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Virginia Tech Hokies

In Year 3, Brent Pry has Virginia Tech ready to win big again

Neil Blackmon

By Neil Blackmon

Published:


CHARLOTTE, NC — Kyron Drones was a 7-year-old Pop Warner player in Texas the last time Virginia Tech won the ACC championship.

Maybe that’s why it’s so surprising to hear him gush about what he thinks the Hokies are capable of in 2024, the program’s third season under coach Brent Pry.

“My expectation is to win the ACC championship,” Drones told SDS with a wry smile. “This team is better in every area from 2023. You look at the schedule and you’ll see we are very capable of having an undefeated regular season. So yeah, my goal is to win the ACC championship and leave our mark on the expanded playoff.”

A quarterback with some swag is never a bad thing, but is Drones a bit out in front of his skis?

Pry doesn’t think so.

“Yeah I would probably be disappointed (if we didn’t make the ACC Championship Game),” Pry told the assembled media on Tuesday. “Again, my message to them has been we have to keep pushing and we have to make strides in these areas where we have to be better to be a team that can do that.”

Both Drones, who has garnered first-team All-ACC quarterback buzz in the preseason, and Pry, believe deeply that this Hokies team can build off last season’s 7-6 record, which included a decisive Military Bowl win over an 11-win Tulane.

The Hokies won 5 of their final 7 after a miserable 2-4 start that included ugly losses at Rutgers and Marshall and an eyesore of a loss to Purdue in Lane Stadium. When they won the Military Bowl, they wrapped up the program’s first winning season since 2019, a small return to normalcy for a program that posted an astounding 25 consecutive winning seasons from 1993-2017.

In addition to Drones, the Hokies return running back Bhayshul Tuten, and 4 of their top 5 pass catchers, including the electric Da’Quan Felton (17.6 per catch). The pieces are in place to make a big leap, similar to the one Mike Norvell and Florida State made a season ago behind a returning star in Jordan Travis and a host of playmakers on the perimeter. In fact, the Hokies boast the most returning production in the country, with Drones (2,085 yards passing, 818 yards rushing 22 overall TDs, 3 INTs) poised to take a leap production wise in his first full campaign as a starter.

The defense is stacked too, especially in the secondary, with star corner Mansoor Delane and Dorian Strong anchoring what might be one of the nation’s best secondaries.

All told, 22 starters return for Virginia Tech (including both specialists), which lost only twice after the awful 2-4 start.

Is unbeaten a stretch? Perhaps. But other than a road trip to Miami on Sept. 27, the Hokies play all of their toughest games in Blacksburg, including a Nov. 9 showdown with perennial ACC power Clemson. A Playoff run, in other words, doesn’t seem out of the question.

It starts with Drones, who started only 11 games but became the first Hokies quarterback since Michael Vick — yes Michael Vick — to throw for 2,000 yards and rush for over 500 yards in a season. Drones is a serious dark horse in the Heisman Trophy race, but that will change if he and the Hokies have the type of season they envision.

“People are always talking about the Vick era,” Strong said on Tuesday. “But we’ve got the Drones era, so let’s start leaving our own legacy.”

“He’s a special football player, I know that much,” defensive end Antwaun Ryland-Powell told SDS on Tuesday. “I played with Anthony Richardson at Florida, a top-5 NFL Draft pick. Drones is that special, I’m telling you. He amazes me every day. I think the sky is the limit for us.”

There’s a chance something special is brewing in Blacksburg, and Pry wasn’t shy about that. Sure, it’s talking season. But why not talk about a Playoff berth?

“A lot of things have to go right, but there is enough returning production and experience. We have to coach our asses off and be right a lot more than we are wrong. We have to stay healthy and have some things go our way. But we are going to be awfully good,” Pry said.

That’s big news for the ACC, which desperately needs to bolster the prevailing outside view that it is a weak league compared to the mighty SEC and the powerful ceiling of the B1G.

A return to prominence for the Hokies, who are one of the few “football first” programs in the ACC, would be a welcome development, not just for the league, but college football.

There’s a special feeling in Blacksburg on an October night when “Enter Sandman” comes on and Lane Stadium is loud and proud.

“It’s as good an environment, as loud a place, as crazy and exciting a place, as anywhere I played in the SEC,” Ryland-Powell told SDS. “When it is rocking, the ground shakes. That’s what we want at home. A championship environment and hopefully, a chance to play for a championship.”

That’s what the ACC wants too.

In Year 3 under Brent Pry, all of that seems possible.

Neil Blackmon

Neil Blackmon covers Florida football and the SEC for SaturdayDownSouth.com. An attorney, he is also a member of the Football and Basketball Writers Associations of America. He also coaches basketball.

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