Quote Originally Posted by Woadi Hokie View Post
Believe it or not, I think we kind of agree. When I say, "culture" I am referring to what we have, which is generally speaking, 25-260 pound de's and 6ft 280-300 lb dts. We/coaches want the big 65 260 lb ends or the 300 plus dt recruits. BUT, we don't get them...or if we do get them, something happens that curtails their career, william wall, jimmy williams, leon mackey...the list is amazingly long considering its such a specific group/player type.

I think we disagree about the coaching player development component. It could be argued that we don't get nfl caliber dt's /de's but it could also be used against us to suggest that nick acree, john graves, jon lewis were big time recruits that wiles failed to develop into NFL players. I kind of think Wiles is not that great of a dl coach based on our lack of players in the pros as well as bcuz of something dtapp said when he got into the pros...hell uva has more dlineman in the league than we do!
We do disagree on player development. Simply put UVA has gotten recruits with more nfl upside than we have so more get there. No where is that more true than the OL and jumbo LB, 2 places we have difficulty recruiting. You mentioned a few that did not work out but that list is not surprisingly long. Graves was not really an nfl prospect before he got to us. Tapp was not either. Acree only had the physicals but had no evaluations vs top level high school players. Jon Lewis was seen as being way more nfl material leaving VT than he was coming in. So I think you are equating "good" recruits for VT with "good" nfl material.

Heck, neither Brian Randall nor Tyrod Taylor were really seen as nfl QBs out of high school.

So a lack of players in the pros has more to do with the players we started with than what was done with them after they got here. As stated above Tapp did not have the nfl physicals but he had the nfl sized heart. He got there.