Three Rising Stars on Virginia Tech's Coaching Staff

These rising assistants are shaping Virginia Tech's offense and are already making an impact on the 2027 recruiting trail.

Virginia Tech Athletics | Virginia Tech Athletics

When James Franklin built his first staff at Virginia Tech, the splashiest move was bringing Brent Pry back as his defensive coordinator.

But buried underneath that are three hires who say just as much about where the Virginia Tech football program is headed — Ty Howle, Norval McKenzie and Danny O'Brien each arrive with momentum behind their names, and each will have outsized influence on how quickly Virginia Tech's offense finds its footing.

Howle is the riskiest hire of the group, if only because of what he hasn't done yet. At 34, he'll be one of the youngest offensive coordinators at the Power Four level, and he's never called plays as the lead voice on a staff before.

What he has done is build a reputation as one of the sport's premier developers of talent at tight end. Football Scoop named him its 2024 National Tight Ends Coach of the Year, and the resume behind that honor is hard to argue with — Theo Johnson went on to the NFL Draft where he was drafted in the fourth round by the New York Giants, Brenton Strange was a second-round pick, and Tyler Warren capped his run by winning the John Mackey Award and earning first-team All-American honors before becoming a first-round pick himself. Three different tight ends, three different trajectories, all under Howle's watch.

The questions about him aren't about football knowledge; they're about whether the version of him that quietly helped shape an elite tight end room translates into the version that has to live with every offensive play call on Saturdays.

McKenzie's path to Blacksburg looks almost like a tour of the sport's better-run backfields. He's coached running backs at the Division 1 level for 15 seassons, and nearly everywhere he's landed, the production followed him. At Louisville, Javian Hawkins ran for a school-record 1,525 yards in 2019. At Vanderbilt, Ray Davis turned in one of only ten 1,000-yard rushing seasons in program history before being drafted by the Bills. And most recently at Georgia Tech, he helped Malachi Hosley average 7.1 yards per carry in 2025, good for second in the ACC and sixth nationally among Power Four backs.

What stands out beyond the numbers is his ability to find production in players who weren't neccessarily backs to begin with — Jamal Haynes moved over from wide receiver under McKenzie and still put together back-to-back 900-yard rushing seasons at Georgia Tech, the first Yellow Jacket to do so in 16 years. McKenzie has shown time and time again, he can find the right shape for a running back room with talent worth shaping.

O'Biren is the name with the clearest assignment. At 35, he's one of the youngest coaches on Virginia Tech's on-field staff, but his speciality is one the Hokies have needed for years: keeping quarterbacks from beating themselves. Drew Allar opened his career with an FBS-record 311 pass attempts without an interception under O'Brien's tutelage, and went on to finish his Penn State career with the best single-season interception rate in program history. That kind of ball security isn't an accident, and it's the exact deficiency that's haunted Virginia Tech's recent seasons. O'Brien's recruiting trail also runs through name-brand talent — he played a role in Penn State landing Ethan Grunkemeyer, the same quarterback now learning his system at Virginia Tech.

That recruiting touch has already shown up in the 2027 class. O'Brien's biggest win came with four-star quarterback Peter Bourque, the No. 6 quarterback and a top 75 overall prospect in the 2027 class according to 247Sports.

Howle's group has turned into of the class's deeper position rooms. Virginia Tech has three tight end commitments so far — four-star Jordan Karhoff, three-star Sam Faniel and three-star Braxton Salster. Karhoff has been the headliner of the group, climbing to the No. 4 tight end nationally and becoming Virginia Tech's second top-100 prospect in the class, according to 247Sports.

McKenzie's backfield work is still taking shape, but the early names give a sense of his range. Three-star running back Javian Jones-Priest and three-star Stanley Smart are the only ball carriers committed as of June 21 and each provide depth to the future of the running back room.

None of the three arrives with a finished product to point to. Howle has never called a game on his own, McKenzie has bounced through five programs in 15 years without ever staying long enough to build something lasting and O'Brien is still building a body of work outside one program. But all three have already shown the part of coaching that's hardest to fake — getting players better than they were before they arrived, and getting new ones to believe they can be next. Whether that holds up in the ACC is the question Blacksburg will spend all fall answering.