Virginia Tech football head coach James Franklin spoke with the media on March 16 as the Hokies prepare to begin spring practice. The team will take the field for the first time under Franklin’s leadership on Tuesday morning, leading up to the Spring Game scheduled for April 18 at Lane Stadium.
The upcoming Spring Game is expected to provide both fans and media with an early look at the team. “Excited about the Spring Game, excited about spring practice, I think it is going to be really important that we pack Lane Stadium for a number of reasons. It’ll give us an opportunity to get an understanding of what a game day is like around here, try to make it as game-like as possible. Put some exciting football out there on the field to give the fans and the media obviously, a first glimpse of what the team looks like and try to play some real football so that will be real exciting for us as well,” Franklin said.
Franklin addressed how he plans to structure the quarterback competition during spring practices. “That’s probably the biggest challenge. We’ve made sure that the players all know that everything was being evaluated. So the strength staff was having an evaluation, the winter workouts that’s why we tracked all of the competitions. That was a factor, the meetings that we are allowed to have, all of those types of things. How are they retaining information, how are they answering questions all of that stuff has been part of the evaluation process but we’ve got to find a way to get them reps because there’s guys who are unbelievable in the meeting room and they can’t do it out on the field. So although we will have a starting point, it is fluid and also why we are going to do as much two spot teaching and two spot drills as we possibly can….It’s almost impossible at the quarterback postion to base it off of winter workouts,” he said.
Franklin also commented on his approach toward competition across every position group this spring. “At this stage, I don’t see myself limiting, anybody or anything. As this progresses, we may get late into spring ball and now Brent Pry as the defensive coordinator and Ty Howle as the offensive coordinator and the same thing on special teams they may say ‘I’ve got a really good idea of who this guy is and we may want to make some adjustments behind him.’… At this stage, no we won’t limit anybody, as the spring ball grows and continues on we may start to make some adjustments once we have a better feel of who our team is and who our clearly established guys who know their stuff and also can go out and execute it at a high level,” Franklin said.
The Hokies’ preparations mark an important period for evaluating talent ahead of next season under new leadership.
