Virginia Tech’s freshmen offensive tackles struggled, but Logan Thomas threw a 30 yard touchdown pass to Joshua Stanford to highlight Saturday’s scrimmage in Lane Stadium.

This was a much more entertaining scrimmage than last week’s, because most of the starters participated.  However, note that the offense’s production was limited because tight end Ryan Malleck and wide receiver D.J. Coles did not scrimmage.  Also, starting tailback Trey Edmunds only had 12 total plays and one carry, while #2 tailback J.C. Coleman was out with his two sprained ankles.

Defensively, Kyle Fuller didn’t scrimmage because he had a Summer Session final exam.

Alright, let’s get right on to the observations.

The Offensive Line

Considering Tech played a r-freshman and three true freshmen at offensive tackle, a couple of walk-ons guards with the backup group, and they really only used their #3, #4, #5 and #6 running backs ( Chris Mangus , Jerome Wright , Daniel Dyer and Maurice Taylor), the running game went about as I expected it to go.

Maurice Taylor broke a couple of nice runs up the middle and finished with 54 yards on six carries.  Tech has added some inside zones this August to go along with the two outside zones they ran in the spring.  I don’t have the benefit of replay, but I believe both of Taylor’s runs came on inside zone plays.  The #2 offensive line did a pretty decent job up the middle against a mixture of the #2 and #3 defense.

The Hokies are doing a lot of #1 offense vs. #1 defense during regular practices that nobody is allowed to see.  They know what they have in Trey Edmunds as far as running the football goes, and there’s no reason to give whichever Alabama scout that was in the crowd today a scouting report on the r-freshman tailback (I’m just guessing that Bama had somebody there observing, but I don’t know it for a fact…I personally wouldn’t open up any of the scrimmages to the public, but that’s just me).

The offensive line gave up eight sacks in this scrimmage.  Wyatt Teller (Fr.) gave up a couple, and I saw Augie Conte (r-Fr.) and Parker Osterloh (Fr.) give up one each.  It’s important to remember that these guys are freshmen, and they are facing a very good Virginia Tech defensive line.  I remember a scrimmage back in 2006 or 2007 in which a much more experienced OL gave up 13 or 14 sacks to the Tech defense.

I see enough of those guys to make me believe they are going to be good players.  Considering he had only two days of technique work to prepare for his first college scrimmage against Bud Foster’s defense, I thought Wyatt Teller did a good job.  Obviously technique in pass protection will be an issue, which was totally expected.

As far as run blocking, Teller is very willing, also as expected.  He has no issues getting to the second level, and there were a couple of plays early on in which he took mike linebacker Devin Vandyke (r-Fr.) completely out of the play.  That’s something the starting offensive struggled to do in the Spring Game, if you recall.

I saw enough from Teller today to reinforce my opinion that Teller’s best position – as well as the position he can help the Hokies the most over the next few years – is offensive tackle.  I think that’s his best college position, and I think that’s his best NFL position.  For those of you who don’t remember Phil Martin, he used to write scouting reports for us a few years back, and he’s one of the smartest football guys I know.  I sat with him at the scrimmage

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