We now continue with our regularly scheduled articles on Pro Football Focus ratings for each of Virginia Tech’s positions since 2014.  We’ve worked our way through most of the team at this point, and today we’ll continue with the linebackers.

Note: this article doesn’t include the whip/nickel position, as I view that position to be more of a defensive back position these days.  I’ll probably include them in a future safeties article, though it’s possible that I could dedicate one article to the whip/nickel spot only.

The snap minimum for purposes of this article is 100.  Anyone with fewer than 100 snaps at linebacker in a season is not included.  Here’s how the overall grades look…

Year	Player	Grade
2017	Andrew Motuapuaka	82.9
2017	Tremaine Edmunds	80.9
2019	Rayshard Ashby	75.8
2018	Rayshard Ashby	74.5
2016	Andrew Motuapuaka	72.8
2016	Tremaine Edmunds	72.3
2015	Andrew Motuapuaka	71.5
2018	Rico Kearney	67.5
2019	Alan Tisdale	66.2
2014	Deon Clarke	63.7
2019	Dax Hollifield	63.6
2015	Deon Clarke	62.9
2018	Dylan Rivers	61.7
2015	Sean Huelskamp	61.6
2018	Dax Hollifield	61.1
2020	Alan Tisdale	60.9
2015	Tremaine Edmunds	58.8
2014	Chase Williams	57.6
2020	Rayshard Ashby	57.4
2014	Andrew Motuapuaka	54.5
2020	Dax Hollifield	51.6

I bet most people wouldn’t have guessed that Andrew Motuapuaka would have the highest grade, but overall I think those grades would look about right to most folks.  I think there are some situations where the PFF grades don’t necessarily tell the entire story, but I do believe that in the case of Virginia Tech’s linebackers, the PFF grades do match the eye test.

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