It's a tragedy that we spend 11 months out of the year pining away for the big games of November.  I think the Hokies ought to play WVU, Syracuse, Miami, and UVa every week, all year round.

That's my way of saying that I live for nights like Saturday's night clash with the Carrier Dome.  Sure, every game we've had this year has been important, but let's face it, the game against the Orangemen is High Noon for the Big East championship.   Lose this one, and there will be no BCS bowl, period.  Win it, and the Hokies just might be playing for an $8 million paycheck come January.

Do you get what I'm saying?  This is it.  Saturday night, the Hokies' season turns on a dime, for better or for worse.  There is a clear line drawn in the sand, and on one side of that line is the Bowl Championship Series, and on the other side is ... something else.  And after Saturday night's game, we're going to be standing on one side of that line or the other, but we won't be straddling it anymore.

I read a post by message board poster and HokieCentral member "Rusty" on Wednesday afternoon that provides a great preview of this game.  Rusty says many of the things I was planning on saying, plus a little I hadn't thought about.  Take it away, Rusty:

Here's what I came up with earlier as our keys for the game.

1) Tackling - It is November, it is the Dome, we are a little banged up and coming off of a bye week. These are the kinds of situations where we have trouble tackling. Hopefully Coach Foster has been doing full contact drills this week and the guys are sharp, otherwise it's a scoring contest.

2) Run Defense - Our defense is tailor-made to stop this kind of running offense. They like to key their run around Konrad, with dives, isolation plays, and option. Our scheme is strong in all three areas. Look to see if Syracuse goes away from their strength and tries to run some counters, traps, and draws.

3) Extra Long Coverage - Our secondary has to be ready to play a full 8 seconds of coverage - with McNabb's scrambling ability, he will try to keep the play alive and he always finds a breakdown. We need a super game from LJ and Midget (both at corner and at FS).

4) Noise - This is the biggest game of the year for the offensive line. The Dome will be loud, which means that on some key passing downs we will have to use the silent snap count. The Syracuse pass rush will have a half-step head start in these situations, so we need our guys to make the correct reads at the line, react quickly to the snap, and engage well. Pegues, Stith, and Ferguson have to do a good job of reading the holes in pass protection and picking up the blocks.

5) Drops - With the injuries to the Syracuse secondary, we should be getting some guys open. Heck, we should be getting some guys open regardless. We cannot have the drops. For VT the drops seem to accompany the missed tackles, and show an overall lack of concentration with the team. The measure of our focus can be taken from watching these two aspects of the game.

6) Depth - We need to play just about everyone on the roster. We can avoid the mental lapses and 'quarter of horror' scenarios that have plagued us in Jiffy-Pop Dome games of the past by having fresh guys on the field at all times. This will help with the aforementioned aspects of tackling, focus, and coverage. And obviously, as we saw in the Miami and West Virginia games, having a fresh team in the 4th quarter can put the game away for us.

7) Special Teams - This is my number one worry for this game. Yes, we have been dominant this year, blocking kicks, returning kicks, and covering kicks. As the scene from whatever that movie goes:

Guy 1 - "It's quiet"
Guy 2 - "Yeah, TOO quiet"

I'm most afraid of our kick coverage. We haven't given up a return longer than 8 yards all year, and that's a stat that's just itching to get scratched. Syracuse knows how to block some punts of their own, and Graham has been, well, less than stellar. We could be in for problems on special teams all night if we're not careful and focused.

Will here again - that's a great analysis by Rusty, particularly with regarding to tackling and "the drops."

One of the points that had been touched upon earlier in the thread that contained this message was the immense amount of pressure that will be on Loren Johnson in this game.   LJ will be guarding Syracuse's top receiver, Kevin Johnson, who lit the Mountaineer secondary up last weekend for almost 200 yards on about a million catches.

Other then Kevin Johnson, the Orange don't appear to have much at the receiver position.  Superstar Quinton Spotwood is out for the year with an injury, and I don't recognize any of the other names on the SU roster at the receiver spot.

Let's put it this way:  during Monday night's Hokie Hotline broadcast, I asked Coach Beamer about Syracuse's other receivers, and he picked up a copy of their roster and started scanning it just to remind himself, "Hey, who the heck do they have other than Johnson?"

So Loren's got a tall order, and if he stops Kevin Johnson, I like our chances.   Having said that, some no-name receiver of theirs will probably light us up for 150 yards or more, but for now, I'm sticking by my statement that it's a one-man gang when it comes to their receiving corps.

Syracuse Strengths

The easy thing about stopping WVU's passing game was that once we flushed Bulger out of the pocket, the play was effectively over.  He was awful on the run.

Donovan McNugget is the exact opposite.  He has an accurate rocket for an arm, making him a dangerous pocket passer, and the bummer is, once you flush him from the pocket, he is excellent at buying time, letting his receivers turn the defensive secondary into a free-for-all, and then finding the open receiver.

Remember how good Maurice DeShazo was at that?  He would avoid the rush with some wiggly-worm move, jog out near the sideline, wave Antonio Freeman downfield, and then hit him with a touchdown pass five yards behind the defense.  Well, imagine the 1993 version of Maurice DeShazo "turned up to eleven," as they say in Spinal Tap, and you've got Donovan McNabb.

Another major difference between McNabb and Bulger is that McNabb is strong.   Getting a hand on him doesn't mean you've got him tackled.  He is very hard for one man to bring down by himself, and Cornell Brown is the only person I have ever seen who could do it regularly.

Other than that, the Hokies have had their best success sacking McNabb when they've come at him with two or more players and have been able to corner him, giving him nowhere to go.  If you get after him with one guy, or if you come at him from one side only, he's trouble.

Another strength on the Syracuse team is the fullback, Rob Konrad.  He can run, block, and catch.  For some reason, the Orangemen horribly underutilized him in the WVU game, and I hope they forget about him again Saturday night.  Konrad is particularly dangerous catching the ball out of the backfield, but the good news is, the Hokies have some seriously fast linebackers that can contain him.

So, to sum it up, Syracuse's strengths are McNabb, Konrad, and Kevin Johnson.  And of course, the Jiffy-Pop Dome, or more precisely, the way they play when they're in it.   It's possible that someone other than the three players I've listed could jump up and hurt us, but those are the three main threats you want to look for.

Syracuse's Weaknesses

The good news is, the Orangemen have plenty of weaknesses.  Hopefully, the Hokies will be able to exploit them.

Weakness #1 is their defense, more precisely, their injury-riddled secondary, as Rusty alluded to.  Torry Holt (who admittedly is a great player, with a great QB to feed him the ball) of N.C. State was unstoppable against Syracuse, so they can be beaten with the passing game.  Angelo Harrison and Ricky Hall will be able to get open, and will have the opportunity to make some plays.

The Orange defense is a defense that has played well at times, most notably against Michigan, whom they pretty much shut down until late in the game.  And in 1996, an average Syracuse defense did come into the Dome with a great game plan, and they shut down a pretty darn good Hokie offense.  So stranger things have happened.

But it's an inescapable fact that the Syracuse front seven on defense is not very good, and historically, if you wear them down, they become total pushovers and start arm-tackling in the fourth quarter so badly that it will make you laugh out loud.

Syracuse's other weakness is their kicking game.  Their field-goal kicker, Trout, pretty much left a foul, fishy smell on the turf in West Virginia last weekend, and it's arguable that he lost the game for Syracuse by missing field goals.  He was looking despondent and totally devoid of confidence late in the game.

If we're lucky, Trout will get an early field goal attempt against us Saturday night, miss it, and get booed so roundly by the Syracuse "fans" that he'll fall apart and become such a basket case that he couldn't make a kick if you teed the ball up on the crossbar and told him, "Go ahead ... kick it."

The Game Plan

On defense, the Hokies will try to play sound, fundamental defense, tackle well, defense the option well, and stay with the receivers when the pocket breaks down and McNugget gets loose.  I look for us to blitz more than we did against the Mountaineers, because historically, we have had great success blitzing Syracuse.

I also look for Corey Moore to get brutally held, and it won't be called, not once.   Watch for it.  As an opposing coach, you would have to be an idiot to watch the tapes of VT versus Miami and WVU and then not decide to just hold Corey all game long.  It works, and it doesn't get called.  And my big fear there is that Corey will just snap one game and draw a crucial personal foul when he decides he's had enough of the constant holding.

On offense, remember what you saw against WVU, because you'll see it again.  Tech will try to control the ball on the ground in an effort to keep it away from McNabb and to keep the Carrier Dome crowd out of the game.  We'll throw an occasional home run ball, and will probably succeed with it once or twice.

A possibility, but not a likelihood, is that Rickey Bustle will decide that the Syracuse secondary is really weak, and he'll throw a constant stream of bombs, hoping to score on a few of them.  Call this the "Clemson game plan," because that's what we did there.  But I don't think you'll see that, because we would rather play ball-control offense.

Lastly, on special teams, we'll try to contain their returners, and of course, we'll try to block a few kicks here and there.

My Prediction

Well, here we go.  I told myself at the beginning of the year that I would pick us to lose this game, no matter what, because we haven't proven we can win at Syracuse.

But I'm a sucker, and in writing this preview, I've gotten myself too jacked up to pick a loss.

Virginia Tech 27, Syracuse 17.

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