For the first time in the Brent Pry era, Virginia Tech appears to be playing good football. The Hokies thoroughly handled Wake Forest before going into their bye week. The big concern now is how will the Hokies show up post-bye week. Will they look rusty? Or will they be able to maintain the momentum they had prior to the week off?
SP+ Rankings
Virginia Tech
Overall: 66th
Offense: 86th
Defense: 39th
Special Teams: 36th
Syracuse
Overall: 48th
Offense: 67th
Defense: 40th
Special Teams: 65th
Syracuse is pretty solid all around on offense. Jason Beck, former UVA QB coach under Bronco Mendenhall, remains at Syracuse and he has done a good job with QB Garrett Shrader. They like to balance the run with the pass and lean on Shrader and RB LeQuint Allen to get yards on the ground. Allen is a capable runner but thus far this season has not been a home run threat. The longest run that Syracuse has this season is 39 yards. The Hokies need to focus on bottling up those two in the run game and make Garrett Shrader beat them with his arm.
Syracuse’s big weakness on defense is defending the pass. They rank 111th in the country in passing yard allowed. This week, Kyron Drones needs to show that he is more than just a runner. After throwing for over 300 yards against Wake Forest, Drones needs to show he can do it again. While the Syracuse run defense isn’t great, the pass game is where the Hokies will want to attack them. Once again, the Hokies need to set up the pass game with an effective run game behind Drones and Tuten.
This matchup does not scare me, particularly at home. I’m more worried about the Hokies getting off to a slow start after the bye week. This is the type of game where a slow start could doom Tech. The formula for this game needs to be for the defense to feed off a great atmosphere to get off to a good start until the offense can get into a rhythm. This would be a good week to get the pass catching weapons involved like Jaylin Lane, Dae’Quan Felton and Stephen Gosnell. This looks like a close game but I like the Hokies at home on Thursday night.
Prediction: Virginia Tech 31, Syracuse 24
treadmillhorse 