ECU Week, Volume 2 (Pointy Fingers edition) ...

Ah, vitriol! And here I thought the Hokies were going to get through an entire season without someone needing to be fired or have their scholarship pulled or just their general dignity stripped of them to appease the angry mob.

Just ... wow. I knew my take on offensive coordinator Bryan Stinespring last night would stir the pot a bit but, boy, some of you folks REALLY don’t like the guy. And as it turns out, now some of you really don’t like me much, either.

On both counts I say only: Fair enough. Hate who you will. Don’t, however, question my journalistic integrity. Don’t tell me I’m on the VT payroll. Don’t speculate that I fear for my job or my access to the team if I don’t act like a Frank Beamer puppet.

Don’t. Not because it hurts my feelings. It doesn’t. I sleep great even with an in-box full of hate mail. But don’t say such silly things because they just aren’t true.

I’m not afraid of backlash from Beamer if I’m critical of his team. I’ve been critical many times in the past and he hasn’t clubbed me with a crow bar or barred me from interviewing anyone. He and a few of his assistant coaches have had quite a few choice words with me before. We’ve agreed to disagree on some things. Here’s a little secret: We’ve even screamed at each other.

But at the end of the day, both sides recognize and respect that we’re each just trying to our jobs. And Beamer knows that mine is to tell the truth as best I understand it. Last year, that truth was that the offense was outright impotent for almost the entire first nine games or so. And I wrote that. I went to great lengths to find the stats to confirm for you, the interested and frustrated reader, that no team had won more with less offense over the previous three seasons.

I am nobody’s puppet, folks. Just ask my boss, who would frequently like to bludgeon me for zigging when I should have zagged because I just happen to like zigging better.

So if I tell you that I don’t think this season’s shortcomings should be hung exclusively on offensive coordinator Bryan Stinespring, I’m saying so because I believe it. I think he has called some pretty excellent games this season (along with a fair number of calls that I’m sure he wants to have back). Even the guy who runs the Web site whose sole purpose is to get Stinespring fired wrote multiple posts earlier this season about what a nice job Stiney was doing and that a positive trend was developing.

But now that same guy is publicly insulting me for being some sort of Hokies PR flack. Uh, no. Even the biggest cynic was willing to admit Stinespring stepped up his game this season and the offense was getting better and players were executing better. Great? No. But better. I keep hearing how all this program needs is a top-50 offense and after six games, Tech was climbing toward that. It was a top-25 rushing team and a top-30 scoring offense.

So now, after two tough games, two crushing defeats for the Hokies ... Stiney is back to being an idiot and totally at fault for everything that has ever gone wrong for Virginia Tech in the last eight years? Come on. Step back. Take a breath.

And to those of you who took offense over my comments about defensive coordinator Bud Foster ... relax. I wasn’t saying, ‘Blame Bud.’ Hardly. As so many of you have pointed out, Tech owes a great many (most) of its wins over the past five seasons to Mr. Foster and his perpetually top-10 defense.

So maybe in my haste, I wrote it wrong last night. The point I was trying to illustrate is that no one ever says, ‘Whoa, Bud is slipping. What’s his problem?’ EVERYONE is saying, ‘If his defense is struggling, he must have less talent than in the past. It must be the players’ failure to execute.’ And Foster has essentially said as much. What I don’t get, though, is why that’s a viable excuse for Foster and not for Stinespring?

Maybe it’s just TRUE in both cases. Everyone within the program talked about the horrible strikeouts in offensive line recruiting several years ago, which led to porous units up front the past three seasons. Is it a coincidence, then, that the offense struggled mightily in those years? But it couldn’t be the players, right?. And if Stinespring said so, he’d just be “throwing them under the bus.” But if Foster says so, it’s just true and the players need to step up.

Does nobody see the double standard in that? My point last night is that I think fans are letting the past few years color their perceptions of today. And the fact is, things change. This year is not the same as any of the previous three (or five).

This year, the Hokies have won most of their games as a team. They’ve lost all three of their games as a team. There have been great successes and great failures in all three phases of the game.

So maybe it’s possible that, despite all the hype – admittedly perpetuated in part by people like me – this was always just a team that was going to lose two or three games. No shame in that. No blame in that.

Ah, but we need goats, don’t we? Maybe someone wants to send this guy below some hate mail? No? Well, that’s good to hear. It wouldn’t surprise me. With some of the fire that comes spewing out of folks after a loss, no wonder this kid didn’t want to leave his house ...

RB RYAN WILLIAMS

ON HIS NIGHT AFTER THE FUMBLE AND THE LOSS AGAINST UNC ON THURSDAY: “I didn’t go to sleep until about 8 that (next) morning. I stayed up all night. Couldn’t sleep. I stayed in my room in the dark. That play just ran through my head over and over again. When I say over and over again, I mean over and over again. If I wasn’t tired, I probably still would be up thinking about the play.”

ON WHETHER HE’S OVER IT NOW: “Yeah, I’ve got to be. I’m a guy who doesn’t like dwelling on things about that past. If I keep dwelling on it, my future, the future for this team and me helping this team won’t probably be very good. I can’t have something negative lingering, sitting on my mind.”

ON THE TEAM’S MOOD GOING FORWARD: “The same mood for every game. We’ve got to come in and play our ‘A’ game. Some games, we’re going to play our ‘A’ game. Some games we don’t execute like we want to, and that’s where those losses come from. If we would’ve executed every play the way we needed to and come up with our ‘A’ game, we would be undefeated by now. But things happen. We just need to come out and execute.”

ON WHEN HE WOKE UP FRIDAY IF HE DIDN’T FALL ASLEEP UNTIL 8 A.M.: “Ten thirty. I just woke up. That play, that was the first thing I thought about. It still makes me sick to my stomach. But the difference now is that I’ve come to terms with it. That’s the difference now. Before, I didn’t come to terms with it. Just being able to say, ‘Yeah, I fumbled. I fumbled and that might have cost us the game.’ That’s what I’ve been able to come to terms with. I couldn’t do it before. I hate fumbling. I only fumbled once or twice in high school and I played all four years. I hate fumbling, but things happen and you’ve just got to keep going.”

ON WHAT RB COACH BILLY HITE HAS SAID TO HIM: “He pulled me to the side and he told me he already thinks that I’m a great player and that everyone he’s coached and been considered great here has fumbled. I guess arguably the best running back, Kevin Jones, put the ball on the ground multiple times. I want to be considered one of the great running backs here. Things happen. So (Hite) told me don’t get myself down about it, that I wasn’t the reason that cost the game, even though personally I think so. He said ... there were multiple times we should’ve put points on the board and we didn’t. He just said keep my head up and you’ve got to keep going.”

ON WHETHER HE’LL BE HIGHLY MOTIVATED THE REST OF THE WAY: “I’m just going to be the same old guy. That fumble doesn’t motivate me to run even better or run even harder or do things any differently. I’m going to come out against ECU the same guy I’ve previously been. I’m going to try to make plays.”

ON WHAT HE DID FRIDAY TO FORGET ABOUT IT: “I just chilled. That’s all I do anyway. I just chill in my room and watch TV. It was probably about Saturday, Sunday when I started talking to people. I was really down on myself. I didn’t even go to class Friday. I stayed in my room. I couldn’t stomach looking at people’s face, the same people who look at me every day and tell me how proud they are of me and tell me I’m their favorite player on the team ... that they look up to me. To look in their face and know I may have disappointed them in some way, I just couldn’t do it. I went out Saturday ... and it made me feel a lot better, that a lot of people were still in my corner. They just basically told me that regardless of what happened ... one mistake don’t compare to my whole season. I was still apologizing to people that were coming up to me. They gave me a hug, gave me support. I was apologizing to them because I still feel bad about it. That’s something that probably won’t ever leave my mind, but it’s got to.”

*** And here’s the Big Whistle ...

HEAD COACH FRANK BEAMER

OPENING REMARKS ON EAST CAROLINA: “I’m really impressed with this East Carolina football team. It all starts out with their quarterback, Pinkney. He’s a dynamic player. Their running backs are really coming along, and I think this wide receiver, Harris, is really a special player. ... Defensively, they’ve got eight seniors. They’ve got experience. They’re very strong up front. They’ve got a kicker that kicks it a mile. ... This is a very good football team.”

ON THE TEAM’S MENTALITY AFTER CONSECUTIVE LOSSES, INCLUDING A HEARTBREAKER AT HOME: “We certainly had a tough loss, but I think what we’re playing for is pride in each other, pride in our football team, and just going out and trying to get a win. That’s what we need to think about right now. We’ve got a good group of players here. We’ve got good kids, got good leadership. It was just a tough loss and you’ve got to go on to next week. We’re playing for the pride of each other and all the work that we’ve put into this thing and we just need to work to get a win right now.”

ON HOW HARD RB RYAN WILLIAMS TOOK HIS FUMBLE AT THE END OF THAT GAME: “He knows he’s got everybody’s support. He’s a tough guy and he’ll come through it. In athletics, you’re out there and you’ve just got to realize there’s some bad with some good. And there’s going to be a lot of good from that guy. There already has been in the short time he’s been here, and there’s going to be a lot more good before he leaves here.”

ON HEAVY FAN CRITICISM OF OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR BRYAN STINESPRING AFTER THE LOSS: “Well, I appreciate people’s interest and people’s passion for our program. I don’t think now is the time. Anything along those lines is not helping us beat East Carolina, and that’s all I’m concerned about right now is beating East Carolina. That’s going to take a major, major effort.”

ON HIS MESSAGE TO THE TEAM DURING THEIR MEETING AFTER THE LOSS: “I told them that we were in the exact same position last year as far as record: just lost two conference games. We kept working, stuck together and we ended up the season feeling good about ourselves. That’s what needs to take place now. I talked about some tough losses back in 1998. We lost three games that were just tough, tough losses. That’s life. You get disappointment in life and you’ve got to come back from it. ... We always came back (in ’98). That’s just part of football. You’re going to have disappointment. How you come back from it is what’s important. That’s where we are right now.”

ON WHETHER THIS ONE WAS HARD TO SHAKE OFF FOR HIM PERSONALLY: “Well, you’ve got to move forward. We’ve got such a tough opponent coming up that it doesn’t take you long to figure you better forget about North Carolina and start getting ready for East Carolina. This crowd, they can play. ... This is a football team that beat us last year and we need to play a great football game at their place to have a chance to win it.”

ON LYNDELL GIBSON STARTING TAKING JAKE JOHNSON’S STARTING SPOT AT LINEBACKER: “I think Lyndell’s got some real talent, just a natural nose for the football. He’s very quick, stocky. Jake’s going to continue to play. Both of them are just young. We’re you’re young, sometimes it’s inconsistent. But both of them are going to play and Lyndell, I like his possibilities.”

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