Virginia Tech entered last season as an ACC dark horse contender, but instead stagnated in Year 3 of the Brent Pry era with a 6-7 record and a loss in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl. The pressure is on Pry to take that next step into the upper echelon of the conference, and beating Louisville is part of the path there.
Though the Virginia Tech roster suffered some major losses from last season, quarterback Kyron Drones is back, and that’s enough to give Louisville some real concerns on the defensive side of the ball in Week 10.
A road trip to Blacksburg on November 1 is one of Louisville’s last road trips of the season, and a crucial spot for Jeff Brohm to keep the Cardinals near the top of the ACC.
Keeping Kyron Drones in check on the ground
In some ways, with an experienced group of linebackers returning, led by TJ Quinn and Stanquan Clark, Louisville’s defense should be ideally constructed to deal with athletic dual-threat quarterbacks. In some cases last season, it was.
SMU’s Kevin Jennings was the exception with 41 of his 113 rushing yards coming on scrambles, but for the most part, Louisville limited scrambling quarterbacks last season. The rushing quarterbacks that did have success are more like Virginia Tech’s Kyron Drones, powerful QBs who thrive in the designed run game.
Last season, Georgia Tech’s Haynes King ran for 58 yards and a touchdown against Louisville, all on designed carries. Notre Dame’s Riley Leonard went for 55 yards, 53 on designed carries. At 6-foot-2, 235 pounds, coming off a year with 336 rushing yards and six touchdowns, 274 of those yards in the designed running game, Drones fits that mold.
Quinn and Clark are an ideal mix to spy athletic scramblers, but no matter how reliable a linebacking group is, a running quarterback negates the defense's numbers advantage, and Louisville’s coaching staff didn’t have great answers for the 11-man run game throughout the year.
Overall, Louisville ranked 60th in run defense success rate and 40th in EPA/play. That’s a solid, but not elite unit. They performed slightly below those marks against Georgia Tech, Notre Dame, SMU, and even Cade Klubnik and Clemson in an upset win. Virginia Tech was not the prolific run offense that it hoped to be last season with Drones and Brayshul Tuten, who has since left for the NFL, but Drones and Bowling Green transfer Terion Stewart will present a difficult challenge for Louisville.
The good news for Louisville is that in 2023, the Cardinals held Drones to just six rushing yards on 11 carries, but those were two very different teams.