“Second, you must realize who you are, trying to get to know yourself, which is the most difficult knowledge that can be imagined.”

That’s a bit of Quixote’s advice to Sancho Panza, given just before the squire (spoiler alert) takes up an ill-fated governorship. I read that passage this week, and my mind immediately jumped to the Spring Game. Coaches have seen their guys through scrimmages and a few weeks of practice, so these public scrimmages aren’t as weighty to them as they are to the fanbase. Still, as an individual performance, they probably put a weightier thumb on the scales leading to August than any other scrimmage.

According to Nabokov, Quixote falls into forty battles of various sorts, and that the battles have an even win/loss split of 20-20, meaning the Knight of the Sorrowful Face should have a good accounting of himself. We Hokie fans don’t have the same quantitative luxury. Not only that, but we were also given a muddled scrimmage structure of mixed rosters, instead of a clean ones-vs.-ones matchup…and I don’t know what to call the skeletal special teams. On the other hand, this format gives young guys opportunities to shine against veterans, and we saw a few guys take advantage of their chances.

Virginia Tech Quarterbacks

For the QBs, the stats don’t quite tell the whole truth, but they tell most of it, at least as far as impact goes. Grant Wells (#6, Maroon) had a solid running game, good protection, and coverage lapses to pick on, and he made more of his opportunities. Jason Brown (#1, White) had no running game, bad pass protection, and guys not getting open and dropping the ball, and then he didn’t do much to create plays in bad situations.

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