Virginia Tech-Pitt Review: What Happened To The Defense?

Virginia Tech
What happened to the Virginia Tech defense at Pitt? (Ivan Morozov)

The Virginia Tech defense got thrashed Saturday. Thrashed. The D gave up chunk plays on land and air, allowed a pile of points, and added dumb penalties and head-scratching decisions to the fun. As much as I want to talk about the offense, we’re focusing on the ground-gashing today, as giving up record after record deserves scrutiny.

This won’t be fun.

First, I’m going to push back on the line of thinking that goes, “Well, if we take away x number of plays, we did pretty good.” That’s feel-good rationalization, or, as you can read on the interwebs, a healthy dose of “copium.” You can’t take that handful of plays away. It’s an integral part of this defense’s history, and it defines the defense’s weaknesses. As the saying goes, “And if my aunt had balls, she’d be a Christmas tree,” or something like that. And the sentiment is faulty even from a numerical standpoint—the Hokies failed to adequately defend over half of Pitt’s run plays, and they gave up over eleven yards per completion. You take away a few plays, and the defense goes from “historically bad” to merely “lousy.”

Through the air, you often saw right away what went wrong, though deciphering the rushing attack is always harder. When defending the run, guys correctly setting their gaps or covering option assignments can be mistaken for eating blocks or running past the play. Today we’ll peel that back a little bit. Funny enough, the starting Hokie defensive line did pretty well fitting their gaps, which isn’t what you expect to hear after a game like this. Dax Hollifield, Keonta Jenkins, and Nasir Peoples were generally where they were supposed to be. But just about everyone else stumbled.

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