This is a hard one to swallow. The game felt like the season—embarrassing early, hopeful midway, seemingly kicking into an unknown gear towards the close, and failing to finish out. Bud Foster’s last two games as a Hokie coach are going to be footnotes for other teams: UVA broke the streak in his last regular season game, and Kentucky turned his final game into a bowl loss. Both times, the quarterbacks ran wild.

The “prognosticators” got some heat for worrying about Kentucky, but you only had to watch a few highlights to tell that this was a bad matchup for Tech. Watching a few games would only deepen the opinion. The Hokies on both sides of the line have struggled against bigger o- and d-lines, and the defense hasn’t had the scheme-discipline or eye-discipline to handle teams that double-down on the option game. For all the defense’s growth this year, the mistakes looked like Cincinnati all over again, or, more recently, Duke and bits of UVA, and they started early:

It’s QB Iso Draw. The front four are a little unorthodox in their play, but thanks to Jarrod Hewitt getting a double-team, the linebackers can squeeze the Iso and make the tackle. Rayshard Ashby comes outside-in and hits the blocker, meaning Dax Hollifield can come inside-out untouched.

Last year against the Bearcats, Hollifield guessed on a gap and allowed a long touchdown. Here, it looks like he’s passively watching the backfield and failing to step into and press his gap. If he takes a step to his left, he’s got a chance at a tackle. Instead, he stays in no-man’s land. Though his mistake here was different, the two outcomes are the same: the opponent scores, and Hollifield lost some snaps on subsequent drives.

...