BLACKSBURG - On Friday, ESPN's lead college football crew of Chris Fowler, Kirk Herbstreit and Maria Taylor caught up with head coach Justin Fuente and defensive coordinator Bud Foster on a conference call to begin preparations for their coverage of Virginia Tech's opening game at Florida State on Sept. 3. Taylor also spoke with QB Josh Jackson and several of his teammates via phone on Saturday.
Herbstreit later participated in a conference call with members of the media previewing the upcoming college football season. Here are some excerpts from that call that featured conversations about the Hokies and the Seminoles. Here's that transcript courtesy of ESPN PR.
Q. Good afternoon. Obviously, you'll be doing that Virginia Tech-Florida State game season opening weekend. I was just kind of curious what intrigues you about that matchup and what are the keys for each team to pull off a win? I'm not sure how much of a deep dive you've done yet considering you've got three games coming up here.
KIRK HERBSTREIT: It's ironic, I just actually did a conference call today with the Virginia Tech coaches. So it was great to catch up with Justin and Bud and talk a little bit about their personnel and some of the -- it's another team where we know about Josh Jackson, but, boy, they've got a lot of new names and new face that's they're going to emerge in some key spots for them. They lost so many great players, especially on defense.
I've seen Bud Foster lose a bunch of guys on defense and return two or three starters and you're thinking, boy, this will be a down year. Then here comes that next wave of eager, excited, hungry players, and they end up playing better than they did the year before.
I don't think, just because a team is young, that they're not necessarily still going to be really good. What a great way for college football fans and ACC fans to start the season with a game as meaningful as Florida State and Virginia Tech.
"So I'm excited to see what Virginia Tech's defense can do. Like I said, with all those new faces. And I can't wait to see Josh Jackson in his second year and with a lot of new faces around him, especially in the backfield. And then, of course, what more needs to be said about Florida State? Willie Taggart, new head coach coming in. According to what he's told us, his dream job is to be in Tallahassee and to be that head coach. I personally feel that a lot of people have almost forgotten about Florida State this year. There's such an anticipation of Clemson once again and even Miami, that you talk to your average fan on a national level, and people are not expecting much of anything from Florida State. I think it's a real opportunity for them to showcase their team and their talents on national TV on a Monday night, and I think we're going to learn a lot more about Deondre Francois and James Blackman and who eventually emerges to be the guy. And another team with another quarterback that's going to have a lot of talent around him that is anxious to prove what they can do. I'm fired up. That will be my third game of the weekend, but it's easy to say that I might be the most excited to get to that game on a Monday night."
Q. I just kind of want to follow up a little bit on Virginia Tech and Bud Foster defensively. Having replaced seven starters with not a lot of guys who have been regular ins that rotation, kind of what do you think the biggest challenge is for Bud Foster to get the defense ready for that first game?
HERBSTREIT: "Yeah, great question. I think it's his 23rd year (as defensive coordinator), so he's kind of been there and done that. The big thing to remember about Virginia Tech is the complexity of the defense. This is not your, hey, we're going to sit in cover two or we're going to sit in cover three and just kind of have a vanilla defensive scheme. They are incredibly complex when they have their team really humming.
The question is, and what I asked him is are you just going to be who you are regardless of the inexperience, or do you have to scale back because of having two brand new corners, brand new linebackers. I mean, especially on the back end, not so much the front, but the linebackers and secondary there's a lot of new faces. And he said, you know, it's kind of a game time feel. They might give a little bit of a taste to these players and give them a challenge to see how they respond, but until you see it, it's really hard to respond to know what those players are going to be able to digest and handle until they get out there in front of the lights and against the speed of Florida State. So I think he has an idea and a plan of what he wants to do, but he may have to pull back depending on what those young players are doing, especially at the cornerback spot. And I guess, getting specific to your question, I would say the biggest challenge to me is he's going to get pressure on a quarterback. They're typically going to defend the run because they get so many guys up at the line of scrimmage. But to do that, you've got to be really good at corner, and they lost their top three corners from a year ago. In that defense, they typically leave those corners on islands, and how do those young corners hold up when they're out there on an island, especially against a team like Florida State that has some speed and can run?
I think that's the thing I'm most excited to see is how that defense holds up on the perimeter."
