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.

Since I’m not spending as much time on social media these days, I worry up and coming chefs like Ricky LaBlue won’t get enough meal ideas and instead will make the same steak meal he specializes in over and over again. To alleviate that, here are my meal plans for the weekend, of which little money was spent.

This morning, for example, I went looking into my freezer for stuff to rescue from an almost certain frozen death. I buy stuff when it’s on special in some quantity, put the excess in the freezer, then hope I remember to use the various chicken, shrimp, fish and other stuff before the Nationals win another World Series.

Today’s search prompted me to go to the grocery store to pick up about $20 worth of stuff to turn what I found into several meals. Here’s how it turned out:

1. Found a package of frozen Northwest white fish I’d obviously gotten a great deal on at LIDL a while back. I bought some cabbage to make slaw, a cucumber, some fresh tortillas and a tomato. Those ingredients, plus salsa and sour cream I already had, will make for some very nice fish tacos.
2. Found a Tupperware container of chopped BBQ. When I take a pork shoulder and make it into BBQ, it’s too much for just the two of us. I bought some fresh hamburger rolls, and along with the slaw being made for the fish tacos and some thinly sliced onion, can be made into some nice BBQ sandwiches. Will also bake a tray of baked beans so we can be like cattlemen and eat BBQ and beans.
3. Found a couple of frozen chicken breasts (I’ll buy the big pack at $1.99 a pound when they’re on sale and split them into two portions, freezing one of them). They’re now defrosted and I bought some apples to peel and chop up. The apples, chicken, sweet pickles, boiled eggs, mayo and the rest of the onion from the BBQ sandwiches will make a nice vat of chicken salad which will become lunch for few days.

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.

I don’t know if it will end up being a personal turning point, but the discovery of an old computer artifact got my attention this weekend when it comes to online priorities.

It started Friday morning. I tend to be on Twitter a lot for discussions involving sporting events we’re all watching, because I can access it on a computer and type my posts on a real keyboard. Being born with fat thumbs and fingers has always been an issue for me when it comes to texting on a tiny phone keyboard, and as a result it’s not my favorite way to communicate with friends.

But while looking for something else in the basement, I came across a small keyboard designed to connect to smaller devices made by a company called Targus. It’s about half the size of a regular computer keyboard, and when I found it, it was as dead as a certain local football team’s chances to play in the Super Bowl. But with a new battery, it easily connected to my phone via bluetooth, and problem solved. I put the phone on a little stand I had bought on Amazon so I could easily see what’s on it, and started texting people with the tiny keyboard.

As the baseball games started Friday, I did not immediately join in on the conversations on Twitter. No longer tethered to the computers in my office, I took my phone and keyboard out to the den and texted a few friends I knew were baseball fans. They responded, more friends jumped in, and for most of the day, I was discussing the game with 7 or 8 friends I’d actually met, had meals with, and would not call me some spawn of Satan if I said something they disagreed with.

Well, most of them wouldn’t.

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.

If you’re a Hokie fan and are not doing so already, you may want to keep an eye on Wisconsin.

There’s a soap opera going on up there that has already benefitted the Hokies 10 months ago, and with the Badgers unbelievably firing head coach Paul Chryst Sunday, there’s a possibility of more to come.

It seems something has been brewing up in Madison for a while if you put the pieces together. I was absolutely elated that the Hokies were able to hire Joe Rudolph away from Wisconsin at the beginning of the year, because he was the architect of their run game, particularly when it came to the development of offensive linemen in their program.

He was exactly what the Hokies needed to start the process of re-establishing an identity in Blacksburg back to the days when if Virginia Tech needed a few tough yards between the tackles, the Hokies were able to get it.

But even with Rudolph coming to Blacksburg, I privately wondered why he’d do it. Rudolph played for the Badgers, coached tight ends from 2008-2011, spent three years at Pitt (including a short stint as interim head coach) and spent the last seven years back at Wisconsin in charge of their offensive line and run game. He was a Badger through and through, much like Frank Beamer has blood type orange and maroon plus.

Based on Sunday’s developments, maybe he saw something coming before the rest of us.

There are times when judging the quality of a football season that it’s perfectly fine to say what’s on your mind.

Then there are times where it’s best to sit back, watch, and see if what you think you are seeing is a trend or a mirage.

I’ve kind of reached that second stage after yesterday’s loss by Virginia Tech to North Carolina.

Doesn’t mean I don’t love Brent Pry, doesn’t mean I’ve given up on what I still believe is going to be a turnaround in the program, doesn’t mean anything other then there’s a time to speak and a time to be quiet.

Now’s the time to be quiet.

If you’ve read my ramblings over time, you know I equate coaching with sales. In both professions you need to keep people fired up, have to make tough decisions on who you keep and who gets let go, and despite everything you do, you know it’s a produce or perish situation. You’ll be given years to turn around bad situations, but you consistently need to show signs that there are new ideas that can produce a turnaround, or you won’t get those years.

That’s where I’m at with Virginia Tech football on this rainy Sunday morning. The initial months of a new coach’s regime have been filled with all the right moves off the field and all the right words behind the podium. Hope has sprung eternal to the point “it’s going to take 4 or 5 years to get this turned around” has become a mantra for most fans.

That’s huge if you’re the new guy because managing expectations is a crucial task in the first year.