How Virginia Tech's Offense Can Start the Season With Momentum in Week One

The number that should stick with Virginia Tech from last season is 125. That's where the Hokies ranked nationally in passing offense in 2025, a little over 153 yards a game, and it's the statistical bottom of a 3-9 year. When Virginia Tech opens against VMI on Sept. 5, erasing that number is the entire assignment head coach James Franklin handed his new staff.

An FCS opponent won't tell you whether the fix took. What it will do is give you the first live look at a system nobody in Blacksburg has seen in a real game. This is the opening night of the James Franklin era, the one a fan base has been waiting for since November.

Offensive coordinator Ty Howle followed Franklin from Penn State and brought the scheme with him. So did Ethan Grunkemeyer, the transfer quarterback who has been the presumed starter for months, even though Franklin hasn't made it official.

Start with Grunkemeyer, because the passing game is what broke. He isn't a runner and he doesn't have a thick file of starts, but none of that is the point against VMI. Rhythm is. A group whose leading receiver, Ayden Greene, managed just 516 yards all of last season doesn't need 400 in one night to look reborn.

It needs completions on time, a quarterback working through his progressions instead of bailing to the checkdown, and an offense that moves with a pulse. Watch the first two drives. If they're crisp and scripted, that's the sign that Howle's install is ahead of schedule.

The other tell is positional. Howle is both the coordinator and the tight ends coach, and Penn State transfer Luke Reynolds was brought in to make that pairing count. In this scheme, the tight end is a featured target, not a sixth lineman. If Reynolds is running seams and drawing red-zone looks, this is a different attack. If he's stuck in-line blocking all night, it's last year with fresh paint.

The run game is the one thing that already worked, and Marcellous Hawkins is why. He ran for a team-high 749 yards at 6.3 per carry last season and came back for more; and he did it behind a passing game defenses could load up against.

That's what makes him dangerous inside a working offense. A 30-carry afternoon against an FCS front, though, would be the wrong kind of good. Let Hawkins set the tone, then empty the bench, from backup quarterback Bryce Baker to the true freshmen who need reps banked for November. Behind Hawkins, Jeffrey Overton Jr. gives the room a second back who flashed as a freshman.

Virginia Tech has spent a decade cycling through coordinators and quarterbacks without landing on an identity. Franklin and Howle were hired to end that. One game against VMI won't settle it, but it's the first real evidence of what they're building, the first snapshot of an offense with a plan again. That snapshot is worth the price of a September ticket.

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