Rothe from the Top Rope: NC State - 1 Quarter Forward, 3 Quarters Back

If you thought "the Hokies are going to win this" after they went up 21-3 late in the 3rd quarter then all I have to say is bless your heart. That simply has not been the case over the last decade of Virginia Tech football. No Hokie lead is safe until the clock hits 0:00 at the end of the game.

The losing streak continues and last week's implosion came at the hands of... *checks notes*... 10 (bleeping!) false start calls!

Now I will say, that is actually impressive. Doing anything 10 times in a game is a feat that should be looked at with awe and bewilderment. 10 touchdowns? 10 field goals? All highly unlikely, but 10 false starts? Now we're cooking with gasoline baby!

The game started like seemingly all Hokie games have this year with an electric 0-0 score for nearly the entire half until NC State's all-world kicker, Christopher Dunn, nailed a 35 yard field goal with five seconds left in the half to add points to the board. If the half ended 0-0, that would've been the first scoreless half of college football the entire year in FBS (cue the Frank Beamer Wake Forest meme).

After another snoozefest of a first half, naturally and just as everyone expected, the Hokies came out on fire in the 3rd. They scored three touchdowns in about nine minutes, which included an 80-yard Grant Wells pass to Kaleb Smith for a TD on their first play of that series.

Roughly all of Well's 243 yards passing came in the 3rd quarter as the Hokies took a, what seemed like, commanding 21-3 lead over the Wolfpack nearing the end of the 3rd quarter. But, as we all saw, it didn't come to fruition. We need not delve into detail, but let's just say Tech turned back into their first half selves where they couldn't do anything on offense and their defense let NC State go straight down the field on 3 straight drives to end the game.

Want to read something ridiculous? On State's three TD scoring drives they lasted 2:20, 1:12, and 3:01. That's less than seven full minutes. The back-up freshman QB MJ Morris absolutely carved up Virginia Tech's defense in the fourth quarter. But hey, if there's one thing all Tech fans know to be true it's that a back-up QB is the most dangerous.

On long losing streaks like this it's a challenge to keep talking about what to do differently because it's usually the same thing each week. And that is true with the Hokies. Penalties, coaching blunders, lethargic offense, overrated defense, and terrible offensive line play mixed with an extremely talentless roster isn't a recipe to win anything, even in the ACC Coastal which has a claim for worst conference in all of college football.

The remaining games for the Hokies include Georgia Tech, Duke, Liberty, and UVA. I'd say Tech's best shot to get wins would be Gah Tech and UVA. Duke is much better than everyone expected and Liberty is ranked in the top 25 currently. Although, based on the way Brent Pry's year 0 has gone I will not be predicting anything, we will just have to see what happens.

The full rebuild is rearing its ugly head and while most rational fans knew this team was going to struggle, it's just quite shocking the ways in which they have been struggling. And it hurts me to say this but the easiest things to correct, such as penalties, can't be attributed to the war crimes Justin Fuente committed during his tenure. Those are all on Pry and his staff, and he needs to fix the easy things going forward or else there won't be any shot even when he gets his players recruited into the system.