Inside HOKIE SPORTS | Vol. 10 No. 5 | May 2018

10 Inside Hokie Sports I’ve had a lot on my mind lately, as my personal and professional lives have attempted to harmoniously coexist at a high rate of speed. As I prepare to close out my third athletics year at Virginia Tech and tie the knot in late May, I was hoping you would bear with me, as I unclutter many of the things that have kept my head spinning these past few months. Post-spring football I have realized that I am excited about the upcoming football season in much the same way I was prior to my first season in Blacksburg in 2015. There are clearly differences between the makeup of the team that will take shape for this upcoming season and the one from Coach Beamer’s final year, but I also see similarities in the enthusiasm that only comes from a youthful roster. In many ways, we’ve applied revisionist history to that 2015 season. It was successful in the extension of the Hokies’ bowl streak and continued dominance of rival UVA, but also didn’t live up to the preseason expectations of many. The biggest reason for that was injuries, primarily to quarterback Michael Brewer and cornerback Kendall Fuller. There were certainly others, but I remember, in my first round of interviews in this role, brimming with excitement about an all-sophomore receiving corps of Isaiah Ford, Cam Phillips and Bucky Hodges, a shutdown tandem in the secondary of Fuller and Brandon Facyson, a two-deep defensive line and Brewer returning for his second and final season. Those injuries and others took out a lot of the steam throughout the course of the year. That doesn’t mean that preseason excitement was unfounded, however. So where is the comparison to this season? I look at that year, and then all that followed—Justin Fuente being hired and bringing in what seemed to be the missing piece offensively in dual-threat quarterback in Jerod Evans. Evans allowed that receiving trio to flourish in Fuente’s first season at the helm, and the Hokies won the Coastal Division and posted their first double-digit win campaign since 2011. The success of that team led to the departure of Ford, Hodges and Evans, so the Hokies retooled the offense, while the defense dominated in 2017, with the Edmunds brothers, Ricky Walker, Tim Settle and Greg Stroman leading the way. All of those players have moved on save for Walker, and now we arrive at this coming season, one I believe possesses all the excitement, and volatility, of youthful possibility—on both sides of the ball. We rightfully will enter camp with a keen eye on the replacements for some of those departed stars, but at the same time, truly begin to see what a football team constructed by Fuente and his staff ideally looks like. I noticed during the Spring Game that, even with a handful of expected impact receivers sidelined, plenty of playmakers still existed. Hezekiah Grimsley and Phil Patterson stood out, but Sean Savoy also reminded us of his ability. Add in Damon Hazelton, Eric with Jon Laaser Spring (Mind) Cleaning /hokiekidsclub Kumah, Tre Turner and others who sat out with injuries, and you start to see the vision that offensive coordinator Brad Cornelsen has been pointing to since this staff’s arrival —using a group of eight, nine, 10 receivers whom you have confidence in to catch the football. The aforementioned group, coupled with a trio of talented tight ends, gets you there. Josh Jackson doesn’t profile in the same way as Brewer, but as Fuente has eluded to, there are levels above that to which Jackson can strive with a bevy of playmakers around him. The running backs intrigue me as well, and although the line lost Wyatt Teller and Eric Gallo, I think the group is as deep as it’s been in a number of years. There will be question marks on the other side of the ball, but hey, we’ve got Bud Foster, and in Bud we trust! We also have