Brad Glenn (left), Andrew Breiner (center) and Josh Gattis

So much for continuity in Virginia Tech’s football coaching staff.

With Scott Satterfield moving from Louisville to Cincinnati and in need of a play-caller, he decided to poach old friend Brad Glenn from the Hokies – a man he coached alongside at Appalachian State from 2005-08.

Glenn spent 2022 as Tech’s passing game coordinator and quarterbacks coach. While on the surface that doesn’t seem like a substantial loss for an offense that had minimal success through the air, Glenn is the only member of Tech’s on-field staff with any experience coaching quarterbacks.

That’s a problem, especially when dealing with such an important position. So the Hokies will have to dive back into the well for another QB guru.

Should we be scared that they’ll fall into hiring someone they know?

With one year under his belt, Brent Pry enters his second season as the head whistle in Blacksburg with plenty of pressure on his shoulders.

Eight losses and a bowl-less December later, there’s no doubt that the honeymoon period is over for Pry and his staff. Virginia Tech needs to generate some positive results in 2023, and that process began this winter.

Pry made a flurry of roster moves to try and fill holes on his roster that were already there, plus some extras that showed up after the season. He spent much of his time on one position in particular, but let’s take a holistic approach and examine each of the position groups on offense.

As bad of a football season as Virginia Tech had in 2022, it at least ended with a victory.

Harken back to a few weeks ago when the Hokies upset future Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze and the Liberty Flames in Lynchburg. The upset wasn’t historic, but it at least felt meaningful at the time.

With the Commonwealth Clash canceled and no bowl game to look forward to, however, Tech has moved on from 2022 already. Players have entered the portal and are pursuing other opportunities while the Hokies eagerly look for young men to take their spots.

It’s almost like the win didn’t matter, which is a shame.

But before burying this dreadful season in a shallow, unmarked grave in the swamps of Back Bay, I think it’s appropriate to take a step back and take inventory of Virginia Tech’s 2022 season with an eye toward the future.

Virginia Tech’s loss to the Yellow Jackets last Saturday was emotional for me.

As it turned out, I wasn’t the only one.

As I lamented another deflating defeat, I stayed in the stands and tried to come to terms with what just happened. Virginia Tech had blown another two-score lead and for the second consecutive week, the Hokies lost by a single point.

I was surprisingly shocked. I never thought Virginia Tech would fall to 2-7 in my lifetime.

Also seemingly stunned was sixth-year defensive end TyJuan Garbutt. He sat on the ground on the sideline after the game, watching Georgia Tech celebrate a come-from-behind win. Garbutt looked exhausted in every possible way — physically, mentally and emotionally. People on the sideline did their best to lift him up, but Garbutt had reached the end of his rope.

Fourth-year player Josh Fuga wasn’t far from Garbutt, except Fuga’s emotions ranged from angry to inconsolable. Multiple people tended to Fuga, but the emotions flowed nonetheless.

If it’s possible to find both hope and discouragement in the same football game, I managed to do so watching Virginia Tech’s 22-21 loss to NC State last night.

In a season where it now seems like half of Hokie fans (mostly the younger ones) want to fire new coach Brent Pry, and the other half (the ones referred to in posts that start out with “OK, Boomer”) want to give him 7 years to turn things around, I’ve been looking for the one sign you tend to see when a new leader is about to get a turnaround going.

Which in the third quarter, I thought I saw.

That sign is one of a team believing in its leader, and that leader in turn believing in its team. It’s an overused expression coaches use all the time, and the sign I’m talking about is something you don’t see in media interviews and other off-the field activities, because to be honest, talk is cheap.

You instead see it in the play calling. Particularly as it relates to the offense.

Following Virginia Tech’s 22-21 defeat in Raleigh Thursday night, I packed up my car after a poor night of league bowling and set up Spotify to console me on my half-hour drive home.

In eerie fashion, Spotify began playing “Something Has to Change” by The Japanese House.

Who knew Spotify could be so aware of my emotional state?

Much like they have for most of the season, the Hokies found a new and yet equally heartbreaking way to lose. Thursday’s loss was the Hokies’ fifth in a row, all but locking Virginia Tech out of a bowl game for the second time in three seasons.

Virginia Tech may have played three uninspiring quarters of football against Miami last Saturday, but they roared back in a last ditch effort in the final period and in the process, gave Hokie fans some hope.

What about that fourth quarter breeds optimism that Tech’s current run of four straight losses will come to an end sooner rather than later? Allow me to dive a little deeper and separate the wheat from the chaff.

With the Hokies enjoying a bye week – meaning there’s no pending game to complain about – I have found the conversations I’ve been having with old Hokie friends the last few days interesting.

There is no talk involving the play of the quarterback, the performance of the new head coach, or much of anything football related. Instead, there is conversation – and concern – about the one question every recruit asks and every coaching staff must answer.

“Why should I come to Virginia Tech?”

It’s not nearly as negative a question as you may initially think. It’s something every student asks whether it involves education, social life, class size, having fun, etc. And as it relates to football, there’s always been a good answer to it for as long as I can remember.

Go back to when I was a freshman in 1974 (I really liked the guy on Twitter who referred to our ilk as Metamucil-swilling dinosaurs who are in bed by 11 PM every night) and the answer was opportunity. Back then the scholarship limits were different, so a good player go either go be the fifth QB at Ohio State or come play and possibly start at Virginia Tech.

I can even remember when part of the pitch was we were going to be the next Penn State, so come to Blacksburg and be part of it.

If you’ve followed my ramblings on this site for any length of time, you know my one concern when Brent Pry was hired as the head coach at Virginia Tech was the fact he’d never been a head coach.

It’s not that this was some insurmountable obstacle, but when you’ve never been the head guy, you really don’t know what you don’t know. While the tendency is that you pick up things fast, you’re really not tested until you run into a crisis.

It’s during that time most new head coaches, company presidents, etc., have to fight the inclination to focus on the areas they’re most comfortable with instead of continuing to be the captain of the ship. The head coach’s job is to hold assistants accountable, provide advice and - if necessary - tough love.

Above all else, a good head coach keeps everyone in their lanes.

Failure to do so for many teams tends to result in everyone on staff offering their two cents about areas that are not their direct responsibility and you end up with a management by committee atmosphere that never works. If you look back to the waning years of the Frank Beamer era, you saw a little of that.

With that in mind, I think the next few weeks are going to be interesting in the development of Pry as a head coach. Two weeks ago against North Carolina, the offense and defense were big problems, but against Pitt, you could see some changes had been made in strategy and the offense scored 29 points. Take away some untimely penalties and dropped passes and the offense could have scored 40 points.

Virginia Tech’s defense had rightly been considered the Hokies’ strength through the early portion of the 2022 schedule. In fact, ACC Network broadcasters highlighted it before the game against Pitt, as Virginia Tech’s defense ranked in the top 25 in several categories, including total defense and third-down defense.

But after the last two weeks, there’s no way to look at Virginia Tech’s defense in the same light.

In two games, Virginia Tech has posted some of the worst defensive numbers in the country. Consider these statistics over Tech’s last two games, both of which have been losses:

• Points Allowed: 86
• Rush Yards Allowed: 486
• Pass Yards Allowed: 537
• Sacks: 1

Virginia Tech’s defensive problems can be blamed on all three levels of the defense, and improvements need to be made in all three.

Following North Carolina’s rout of Virginia Tech Saturday, Brent Pry asked fans for patience.

“It’s not going to be an overnight process,” Pry explained in his post-game press conference. “It’s going to take time. We’re going to do it the right way. We’ve got to recruit better, we’ve got to create better practice habits and we’ve got to keep working on our culture… We’re making progress in all three areas. Sometimes it’s hard to see, but we are.”

Still, Pry should forgive some fans if they are struggling to see the progress claiming to be made.

The Hokies’ 41-10 loss at Chapel Hill was possibly the most incomplete performance of Pry’s short tenure as the head whistle in Blacksburg. We knew that Tech had a talent disadvantage, but a 31-point disadvantage?

I don’t think so. Florida A&M, for example, lost to North Carolina by 32 points earlier this season. Are we to believe that Tech is that close to Florida A&M?

The offense, though, might be worse than the Rattlers. Tech scored just 10 points for the second consecutive week, this time against a Tar Heel defense that allowed 61 to Appalachian State, 28 to Georgia State and another 32 to a struggling Notre Dame offense. The Hokies showed no substantive improvement from the week prior — the Hokies averaged just 2.8 yards per rush attempt and Grant Wells inspired little confidence in his 16-of-26 for 139 yards performance.

In fact, Wells’ errant interception in the second quarter provided a lot of ammunition to fans who believe he isn’t the long-term answer at quarterback.