Virginia Tech’s Quarterback Competition Remains Shrouded in Secrecy

You might be wondering why you’ve yet to hear from any of Virginia Tech’s quarterbacks this spring.  The quarterback competition is probably the biggest storyline of Tech football right now, yet all we’ve heard is silence.  That’s by design.

For the second week in a row, the media requested to interview Tech’s signal callers.  For the second week in a row, that request was denied.

JUCO transfer Jerod Evans is new to Virginia Tech, while sophomore Dwayne Lawson was off limits to the media last season.  Rising r-senior Brenden Motley has done plenty of interviews in the past, but this spring even he is included in the shroud of secrecy.  So for those of you who are hoping to get some real information on how the quarterback competition is shaping up, I’ll save you the trouble: you aren’t going to get that information anytime soon.

The media asked Justin Fuente about the secrecy during Tuesday’s interview.

“It’s a little different when you’ve got a competition going on,” Tech’s new head coach said.  “I don’t think there’s a reason to air out the competition for everybody to see.  Those kids are working hard…I don’t see any need to draw any more scrutiny on it than there already is.”

Fuente wants his quarterbacks to be focused on the task at hand rather than dealing with outside questions.  He noted that there is no timetable for selecting a starter.  It could come at any point, though from reading between the lines, it might not happen until August, or perhaps even early September.

“I don’t see any reason to set a timetable for that,” Fuente said.  “We’ll just kind of see how it goes, manipulate the reps as we go through practice.  If it goes into the summer and into the first game, that’s fine…we aren’t going to force it.  We want those guys to have urgency and competitiveness…we’ll continue to evaluate them.  Whenever the time comes that we feel like there is a starter, then we’ll name one, but I’m not setting a timetable.”

Fuente was also coy when asked whether or not he’s liked what he’s seen from his quarterbacks this spring.

“[I’ve liked] some of it,” he said with a laugh. “There’s been some good and some bad, from everybody.  It’s just so new for everyone, and not just the quarterbacks.”

Like Fuente, Tech’s players were also silent about the quarterback situation.  When pressed for answers, they responded with generic quotes.

“I haven’t been able to see a lot of the quarterbacks except for when we do team drills,” nickel back Mook Reynold said. “It’s a good quarterback competition.  I feel like they’re all pushing each other.”

Tight end Chris Durkin, himself a former Virginia Tech quarterback, didn’t have much to offer either, even though he’s snagging passes from all of the competitors every day in practice.

“I can’t tell you who is #1, #2 or #3.  [At this point in practice] you can’t tell.”

Tech fans will get their first glimpse of the quarterbacks, and the team as a whole, in the Spring Game.  However, it sounds as if they won’t know who is going to start until perhaps late August.