Bowl Projections For Virginia Tech Football After Week 5 Loss to Pitt

Pitt has the head-to-head but lost Mason Heintschel. Here’s what that does to Virginia Tech’s bowl path.

Oct 2, 2026; Blacksburg, Virginia, USA; Virginia Tech Hokies wide receiver Que'sean Brown (3) celebrates a touchdown during the first quarter against the Pittsburgh Panthers at Lane Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Brian Bishop-Imagn Images | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

AP voters gave Virginia Tech 86 points a week ago. On Sunday, they gave it none. 

The people who project bowl games watched the same 35–33 loss to Pitt and mostly shrugged. Two of the five national projections I track still have the Hokies in Orlando. One moved them up.

The other two slid them to the spot where the third landed: the Sun Bowl in El Paso on Dec. 31, against Arizona. After Week 1, four projections had Virginia Tech in four different bowls. Now five have it in two.

Where the board sits

Sports Illustrated's Bryan Fischer kept Virginia Tech in the Pop-Tarts Bowl in Orlando on Dec. 29 and swapped the opponent from Oklahoma State to Houston. ESPN’s Mark Schlabach didn’t touch his: Pop-Tarts Bowl against Houston.

His colleague Kyle Bonagura moved the Hokies from the Holiday Bowl to the Sun Bowl. Athlon Sports’ Steven Lassan pulled them out of the Duke’s Mayo Bowl in Charlotte and sent them to El Paso, too.

Then there’s Brad Crawford of CBS Sports. He dropped Virginia Tech from the Gator Bowl to the Fenway Bowl after it beat Boston College. After it lost to Pitt, he moved it up to the Sun Bowl.

Two steady, two down, one up. After a loss.

My pick a week ago was the Gator Bowl. Nobody on the board has Virginia Tech there. The five projections put five different ACC teams in Jacksonville: Duke, SMU, Wake Forest, Clemson and Pitt.

What Friday actually told us

Virginia Tech outgained an unbeaten team 499–295 and lost.

Quarterback Ethan Grunkemeyer went 30-of-41 for 434 yards and three touchdowns. That is the third-most passing yards in school history. The Hokies led 14–0 five minutes in and 24–14 in the second quarter.

Then came a six-drive stretch that produced seven yards, two fumbles and Grunkemeyer’s first two interceptions of the season. Pitt scored 21 straight. Virginia Tech still reached the Pitt 18 with a chance to win, and John Love, 7-for-7 on field goals to that point, had a 36-yard try ruled no good as time expired.

Coach James Franklin said afterward that the tape would show 20 plays that could’ve kept it from coming down to a kick.

That’s a game you can read two ways, and the board did.

Saturday did the rest. Four of the seven teams left on Virginia Tech’s schedule lost, by a combined 121 points. Cal lost at UNLV 39–31. Stanford lost at Wake Forest 57–3. Virginia lost at Florida State 38–7. Clemson lost at home to No. 4 Miami 41–13. Georgia Tech was off. SMU beat Boston College 25–16 and still slipped three spots to No. 24.

Pitt entered the AP poll at No. 25 and lost its quarterback. Sophomore Mason Heintschel tore the ACL in his right knee Friday and is out for the season.

Record prediction: 9-3

The count holds. The cushion doesn’t.

The four games I’ve been counting as wins are still Cal on Saturday, Georgia Tech on Oct. 17, Stanford on Nov. 14, and Virginia on Nov. 28. Three of the four have losing records, and the three that played Saturday lost by a combined 93. Virginia Tech opened as a 10.5-point favorite at Cal.

That’s eight wins. A week ago, the ninth could come from Pitt, Clemson, or SMU. Pitt is gone, and the other two are on the road: Clemson on Oct. 24, SMU on Friday, Nov. 6.

I still think Tech can beat Clemson. The Tigers are 3–2 and have been outscored 92–23 in their two losses. They haven’t scored more than 28 in a game. It took a nor’easter for Virginia Tech to score fewer than 33 points this season.

It’s not a comfortable call. The Hokies haven’t won at Clemson since 2007, and the Tigers get an open date and Charleston Southern before Virginia Tech shows up.

SMU, the other shot at a ninth win, has looked shaky, too. The Mustangs trailed Missouri State 10–0 before winning 34–24, then beat a 2–3 Boston College team by nine.

Lose both and it’s 8–4. A loss at Miami on Nov. 21 is already in the math.

My bowl projection: Gator Bowl

Holding, and the board around it has the same shape it had a week ago. Two projections have the Hokies ahead of it in Orlando. Three have them behind it, now all in El Paso.

It’s a thinner pick than it was. I wrote last week that a win Friday would give the Hokies the head-to-head with the team Crawford had in Jacksonville. Pitt has it instead, and Crawford still has Pitt there. For Virginia Tech to pass the Panthers on record, Pitt has to lose two more games than the Hokies do the rest of the way.

That’s where Heintschel matters. Pitt has seven games left, starting Saturday against North Carolina, and it’ll play them without him. Fischer’s update has the Panthers in the Gasparilla Bowl on Dec. 18. A week ago he had them in the Holiday Bowl.

The other part is in Virginia Tech’s hands. Of the five teams the projections have in the Gator Bowl, the Hokies have lost to one and still play two. Clemson and SMU aren’t only the ninth win.

So don’t take Sunday’s poll as the verdict on Friday. The projections didn’t, and the schedule got softer a day later. What the loss cost is margin.

The pick: Gator Bowl, Dec. 30. Ceiling at 10–2 is the Pop-Tarts Bowl, where two boards still have them. Lose at Clemson and at SMU, and it’s 8–4 and the Sun Bowl, where the other three already do.