As we've blogged before, hands down our favorite non-Virginia Tech related college football fan site is collegefootballnews.com. If you are a college football fan, this site is loaded with great content from some excellent writers which is critical especially during this 'dead' part of the year. I read the columns by their lead writers religiously but what is great about the site is that it feeds us CFB fans what we want: conversation and debate fodder.
A quick surf through CFN.com and you'll see what I mean. They focus on rankings, and all kinds of rankings, teams, players, conferences, positional units, bowls, stadiums, etc. They feed their writers thought provoking questions to write about like "who is the pain in butt team in each conference". They also aren't afraid to push the envelop as they'll freely disagree with polls or the rest of the media on a given team or player if they think something is over hyped or out of whack.
So in a similar vain I'm going to do some posts related to Virginia Tech Football that will allow you readers to ponder and debate. This post will be ranking the Hokie Defensive Players.
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Let me be clear on how players are ranked below. This is based on who I feel is most valuable to the unit as a whole, or would be the most difficult to do without. Go ahead and disagree with me in the comments.
- John Graves (DT). Folks, it all starts up front and in the middle. Good DTs mean your DEs, your LBs, and your DBs will all be better. Bad DTs, mean they'll all be worse.
- Jason Worilds (DE). Hokie defense means speed and getting to the quarterback. We are counting on Worilds more than anyone to do this.
- Kam Chancellor (FS). The DBs are young and Kam not only needs to lead but as FS he makes the defensive calls. Might be the most talented guy.
- Cam Martin (Whip). May surprise - and I'm worried because I don't see him in BeamerBall.com depth chart - but the LBs also need some experienced stability. Cam's had injuries but his contributions have been undervalued.
- Stephan Virgil (CB). Another key success factor in Hokie defense is lock down corners. It falls on Virgil's shoulders this year.
- Nekos Brown (DE). Nekos could really step it up this year.
- Codarrow Thompson (DT). "Taco" made a big jump last year. His goal should be an all-conference team this year.
- Dorian Porch (Rover). The position will likely be a toss up between he and Davon Morgan but Porch has proven his worth.
- Cody Grimm (Whip). Grimm is simply a good football player.
- Eddie Whitley (CB). May not begin the year as a starter, but will become one.
- Demetrius Taylor (DT). Will be counted on for depth at DT, likely play starters minutes.
- Barquell Rivers (LB). The Mike and Backer position will be very interesting to watch this year. I personally don't think we know how good our depth is, and I would be surprise to see it change radically.
- Rashad Charmichael (CB). Likely a starter at a critical position.
- Jake Johnson (LB). Jake gets great reviews from practice and scrimages but has a lot on his shoulders.
- Davon Morgan (Rover). Davon without his knee injury last year would likely be several slots up on this list. Lets hope he gets back to form.
- Bruce Taylor (LB). My guess is Taylor will be a surprise.
- Kwamaine Battle (DT). Undersized but a handful.
- Cris Hill (CB). In this mix with several other young CBs. No reason he can't emerge.
- Lorenzo Williams (FS). Showed a lot of promize last year especially on special teams, but struggled in spring at a tough position.
- Antoine Hopkins (DT). Another young stud at DT.
Next post: Rank the Offense.
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