The interior of Virginia Tech’s 2019 offensive line has more questions than answers. Christian Darrisaw and Silas Dzansi proved themselves on the edges, but in the middle at G-C-G the team loses solid contributors like Kyle Chung and Braxton Pfaff to graduation, and expected starter DeAndre Plantin transfered, while returning redshirt junior Zachariah Hoyt (who had a mixed season) and a bunch of guys who’ve had very few snaps. With that in mind, bringing in Brock Hoffman from Coastal Carolina is a pretty big deal. At CCU Hoffman played center as a freshman and moved to right guard as a sophomore.*

Evaluating high school signees can be tough. Most of the time, all you can find are a player’s self-produced year-end highlight reels, where you try to figure out an entire season of performance based on six minutes of clips against teams you don’t have a clue about. Sometimes you get lucky and a guy’s state championship game is on YouTube, or he plays in an All-American game, but that’s rare.

Transfers, though, can have a bonanza of film, and Hoffman’s no exception, as I watched all or part of eight different CCU games. He also has a collegiate academic record, in this case one that includes being part of the 2018 Google Cloud Academic All-District football team, which awards players based on academic and on-field success. He’s an Information Systems major, so he’s not coasting on easy credits. In a similar vein, he was on the (very young) team’s leadership council in 2018.

Getting back to the film, we’ll look at Hoffman’s two games versus SEC competition to get a feel for what he brings to the table. First, up is a 2018 tilt versus the South Carolina Gamecocks to get a feel for Hoffman’s physical skills. It was pretty easy to overlook the Chanticleers in 2018: it was just their second FBS season in the Sun Belt, they were picked last in their five-team division, their head coach was returning after a year-long medical leave, they only had eleven seniors, and they haven’t reached the scholarship limit yet. It was also easy to overlook them after the season, as they ended up finishing slightly better than predicted at fourth in their division with a 5-7 (2-6) record. They’re a spread/gun team, but they minor in the triple option, either from a two-back backfield or out of rocket motion.

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