Virginia Tech put a lot of youth on the field at most positions on defense in 2018, and the results were not good for the most part.  The one exception came at linebacker, where Rayshard Ashby generally played well at mike, and Dax Hollifield showed plenty of promise at the backer position.

Today we’ll use Pro Football Focus to take a look at the 2018 performance of Tech’s mikes and backers, and then we’ll project ahead to 2019.

Mike

True sophomore Rayshard Ashby manned the mike spot for the Hokies this past season, and he did very well considering his age and the lack of penetration by the defensive linemen in front of him. Here are his Pro Football Focus (PFF) grades for the season…

Rayshard Ashby

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