Everything Virginia Tech Offensive Coordinator Phillip Montgomery Said Before Hokies First Spring Practice

It is finally time for Virginia Tech Football to begin spring practice. The Hokies are hitting the field this week and this is going to be a big spring for head coach Brent Pry and his program. Ahead of the Hokies first practice, newly hired offensive coordinator Phillip Montgomery spoke with the media and here is everything that he had to say:

1. On what a successful spring would look like to him...

"You know, I think for us, I want to see great effort. I want to see attention to detail. I want to see guys get a full grasp and understanding of what we're trying to accomplish. By the end of spring, are we going to be 100 % polished in there? No, I'm not expecting that. I want us to be able to touch and feel a lot of different aspects of the offense so that we have it on tape. We can coach off of that because of the rule changes that we have now in college football. We get a little bit more time with them in the summer and leading up the fall camp. So being able to kind of get through a lot of aspects of it, throw a lot at them, we'll see how they handle it, and then see how fast we can kind of progress through it."

2. On his expectations after seeing them in the winter...

"Yeah, I'm excited about the guys that we have on our roster. Love the way they're working right now. I think they're very much excited about what's going on. I think all of us are ready to get on the field and actually do some true football things and get a chance to start growing as a unit, as an offense, and as personnel. So I've been very, very pleased with their competitiveness as we've gone through our drills in the summer or in the winter, and now I'm excited to step on the grass with them."

3. On if Kyron Drones is a good building block for the offense...

"Yeah, I think he's done an outstanding job. As we've sat through meetings and been able to start talking ball and installing, I think he's picking it up well as long as well as you know a lot of the other guys offensively you know this thing won't be all about about him you know it's about us as a unit and what we can accomplish as a unit and it's 11 guys paying attention to details and executing on the field so obviously a lot of it starts and stops with him but I could say the same thing about the offensive line it all starts and stops with them as well."

4. On the running back position...

"Yeah, I think we've got some new faces in that room. I think we got some guys that are hungry to kind of prove who they are and what they can do. You know, from that standpoint, I think it's kind of the next man up mentality. Obviously, guys getting reps in the spring is going to be beneficial for them. And their understanding of the offense and how we can use them and put them in different situations. And so all of those guys have picked up things extremely well. So I'm excited to see what they do as we step on the field tomorrow we need to stay healthy throughout spring in that room because again we are short-handed a little bit there but that being said I think some guys will start trying to work their way back and we'll see if we can get anything out of them before spring's over."

5. On installing the offense and establishing an identity...

"Well, you know, I think as you start trying to describe us offensively, we'll pull from a lot of different experiences of mind, places that I've been all the way from my high school days to where I am now and so I think it's always a learning process I'm trying to learn every day and so when you get an opportunity to come in and install something new you get an opportunity to kind of work some of the kinks out that you had in some of your old stuff you get ideas from new people in the room we've got a bunch of really talented coaches in the offensive room and so being able to take some of the things from that and being able to okay how do we apply it to what we do now? How does it fit? How does it gel? And so I think there's a lot of different influences to what we're going to be able to do. Most of it's going to be built around what our personnel is able to do and so I think the most successful offenses are built that way. You know you look at our quarterback and what he has in his tool well to bring to the table and then you look okay we've got this guy on the outside we got this guy inside our offensive line this is what they're really good at and so I think as we combine all of those by the end of spring we'll have a really good feel of as we combine all of those by the end of spring we'll have a really good feel of who we want to be the direction we need to head and then we start adding and building according to that."

6. On his view of spring practice as a former head coach...

"You know, I think it's great from the excitement standpoint, especially for maybe a few of the recruits and the families and for the fans Um, if I'm completely honest as the head coach, by the time we got to the spring game, I just wanted to get through the spring game healthy. I felt like I had a good idea of where we were as a team, our strengths and our weaknesses, things that we knew we needed to work on in the summer and fall camp leading up to it. You know, with the college football landscape, it might be, hey, might need to be searching in the portal for something here or there that might be a deficiency that we found that we weren't able to address. And so spring games are great for the fans. I think the guys enjoy it from the standpoint they get to really get juiced up for that part of it and get a little bit of fan experience with it. I think it is great for the younger players. Guys that haven't been on the field and been in that environment. I think it helps them kind of start taking the steps and understanding what that's gonna feel like when you get there on a Saturday. For your older guys, I think more times than not, you're just trying to make sure they stay healthy and get 'em in, get 'em out. "

7. On some of the team bonding activities and building relationships...

"You know, its been great. Coach Pry has done a great job of building a great foundation, establishing a culture and this accountability piece that we've really worked hard on, especially since I've been here and got to be a part of it. You know, it's really, there's so many facets and things changing today in college football again you got a lot of new faces in the room and so it's hard to care about a guy and understand who he is and where he comes from if you don't know him. And so really it's about getting to know your teammates, getting to know the coaches on a much more personal level than hey this guy plays receiver and he's from this town and this is the things you can look up on the internet. I mean, it's really getting to the heart of who he is, his why, his family, all the things that kind of make him click."

8. On communicating different ideas, schemes, and ideas...

"You know, I think for him, he's been very open about, you know, what we're going to do offensively, how he's going to fit within the offense. I think that goes for everybody that's been in the room. I think he has an excitement level about it and we're going to continue to keep working and forming and gelling that thing together but I think there's a lot of different tools and a lot of different avenues that we can help him continue to improve and help us improve offensively and so he and I have had great meetings and great conversations and we're continuing to grow together."

9. On what it is like coaching with his son on the staff...

"Yeah, its been good. You know, he played for me at Tulsa. More importantly, he's an outstanding young coach. He understands what we're doing offensively. He's played in it, been in it. He's got his own experiences away from me, and so for him to be able to be here and join this staff with us I think it's a great opportunity for him to grow but he's a great asset for the room and so young guy that's growing and learning every day but he's hungry and he knows how to grind and when we're in the room he's not my son he's just one of the other coaches and then when we go home just like he was at a player then then we can have that different relationship but when we're at work it's work. He's used to that."