Brent Pry on managing jersey numbers on punts: 'To be honest, it's a pain in the butt'

Virginia Tech Hokies head coach Brent Pry is looking to have a better plan on managing the numbers that his players wear moving forward, particularly on special teams.

This comes after Virginia Tech was penalized on a special teams play in the third quarter of their loss to Vanderbilt for having two players wearing the same number. That gave Vanderbilt another shot at a field goal, which the Commodores made and ended up being a massive deal in a game that went to overtime.

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“We spent a lot of time on it and we did in the preseason,” Brent Pry said. “To be honest, it’s a pain in the butt. There’s not enough numbers to go around.”

With rosters being the size that they are in college football, there’s plenty of times when multiple players wear the same number. That’s, typically, not an issue if one player is strictly on offense and the other is strictly on defense. However, things get complicated when players are on special teams. That’s why players are often seen in games putting a jersey on over their typical number to be on the field at the same time.

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The mistake was costly for Virginia Tech. Now, Brent Pry is looking for solutions to the problem moving forward as the team addresses these issues in practice this week.

“But we’ve got eyes in the sky on it now to see it sooner. That scenario hadn’t come up when you went from field goal to punt safe back to field goal. It hadn’t occurred, unfortunately, since we’ve been here, where we go, ‘Oh, man.’ And it wouldn’t have occurred the other day if [Jaylin Lane] was returning punts or Tucker [Holloway], it never would have come up,” Pry said.

“But it’s unfortunate that it did and it does say to us that we’ve got to be really diligent from the press box looking at that spreadsheet, here we go, making sure we catch it sooner so we can get it fixed.”

In the end, Virginia Tech lost the game 34-27 in overtime. Now, the Hokies need to find a way to bounce back with their Week 2 game against the Marshall Thundering Herd. That game will also serve as the home opener.