The Hokies continued their outstanding performance as college football’s rebound win, this time giving NC State a needed confidence boost. I’m writing this on Halloween, so in the spirit of the spooky season, let’s put on our long rubber gloves and pick through the corpse a little.

The Hokie offense sputtered on its way to scraping up 21 points, while along the way garnering an unholy number of false-start penalties (more on that later) that made the Hokies look like they had the discipline of an antsy JV squad. But there were some good moments, particularly when they showed they’d watched NC State’s loss to Syracuse with some focus. Let’s rewind back to the preview:

That’s Outside Zone, run from a five-man unbalanced formation with two backs. Check out the Hokies here:

Like Syracuse, the Hokies have a tackle-over unbalanced formation, two backs, and the action is Outside Zone. Nick Gallo (#86) is the fullback, and Malachi Thomas (#24) is the halfback. This formation, along with the 1st and 10 and the Hokies OL all settling into three-point stances, strongly threatens a run to the left, and there’s no doubt the Pack defense has been repping against it after their errors against ‘Cuse. Not only that, but Tech had already run some OZ from this and gotten yards against NC State.

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