Six Virginia Tech Players You Don't Know Yet, But Will This Season

New Virginia Tech coach James Franklin tore this roster down to the studs, bringing in 27 transfers and pulling the recruiting class into the top 25 after the Hokies sat outside the top 100 when he arrived. The strangest part of the rebuild: Brent Pry, fired as head coach on Sept. 14, 2025, following a 0-3 start, is back as Franklin's defensive coordinator, running the side of the ball that made his name on the same team that went 3-9 and cost him the job.

The headliners are easy to spot. Quarterback Ethan Grunkemeyer followed Franklin from Penn State; Duke transfer Que'Sean Brown caught 64 passes for 846 yards last fall, and former five-star tight end Luke Reynolds gives the offense a name-brand target. But 3-9 teams don't climb on the strength of their billboard guys. They climb because someone you couldn't pick out of a lineup in August is making plays by October. Here are six of them.

Noah Chambers, LB

Start with the one who's already on tape. Chambers made his college debut at NC State on Sept. 27 and put a tackle on each of his first three college plays, which is the kind of thing coaches remember. He finished his true freshman year with 44 tackles, two tackles for loss, and a sack across eight games and six starts, pressed into the lineup earlier than planned because of injuries around him.

Now the DeMatha Catholic product is a sophomore, and fall camp reporting has him starting in the middle of Pry's defense. He's surrounded by veterans like Kaleb Spencer, Keon Wylie, and Curtis Jones Jr., which is usually how young linebackers take the leap.

Jaquez White, CB

Two years ago, White started at Division II Washburn. This fall, he projects as a starting cornerback in the ACC. At Troy in 2025, he earned second-team All-Sun Belt honors with 67 tackles, 3.5 tackles for loss, a sack, three interceptions, and 11 pass breakups, and Pro Football Focus graded him among the top corners in the country.

He can play. One of those picks went back 30 yards for a touchdown against Louisiana, and another came against James Madison in the Sun Belt title game.

Marlion Jackson, WR

Everybody wants to know who stretches the field for Grunkemeyer. Ayden Greene is back, Brown is the prize, and then there's the transfer nobody's talking about, the one who quietly averaged 18.5 yards per catch last season. Jackson spent three years at Louisiana Tech and put up 20 catches for 370 yards and two scores in 2025, good for a share of the team lead in touchdowns.

The asterisk is the quarterback play he worked with, a revolving door under center that makes you wonder how much of his ceiling got capped by who was throwing him the ball. At 6-foot-2, 207 pounds with real vertical juice, he's a bet on the flashes being the floor rather than the highlight reel.

Samuel Okunlola, Edge

The pass rush is one of the biggest questions on the roster, and Okunlola is the most experienced answer the Hokies have. He's the rare edge rusher in this group who has done it at the Power Four level, with eight career sacks and 13 tackles for loss at Pittsburgh and Colorado. The catch is 2025: he managed a single tackle before a shoulder injury in the opener ended his season.

Healthy, he could be in the starting lineup for the opener against VMI on Sept. 5. The résumé is there. The question is whether the body cooperates. On a defense this thin off the edge, a clean bill of health makes him a difference-maker from the jump, and there aren't many of those on the depth chart behind him.

Bill Davis, RB

Marcellous Hawkins and Jeff Overton Jr. are the names to know in the backfield. Davis is the one who makes the fourth quarter miserable for the other team. The 5-foot-9 transfer from Louisiana is a bowling ball, listed at 230 pounds, and he ran for roughly 1,750 yards and 18 touchdowns over three years with the Ragin' Cajuns. He earned third-team All-Sun Belt in 2025.

He's projected as short-yardage and depth behind the top two, not a bell cow. Come the goal line in November, that's the number that gets called.

Matt Henderson, TE

This one's a scheme play. Franklin and offensive coordinator Ty Howle are going to live in two- and three-tight-end sets, rotating bodies on and off the field and daring defenses to match. That system turns depth-chart tight ends into contributors, and Henderson is the young one worth filing away. The Penn State transfer played just two games as a freshman in 2025, so there's almost no film to go on.

At 6-foot-5 and 252 pounds, he followed Franklin and Howle from State College to an offense designed to feature tight ends. He could open September as low as fourth on the depth chart, but in an offense that regularly puts three tight ends on the field at once, fourth on the depth chart does not mean fourth in opportunity. When he gets his chances, he has the ability to do real damage.

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