Yikes. A loss to Liberty. If the loss to Wake wasn’t bad enough, this team goes down to one of the little brother programs in Virginia. To put this loss in perspective, Virginia Tech’s football budget is more than three times more than Liberty’s. Virginia Tech also paid Liberty to come to Blacksburg and hand them a loss. Ouch. It’s a bad look for this program. It’s going to be one of those losses like ODU that’s hard for the fan base to forget.
SP+ Rankings
Statistically, Miami doesn’t look like a Top Ten team. Their record looks like a lot of smoke and mirrors. But they do have an excellent quarterback in D’Eriq King. If Khalil Herbert is out, King will be the best football player on the field on Saturday. Miami’s offense looks a lot like Louisville’s and Liberty’s. Both gave the Hokies’s defense tons of trouble. And if I’m picking quarterbacks, D’Eriq King is the best out of the three the Hokies have faced the last three weeks. Slowing down this Miami offense will be a tall task for this defense. Watch for this stat on Saturday, the Hokies will need to try to keep King under 50 yards rushing …
With just about every game the Hokies play in this year, they are going to have to outscore the opposing offense in a shootout. They can’t count on the defense to get a lot of stops. If Khalil Herbert is back from his pulled hamstring, I like the Hokies chances. If he’s still out or limited, the Hokies will need to get other weapons involved in the offense. Like Raheem Blackshear, Tre Turner or James Mitchell. Hendon Hooker can’t do it all on his own.
After the Liberty game, I expect a bounce back game from the Hokies. The problem is, I’m not sure how bought in the team is this year. They started the season with a lot of fire against NC State and it seems like slowly it has faded as the year has gone. So, I’m not exactly sure what team we’re going to see on Saturday. No one needs a top ten win right now more than Justin Fuente. It might the cure for what ails him with the fan base. If Khalil Herbert is back, I see a very close game that could go either way. If he’s out, Miami wins by two scores. Let’s see what happens on Saturday. Let’s hope we see more fire out of this team after what happened last week.
Prediction: Miami 41, Virginia Tech 31
treadmillhorse 