Coming out of last week's game at UNC, there were hints that the Hokies were coming together and making progress. I had a suspicion that things were turning around for Tech, but I didn't think the Hokies were quite ready to win one on the road in Lincoln -- close, but not quite.

The Virginia Tech team that drove home from Chapel Hill on Saturday, September 20th probably wasn't ready to win in Lincoln, but the Hokies who ran onto the Memorial Stadium turf the night of Saturday, September 27th were more than ready. Virginia Tech was tougher, faster, and more poised than Nebraska, and the offense took a quantum leap from its early season struggles and played as an asset, instead of a liability.

Virginia Tech was clearly a better team than Nebraska. Time will tell how good the Huskers are; unless the Nebraska defense starts playing better, the QB-heavy Big 12 competition will eat them up. But whatever history writes about the 2008 Nebraska Cornhuskers, Virginia Tech's win in Lincoln is just what the Hokies needed. This could be a landmark win, and a springboard to better things. Again, time will tell.

Turning points in a season can only truly be identified when a season is done, but this win certainly looks like a turning point. Virginia Tech continues to come together as a team and get better and better every week, and the Hokies are poised to make a run at another ACC championship.

377 total yards. 171 yards passing and 206 yards rushing. For perspective, if a team had averaged those totals in 2007, that team would have ended up ranked 73rd in total offense, 108th in passing offense, and 18th in rushing offense.

None of those figures represent barn-burning offensive output, but for the Hokies, they represent a big step forward. Here's how Tech's Saturday numbers stand up to their season numbers going into this game.

There are all kinds of other stats we could crunch, and I'll throw some more interesting stats at you later. But beyond the stats, this game had a much different look and feel to it for the Hokie offense. Simply put, the Hokie offense looked more competent and cohesive than it had all season, like it had a plan that was geared for the opponent and which consistently put the players in position to succeed.

There are two exception-to-the-rule observations that I feel back up that statement. Number one, the Hokies actually averaged less per rush against Nebraska (3.7 ypc) than they did in the first four games (4.0 ypc). Funny, it didn't feel that way. Tech ripped off six runs of 10+ yards, from garden-variety off-tackle runs to QB scrambles. Had you asked me to guess VT's rushing average without looking at the stats, I would have guessed close to five yards a carry, not 3.7.

Secondly, one play the Hokies blew, costing them a touchdown, was one of the best play calls I've seen all season from the Hokies. After Nebraska scored to close it to 9-7, the Hokies drove downfield and faced a third and goal from the Husker 2. VT lined up with a full house backfield and two tight ends, the classic power running formation.

Remember this passage from the Georgia Tech Monday Thoughts?

The offense got off to a bad start in this one, with what I thought was a call that Samuel Morse (inventor of the telegraph) would have been proud of. The Hokies started off in the shotgun, with a single tight end and a one-back set, and threw two passes: a flanker screen to Macho Harris that lost a yard, and a short pass to Chris Drager that set up a third and three.

The Hokies brought in the fullback and lined up in a power-I formation, with the tight end to the right. Looks like an off-tackle run to the right, doesn't it? Georgia Tech agreed, and the Jackets run blitzed and blew the play up for a five-yard loss. Losing five yards on a straight-ahead rushing play from the power-I is rare, but the Hokies did it.

Fast forward to a similar formation and similar situation against Nebraska. The fullback went in motion to the left, telegraphing a run off-tackle left ... but instead, at the snap, tight end Greg Boone ran a corner route to the right in the end zone. He was wide open ... and Tyrod Taylor badly overthrew him. Again, that's one of the best play calls of the year, but it went unrewarded. Such are the things that turn coaches' hair gray.

The Hokies used a similar trick successfully on Darren Evans's one-yard TD run early in the game. The Hokies lined up in a power formation, motioned fullback Devin Perez to the left, and ran it right. Evans waltzed into the end zone.

The Hokies ran the ball well, they used the center of the field in the passing game (mostly with the tight ends), and they even threw a pass to the fullback (Taylor overthrew Kenny Jefferson). Tech blocked well, though not flawlessly. Nebraska only had two sacks for a total of four yards in losses, and in both those plays, Tyrod Taylor had adequate time in the pocket to find open receivers. I would call both of Nebraska's sacks coverage sacks.

Was it a virtuoso performance by the Hokie offense? Not exactly. VT only gained 377 yards on a Nebraska team that was giving up 347.3 per game coming in. But it was, as noted, a big step in the right direction. Virginia Tech looked prepared, unlike their pitiful first half performances against Furman and UNC, outings in which the Hokie offense looked confused and completely inept.

Speaking of that first half against UNC, that appears to be a crucial turning point for the offense, which has played much better in three halves of football since then. Here's a fun stat:

• In the first three and a half games this year (ECU, Furman, GT, and half time against UNC), VT averaged 128.4 yards of offense per half.
• In the last game and a half, VT has averaged 188.3 yards of offense per half, an improvement of 59.9 yards per half, or 119.8 yards per game.

Here's the thing: No one is asking the Virginia Tech offense to rack up 500 yards and 45 points a game (though we'll take it). They simply need to be a solid offense, capable of controlling the football, running it well, and moving the chains.

In particular, the offense needs to be able to do things like this:

• After Nebraska scored their first touchdown to make it 9-7, the Hokies came out and immediately false started, putting themselves into a 1st-and-15 situation. Tech picked up the first down anyway, and embarked on a 10-play, 54-yard drive that ended with a field goal and recaptured momentum.
• After Nebraska scored two straight touchdowns, the second on an 88-yard punt return, to close it to 28-23, Memorial Stadium and the Sea of Red were rocking. The Hokies promptly put together a monster 11-play, 80-yard touchdown drive in which Nebraska came unglued under the pressure. Yes, the Huskers helped with personal foul and unsportsmanlike conduct penalties, but VT finished the drive off.

In short, this game had all the classic earmarks of a Hokie big game loss in the making. VT committed some defensive breakdowns, leading to easy scores, and Beamerball coughed up a key special teams touchdown. In many situations like this in the past, the offense has not bailed out the defense and special teams, but against Nebraska Saturday night, they did. The offense was part of the solution, not a huge, glaring part of the problem.

One more fun stat before we move on to comments about the defense. Against the Huskers, VT had five offensive possessions of nine plays or more, and the Hokies ran 70 plays to Nebraska's 51. Here are those two stats for all five games this year, and you can clearly see the improvement.

Again, trends moving in the right direction.

Of course, one of the reasons VT's play differential was +19 was the numerous big plays hit by the Nebraska offense (cough-cough, harrumph). When the Huskers did score, it was quickly.

Virginia Tech's defense had a feast-or-famine kind of night. The Hokies held Nebraska to 333 total yards, a statistic that makes me neither cheer nor cringe.

Within the defensive stats are a number of encouraging signs: a third-down conversion rate of 2-of-11 (18%), 55 net yards rushing, including 2.2 yards per carry; and only two Husker possessions that lasted longer than six plays.

But two of those possessions went for touchdowns. Nebraska struck for three plays, 68 yards and a touchdown, and four plays, 80 yards, and a touchdown. Bud Foster hates that kind of stuff.

Throw in Nebraska's 88-yard punt return, and it was a weird night for the Hokies, one in which they gave up 21 points in a span of 8 plays and about three minutes, 20 seconds of game time. It's rare to feel like you're in control of a game that ends up 35-30, but that's how it went.

Nebraska had a mind-boggling, Foster-detonating seven plays of 20+ yards, two of them over 30 yards. In those seven plays, Nebraska accumulated 200 of their 333 yards. They totaled 133 yards on their other 44 plays (3.0 yards per play).

Lots to build on here, but again, the bugaboo for the Hokies is the big plays they're giving up. Raleigh Hokie can and probably will comment on this in his game analysis, but as long as this tendency exists, the Hokies will struggle to put games out of reach. This game should have been out of reach, but it wasn't.

VT's cornerbacks continue to be solid (Stephan Virgil is starting to look like a future professional, and Macho Harris's interception was a thing of beauty), and the defensive line is rapidly improving. Jason Worilds, who entered the season with a nagging leg injury and then separated a shoulder against Furman, has defied my expectations for him and is becoming a force on the outside. Orion Martin is bringing consistent play-making ability as well, and John Graves has started to assert himself in the middle in the last couple of games.

Beyond those three guys, Nekos Brown and Cordarrow Thompson are steady, but the Hokies are really leaning on those five linemen that I just listed. DE Steven Friday continues to get playing time, but has just one tackle in the last four games, reducing the Hokies to three effective defensive ends; DT Demetrius Taylor has three tackles in the last four games; and DT Justin Young hasn't played the last two games and hasn't recorded a tackle since the opener against ECU.

That's a thin defensive line, in terms of production, so the health of the starting DL is critical. So far, so good. And the good news is that the Hokies are getting good production from their best players.

This defense isn't up to snuff with Bud Foster's most recent units, of course. This is no surprise. They're currently ranked 46th in the nation in total defense at 328.6 yards per game, but what really stands out (in a bad way) is their per-play average: VT gives up 5.65 yards per play, 84th in the nation.

With the exception of some improved play from John Graves and Jason Worilds, the Hokie defense appears to have hit a bit of a plateau, in my opinion, though I'll admit I'm not the savviest observer of these things.

This leaves me wondering what the loss of Davon Morgan to a knee injury means for the defense. Morgan was starting to play better, but he blew out his ACL in a non-contact injury and is lost for the season.

Morgan's replacement is Dorian Porch, a 5-11, 210-pound redshirt junior who sat atop the rover depth chart at the end of spring practice, but was beaten out by Davon Morgan in fall practice. Porch is a Super Iron Hokie with a 41-inch vertical leap, so he's a good, strong athlete. Chris Coleman, a much better observer of these things than I, says that Porch is one of the better tacklers on the team, but he doesn't have optimal sideline-to-sideline range.

Nonetheless, Porch is a solid replacement for Morgan at rover, so the dropoff shouldn't be too much, if any. Watch for Porch's pursuit speed to the perimeter to see if it's a liability or not.

Porch is backed up by walk-on Matt Reidy (6-1, 213), a fearsome hitter with a good nose for the football.

The Hokie defense should improve statistically as the season goes on, because they have yet to face Western Kentucky, plus some of the ACC's worst offenses, like Boston College (330 yards per game, 89th in the nation), Miami (316 ypg, #99), and Virginia (251 ypg, #118). VT has just finished a stretch of competition against good QBs (ECU's Pinkney, UNC's Yates, and Nebraska's Ganz), and one hopes the big plays will be less common as the season goes on.

This thing is starting to go a little long, so let's put those HTML