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

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.

For good or ill, neither the ACC/ESPN nor streamers have posted more than quick highlights from the game, so the video content today isn’t as exhaustive as I’d like it to be. Let’s consider the following a sampling. First, this touchdown run:

The inciting incident here isn’t the guys running around at the end. Instead, the problem that sets off this play is in the backfield. It’s the old “two guys, one gap” problem. Mario Kendricks (#22) needs to be getting down the line and keeping himself between the LOS and the TE on the kickout block. If he does that, he either runs right into Abanikanda, or he forces him to slam on the brakes and navigate traffic.

Here’s Cole Nelson (#17) showing us how it’s done:

Nelson squeaks on down the line and keeps clean for the takedown. Nelson doesn’t finish the tackle, though, and nobody gets in a good position to front Abanikanda should the tackle fail.

There were also reaction problems:

Despite this being a zone run, Jaden Keller (#24) has a nicely hemmed gap opening in front of him; Kendricks has closed one side with penetration, and Pene (#91) is taking up some space, though I’m not quite sure…