Some games inspire me to provide broad, insightful commentary. Others just require me to put in a day's work and make some comments here and there. This game fits in the latter category.

Much ado was made about an improved Rutgers team making its way into Lane Stadium, and in my preview, I gave them some props. I even said they would score 21 points on the Hokies.

Ah, well, some things never change. The Scarlet Knights still have a ways to go before they can even put up a fight against the Hokies, as long as Tech is paying attention and playing hard. As expected, Tech didn't have any trouble offensively in this game. Defensively, they shut Rutgers down. And the Tech special teams continued to flex their muscle, causing all sorts of trouble for Rutgers' punting game.

It all added up to a 49-0 whitewash win for the Hokies, in a game that was 35-0 just 21 minutes and four seconds in. Tech cruised the rest of the way from there, taking Vick out after just one second-half series.

This game didn't shed a lot of new light on the Hokies, but it did serve as the coming out party for true freshman Eric Green, who was all over the field and rightfully earned Big East Special Teams Player of the Week for his performance.

Let's hit on a few things I felt like commenting on.

Michael Vick. Truth be known, I don't really like to comment a lot on Vick, because everyone else takes care of that for me, from the print media to the message board posters, right on down to the TV commentators who gush constantly about him, calling him Superman and searching the sidelines for phone booths. Keep looking guys, but you won't find one, because there is no Clark Kent to Michael Vick's Superman.

One of the more interesting sidebars to Vick's Heisman campaign is that he apparently will not have to put up big numbers to win the trophy. I once made the statement in the past that Tech would never have a Heisman Trophy winner because (a) these days, Heisman winners come from the offensive side of the ball; (b) Tech platoons running backs, preventing one from racking up big numbers; (c) Tech is a run-oriented team, preventing a QB from racking up big numbers.

The Hokies have a balanced offense and are a team-oriented program. No chance they'll ever produce a Heisman winner with the current coaching staff, I said.

I may have been wrong. There's still a lot of football to be played, but it's interesting that Vick is one player for whom stats apparently don't matter as much as recent Heisman winners. Despite producing just 343 yards of total offense in the last two games (Purdue's Drew Brees gets that in passing yardage alone in one game), Vick's Heisman candidacy doesn't appear to have suffered.

It seems that all Vick has to do is produce two or three highlight-film moments per game, and he can step up to the podium in New York at the end of the season and grab the hardware. For once, the Heisman Trophy race really does seem to be geared towards answering the question, "Who's the best player in college football?"

Vick certainly is the most exciting, if not the best. Never have I seen announcers and fans ooh and aah over incompletions and interceptions, as they have done several times with Vick this year. His one interception, against Akron, drew gasps for its distance and velocity, and his overthrow of Andre Davis in this game had the TV announcers gushing at how hard he could throw the ball without even stepping into it.

He still needs to work on things. Lately, he has been taking a few sacks as he struggles to learn when to get rid of the ball and when to run. Like many running QB's, he wants to be known as a pocket passer, and that's probably dimming his enthusiasm for bailing out of the pocket.

And in this game in particular, he didn’t show much touch, throwing flat bombs instead of putting some air under them (trying to compensate for the wind, perhaps), and nearly taking a receiver's head off on a short pass one other time. So he's still got a way to go, but I'll take a developing Michael Vick over anyone else at this time.

The one obvious roadblock to Vick's Heisman candidacy would be a poor performance on national TV in a Hokie loss. That might make the voters think twice. Until then, as they have all been saying, it's apparently his trophy to lose. Stay tuned.

The Receivers. I've got to hand it to Tech's receivers. They have looked good this year. It's not easy catching the bullets Vick throws, but they have done a remarkable job hanging on to the ball. Emmett Johnson had a nice catch in the end zone in this one, as well as a nice open field catch against Akron, and the Hokies haven't yet had a receiver drop a wide-open bomb, as they have in years past (even Andre Davis did it last year, against WVU).

Johnson has evolved into the next Ricky Hall, working well as a possession receiver who breaks open deep occasionally, whereas Davis appears to have improved his short receiving game. Davis had a long flanker screen touchdown called back in this one for an illegal block.

But after hearing during the spring that the receivers were dropping passes in practice, it's good to see that overall, they're playing well.

Offensive Line. As expected, the offensive line made short work of the Rutgers defensive line in this game. While in the stadium, I didn't think the Hokies did much substituting on the O-line in the first half, but watching the game on tape revealed that the third and fifth TD's scored by Tech came with the backup offensive line in the game.

The third touchdown drive was 8 plays, 70 yards, and the fifth was 3 plays, 21 yards. They both finished with Lee Suggs touchdown runs, neither of which saw a defender touch Suggs.

I also think that I saw backup center Jake Grove playing with the starting line in this game.

There was no significant dropoff in performance between the first line and second line. After I get this week's hokiesports.comthenewspaper, I'll update my offensive line substitution chart and rerun it.

Pass rush. I was disconcerted by the lack of a Hokie pass rush in this one (Tech only had one sack, and that was by linebacker Brian Welch), but message board posters convinced me that the three-step drops and quick passes employed by Rutgers negated the Tech pass rush pretty well.

Okay, I'll buy that, but I'm still concerned about the consistency of the Tech pass rush, or lack thereof. Not that there's much that can be done about it overnight. Blitzes help, but they can be negated with three-step drops and slant patterns. Maturity of the defensive line will fix this problem moreso than just throwing more people at it. And maturity doesn't happen in a hurry.

The good news is, the defensive backs and linebackers played very well in this game. Not that Rutgers has all-world receivers, but they were covered pretty well. Despite the fact that Tech had just one sack, Rutgers only completed 17 passes in 49 attempts, and that is a compliment to the coverage.

Another interesting item of note is the tremendous amount of zone blitz that Tech is running this year. A zone blitz is a defensive play where linebackers and/or defensive backs blitz, and defensive linemen drop back into coverage. In the face of the blitz, the quarterback usually doesn't notice that defensive linemen have dropped back into coverage. The QB's often throw short across the middle, only to have the pass batted down or intercepted by the linemen who have dropped back into coverage.

Tech runs the zone blitz and drops the tackles back into coverage, and so far this year, it has worked like a charm. Last year, Tech did this with John Engelberger a few times when he played the tackle position, but this year, there has been a veritable flood of zone blitzes by the Hokies. None of the meaty-handed defensive tackles have a pickoff from the zone blitz yet, but they have disrupted short patterns against both ECU and Rutgers.

Eric Green. In the very first play of the season, Tech kicked off to Akron, and #1 for Tech closed in from the side, hit the Akron kick returner head-on, and tackled him. Just one question: who the heck is #1?

I didn't have a game program, and #1 on my personal depth chart was listed as Andrae Harrison, and he had left the team. So I was clueless as to who this new guy was. I squinted and was barely able to read the name on the back of his jersey: Green.

Green? Hmm. My hard drive chattered, and my circuits hummed, and somehow, somewhere, I pulled the name out of my memory banks, which usually aren't very good at this sort of thing: Eric Green. True freshman from Florida. Committed to WVU, decommitted when WVU assistant Doc Holliday left for N.C. State, and decided to come to Tech. WVU fans were bummed. Hmm, must be a pretty good player.

Green continued to make plays on the kickoff team, but in this Rutgers game, he absolutely blew up. By now, you know his list of plays on Saturday: he tackled the Rutgers punter after a bad snap, he blocked a punt, he picked off a pass, and he knocked away a pass late in the game that appeared to be headed for a sure TD for the Scarlet Knights.

In the stadium, Vick was given Player of the Game honors, but on the Tech radio broadcast, Bill Roth and Mike Burnop gave it to Green. They interviewed him, and he proved to be a loquacious, humble, articulate football player. He is now firmly on the radar screen of most Tech football fans, and he looks like a playmaker.

Doink! Carter Warley is perfect so far this season, going 20-for-20 on extra points and 2-for-2 on field goals, but he very nearly missed an extra point against Rutgers. He doinked it off the goal post, but it went through, anyway.

McCadam Hits the Field. The long-awaited debut of free safety Kevin McCadam finally happened, and he didn't disappoint the fans. McCadam lowered the boom on a Rutgers receiver on one play and knocked a pass away on another. He generally brought a lot of energy and good field presence to the position, and he looks like a tremendous athlete.

The Hokies now have the luxury of having two talented safeties available. In the past, an injury at this position was very bad news, but the early returns on McCadam make it look as if Tech is deep enough at this position to make it through the season without trouble, especially with Billy Hardee having taken some snaps here.

Worst Prediction Yet. I was pretty close in my predictions for the Akron and ECU games, but I missed this one. For Akron, I predicted 48-17 and got 52-23. For ECU, I predicted 42-34, and it ended up 45-28. But for his one, I predicted 56-21, only missing the Hokie score by one touchdown but blowing the Rutgers score badly.

Actually, it's easy predicting Tech's score -- just guess somewhere around 50. The hard part is guessing the opponent's score.

Up Next: Boston College. After a week off, the Hokies will travel to Boston College for a 3:30 game on September 30^th. For the fourth straight game, the Hokies will face an experienced quarterback in BC's Matt Hasselbeck. BC has a pretty good team, but their Achilles heel against the Hokies has been speed. In the past, Tech has simply been too fast for Boston College. I'll return during game week with a BC preview and prediction.

HC Football Page