Virginia Tech head coach Justin Fuente is something of a quarterback whisperer. Which is a good thing, because he isn’t inheriting much from predecessor Frank Beamer by way of established QBs.
Fuente told reporters at the 2016 ACC Kickoff in Charlotte, N.C., on Thursday that his team will begin fall camp without a definitive starter.
The first-year Hokies coach said right now the top two candidates for the starting job are returnees Brendan Motley and Jerod Evans.
Motley, a redshirt senior, started six games in 2015, completing 56.1 percent of his passes for 1,165 yards and 11 touchdowns, with seven interceptions and a 128.9 pass efficiency rating.
Evans is a junior college transfer who was a four-star recruit from Trinity Valley (Texas) after throwing for 395.5 yards per game and 38 touchdowns in 2015.
Evans would seem on paper to have the pedigree that Fuente would prefer out of his quarterback. His proteges include Andy Dalton, who Fuente coached as an assistant at TCU, and Paxton Lynch, his QB at Memphis who was a first-round pick in the 2016 NFL Draft.
The offense will look a host different from what Tech fans have grown accustomed to over the years under Beamer, who favored a more conservative approach to balance out a stout defense and dominant special-teams play.
Fuente said he still thinks of his offense being built on the foundation of a solid running game, but his approach isn’t three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust. Tempo is a key, and the running game includes the quarterbacks and the wide receivers on reverses and pitch plays.
He has one weapon at his disposal this year that he doesn’t feel he has ever had in tight end Bucky Hodges, an athletic 6’7”, 245-pound redshirt junior who caught 40 passes for 530 yards and six touchdowns in 2015.
“We didn’t have a guy like Bucky Hodges at anyplace I’ve ever been,” Fuente said.
Which is all well and good, but the new coach knows that fans “want to know who is going to run out there the first series versus Liberty.”
“I’m going to say we’ll need both of those guys to give ourselves a chance of having success during the fall,” Fuente said. They’re both working incredibly hard. There’s not one guy over another right now. It’s up in the air. But I like the way they’re going about it and the way they’re working.”
– Story by Chris Graham
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Chris Graham
