Sorry I missed most of the gamethread and a recap, guys, I was out and about. But after watching the entire replay on ESPN360 (I'm not kidding, either), I came to several conclusions about this team.
First off, as bad as the defense is, it's better than the offense, by a pretty decent amount. That's pretty telling for how god-awful this offense is. I can't stand giving them credit for a TD, but the fact of the matter is that they got it and the offense didn't. Both sides were awful today, and neither were where they need to be, but the defense was just a bit better, for what's that worth.
Even though the D was slightly better, they're still terrible. VT had their way with Maryland for everything that mattered. Much like the Wake Forest game, the second half was a little better, but the game was so far out of hand at that point that it didn't matter. I'm just glad Ralph didn't insist that "we won the second half"...because we didn't.
On Jamarr Robinson: I might go into his performance later and what I think about it, but my first impressions were pretty neutral. On the good side, he's clearly has an arm, and seemed to do a decent job with a terrible offensive line. How good he is at scrambling is amazing - he was quite literally the only player Maryland had on offense today, and he did most of that with his feet. He seemed to have trouble getting the designed runs down, but when he's purely scrambling, he's untouchable. He does need to have better pocket awareness, but that comes with the territory.
As for the bad, well, even if he has an arm, he doesn't particularly use it well. He tends to over or underthrow guys, which is a repetition issue right now. He always locks in on his primary receiver, which very nearly caused two pick 6s and another interception. He also seemed a bit indecisive at times when he was forced to make reads. He has the confidence, but he doesn't have the development yet.
There's not much to say about the rest of the team except that they need to get better. I can't think of one guy that adequately did their job today. Maybe that's just me and the fact that I saw it after the fact, but I can't remember anyone that seemed to do well. The stats confirmed. Just a sad performance all around, including from the fans. It was at least 50% Tech fans, and I think that's pretty conservative. In the shots of the student section, a good half the people there were wearing maroon. I'm disappointed there were no fights.
I think everyone kind of expected this, but it still hurts. At least it's basketball season.