Brent Pry: Virginia Tech will be 'work in progress' entering season

There is plenty of optimism around the Virginia Tech program after the way the Hokies ended the 2023 season.

Virginia Tech went 5-2 the second half of the year, including a blowout win over rival Virginia to close out the regular season and a 21-point victory over Tulane in the Military Bowl.

Still, head coach Brent Pry warned that it will take some time for Virginia Tech to reach its potential this fall.

“We’re going to continue to be a work in progress,” Brent Pry said recently. “We’ve got too many young guys that, as much as I want them to be where they need to be by September, they won’t be.”

Pry is entering his third season as the head coach at Virginia Tech. After struggling to a 3-8 mark in Year 2, the Hokies went 7-6 (5-3) this past season.

There’s hope that VT will be even better in 2024, but again, it won’t be easy. Players will have to continue to improve throughout the season.

“There’s going to be guys that have to continue to develop. And maybe they’re not playing much early in the year, but all of a sudden in Week 6 or Week 7, we need 30 snaps from them,” Pry said. “If they keep getting better – the month of September and a couple of weeks in October – they’ll be that much more prepared to help us.”

Brent Pry on NIL: ‘We have to be good in that space’

Brent Pry is still working to get the Virginia Tech roster to where it needs to be. Improved NIL could certainly help with that.

Pry recently spoke about where his program is at the moment from an NIL standpoint.

“You don’t ever want to be too confident with it,” Pry said. “But we’ve had a lot of support … That group’s been very strong and competitive where we’ve needed to be. We don’t have the war chest that some other folks may have. But like I’ve said from the beginning, we don’t want anybody to stay at Virginia Tech because of that, and we don’t want anybody to come here because of that. We want to be competitive. 

“And I want these guys to do as well as they can do. That’s not the right reason to choose or stay. But we have to be good in that space. And we are, we have been to this point.”