, the linebacker’s back, but their best offensive player from a year ago is playing for the Hokies. Jennings was incredible last year for them and now he’s back where he belongs, right? I mean, he’s gonna play against his old team, which is really exciting. 

Talk about the Virginia Tech Sports app. 

Everybody needs to download the HokieSports app. You can buy tickets, you can listen to shows, you can read great columns and stories on the Hokies and get anything you need to know about Virginia Tech you get on the app. 

This is going to be year number 29 for you two [Roth and color analyst Mike Burnop] together up to the booth, how about that?

This is Mike’s 41st season as the radio network analyst at Tech, which makes him the longest tenured broadcaster in all of college football. Maybe they can add it to the game notes. We know people. I’m blessed to work with my best buddy right here. And we’ve seen some great games and we’ve seen amazing moments that we’ve shared with everyone in this room and we’re gonna do it again on Saturday night. Tech football, it’s as much as a cultural experience, it’s almost like a near religious experience when you get into that stadium. I was watching that Nebraska volleyball game last night. There were 90,000 people that went to see a volleyball game in Lincoln and it was amazing. Tech fans are like that, too. 

Lane Stadium is like a cathedral. It’s like a church, a nondenominational church, and we go there in the fall and it’s gonna be amazing and people come back for the game, they come back for the band, for Skipper, to absorb Tech football and having a night game to kick things off means you can tailgate all day, get very well hydrated and then come in and be ready to go. Because our fans are not just spectators. You guys are participants, like some teams have walk-ons. We have 66,000 walk-ons that come out on Saturday to help our team win. And that’s unique, that’s what’s special.