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David Wilson Commits to Virginia Tech
by Chris Coleman, TechSideline.com

Virginia Tech received their eighth commitment of the 2009 recruiting class on Friday when GW-Danville (VA) star running back David Wilson verballed to the coaching staff.

Wilson (5-11, 190) is TSL's #3 recruit in the state of Virginia for the class of 2009.  As a junior last season at GW, Wilson ran for 1,557 yards and averaged 11 yards per carry, while scoring 17 touchdowns.  He also returned two kickoffs for touchdowns, flashing his versatility on special teams.

Wilson is blessed with a lot of speed, and he has more power than people expect.  He is also one of the top track athletes in the nation.  He'll have a press conference on Monday morning to confirm his decision and answer questions with the media. 

Hokies Tops in Returning OL Starts

In the coming weeks, you'll be reading a lot in our preseason coverage (more on that later) about how much experience different teams have coming back at certain positions. Today we'll get a jumpstart to the previews by taking a look at the most experienced offensive lines in the ACC, by number of starts.

Statistics for this portion of TSLMail are from Phil Steele's 2008 Preview magazine.

Miami and Virginia Tech top the list with 79 starts by returning offensive linemen. However, projected Miami center Xavier Shannon has 29 starts, all of which came at Florida International. He transferred into Miami, and is the son of coach Randy Shannon. He hasn't started a game for the 'Canes, as of yet.

If you throw away Shannon's 29 starts, it's clearly a contest between Virginia Tech and Maryland, with the Hokies getting the edge by a mere one start. Both teams lost their top lineman (Duane Brown for Tech, Andrew Crummey for Maryland), but still return experienced players. The Hokies could have the best interior line in the ACC this year, with the G-C-G combo of Nick Marshman, Ryan Shuman and Sergio Render.

North Carolina has the potential to have a solid line, though they were never a physical group last year. The Tar Heels' running game struggled all season. Duke has some experienced players returning, but they only have experience losing games. Georgia Tech returns 58 starts, but 39 of them come from one player (Andrew Gardner).

What's interesting is the three teams at the bottom of that table. Clemson, Florida State and Wake Forest are projected to compete with each other for the Atlantic Division Championship. However, they have the least experience returning up front of any schools in the ACC!

Wake Forest took a big blow when Chris DeGeare was ruled academically ineligible. DeGeare has 24 career starts. Florida State has lost two projected starters for the season. Clemson hasn't suffered any attrition or injuries, they are just thin, so thin that they moved senior defensive tackle Jock McKissic to offensive tackle. McKissic was a good defensive player, with 13 career starts. How concerned is Clemson about their offensive line if they are moving senior defensive tackles to plug the gaps?

I believe one of Clemson, FSU or Wake will still win the division despite their offensive line woes. However, I expect there is a very good chance that at least one of these teams finishes worse than expected thanks to a thin offensive front, a fact that many analysts seem to be completely ignoring.

TSL Preseason Football Content to Begin Next Week

In case you didn't notice, it's about that time of year again. We have reached the second half of July, which means football practice is just a couple of weeks away, and the season opener against East Carolina is rapidly approaching.

As usual, TechSideline.com will bring you preseason content on not only the Hokies, but the ACC as well. Team previews for all ACC schools will begin on Monday. We'll go in alphabetical order, starting with the Atlantic Division. When the Atlantic Division is done, we'll start with the Coastal Division. ACC team previews will run on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Virginia Tech positional previews will begin on Tuesday, and will run on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We'll have some sort of preview content up on the site just about every weekday between Monday and the start of the season.

All dates are subject to change, but that's a general outline of what our preseason content will look like. Following the ACC Game-by-Game predictions on August 25, we'll begin our normal game week content for East Carolina.