In the early years of the Beamer Bowl Era, it was common for Virginia Tech to start a redshirt senior at quarterback. In fact, the first three starting quarterbacks of that era went on to eventually start as redshirt seniors. However, since Al Clark in 1998, the Hokies have had just two redshirt seniors become full-time starters under center, with another playing on a part-time basis.

Unless something drastically changes between now and August 31, Ryan Willis will be somewhat of a unicorn around these parts…a redshirt senior starter at quarterback. Past redshirt senior quarterbacks have had mixed results.

Before we go into the nitty-gritty details of each player, let’s look at their combined numbers…

Year	Player	Comp.	Att.	Pct.	Yards	TDs	INTs
1994	Maurice DeShazo	164	295	55.6%	2,110	13	13
1996	Jim Druckenmiller	142	250	56.8%	2,071	17	5
1998	Al Clark	72	148	48.6%	1,050	9	5
2008	Sean Glennon	65	108	60.2%	743	3	5
2013	Logan Thomas	227	402	56.5%	2,907	15	13
2015	Michael Brewer	126	216	58.3%	1,703	13	7
Total		796	1419	56.1%	10,584	70	48

That’s … not particularly good. In some cases it’s downright bad, especially when you consider how some Tech quarterbacks performed as less experienced players through the years. However, when you examine each situation in detail, we see that most of those redshirt seniors either got hurt or were in horrible situations…sometimes both.

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