Spring review: Will a young Hokies linebacking crew be ready for primetime?

Today: Linebackers

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Burning question

Will a young Hokies linebacking crew be ready for primetime?

Depth chart best guess

Mike

1. Rayshard Ashby, So.

2. Dax Hollifield, Fr.

3. Rico Kearney, r-Fr.

Backer

1. Dylan Rivers, So.

2. Jaylen Griffin, r-Fr.

3. Alan Tisdale, Fr.

Whip/nickel

1. Mook Reynolds, Sr.

2. Devon Hunter, So.

3. D.J. Crossen, Fr.

What we learned

That there's young, there's inexperienced and then there's this year's Hokies linebacking corps, at least at the inside positions. It's as young as young gets for Tech in the middle, not only without a senior scholarship player on the roster but also without a junior scholarship player. The presumed starters -- Ashby and Rivers -- are sophomores who largely only got on the field in a special teams capacity last year. The guys pushing them will freshmen, some who redshirted and some who just arrived on campus this winter or will arrive this summer. There's at least experience on the edge, with Reynolds back for his senior season after a strong junior year. But the inside linebackers are as green as they come. That doesn't mean there's not potential. Both Ashby and Rivers sound like they had good springs, but they have a long ways to go.

Biggest surprise

That there wasn't really much shuffling on the depth chart. With so little experience, one might have expected defensive coordinator and linebackers coach Bud Foster to mix things up every once in a while to get a look at everybody he has at his disposal. And this might have happened outside of the prying eyes of the media in our rare glimpses of the team practicing. But it appears as though it was Ashby and Rivers on the first team at the start of spring, throughout the practices and at the spring game, with little variance. Foster is big on experience, something this group doesn't have, so perhaps putting guys in place and letting them work together was the goal. Either way, the first-team linebackers exiting the spring seem pretty clear.

Wild card

Hollifield won't arrive until the summer, but he'll do so with a tremendous amount of hype. Virginia Tech beat out some pretty good schools to secure the four-star prospect's services out of Shelby, North Carolina. As the No. 151-ranked prospect in the country last year, with pretty good size (6-2, 240) and some experience playing in a defense like Foster's (his high school supposedly ran a similar scheme), you'd think he'd be a prime candidate to compete for playing time at some point this season. Is it too much to ask for a true freshman to win a starting job after a month's worth of August practice? When you've got Florida State as an opener, I'd say yes. That's a tall order. But it's certainly not out of the question that Hollifield could challenge for playing time over the course of the season. It's not a though his competition is a bunch of entrenched contributors.

Arriving soon

Keshon Artis wasn't on the best guess of a depth chart above because I wasn't certain exactly where or how he'd fit in once he arrives in Blacksburg, but he seems to be in phenomenal shape and was a decently regarded high school prospect out of Oscar Smith High. Given Tech's experience level at the linebacker positions, anyone who shows promise can certainly enter the picture.

Odds and ends

Hunter could have just as easily been the wild card entry on this post, considering he moved from the rover spot he played last year to whip linebacker/nickel this spring and got the lion's share of reps with Reynolds still on the mend. He was as hyped of a recruit as the Hokies have had in years, even if he had a quiet freshman season, one set back by some early bumps and bruises. He may not have a starting role at this point, but given his upside, Tech will probably find a way to get his talent on the field in some capacity. ... Crossen was an early enrollee who worked along with Hutner at the whip/nickel spot. The fact that that spot on the depth chart is currently filled by three guys who most would consider defensive backs tells you just how far in the 4-2-5 direction Foster's defense really has gone lately. ... It was a fairly quiet spring for guys not named Ashby and Rivers, at least in terms of what the coaches had to say about the linebackers. Redshirts like Griffin and Kearney didn't make a whole lot of noise, though Foster liked how they went about their business.

They said it

"They’re eager to learn, they’re eager to please. They’re eager to go out and compete. So that’s half the battle. Like I said, we’ve thrown a lot at them. But what we’ve got to do is we’ve got to have a big-time summer from now until we open up camp. And that’s where those guys will make their biggest adjustment."

-- Foster, after the spring game, on the linebackers

Just the facts

Of all the inside linebackers on the roster, Rivers has the most career production of any of them ... with three tackles.

Last word

Not to belabor the point, but this group is young. Like, young. In fact, you probably have to go back to when Vince Hall and Xavier Adibi first starting playing in college to find a Tech linebacker crew this green. (And even then, Adibi didn't start until he was a sophomore, with Hall playing alongside veteran starter Mikal Baaqee as a true freshman in 2004.) Readers will note that things turned out pretty good for Hall and Adibi in their careers. Talent, even if it's young, can win out and produce at an unexpected level sometimes.

But you're often going to get some growing pains with that too. And it wouldn't be surprising if that's the case this year for the Hokies' inside linebackers. There were things that Andrew Motuapuaka and Tremaine Edmunds had seen dozens of times in their careers that Ashby, Rivers and whoever else out there will be seeing for the first time. Practice only takes you so far. Game situations pop up that are unfamiliar, and you can't expect newcomers to react in the right way every time. That's football though, the college variety, at least. There's no free agency to bring in a veteran, other than the junior college ranks or grad transfers, which sometimes present their own issues.

For better or worse, the Hokies are just going to have to throw this group into the fire and let them develop. Miami did it with a talented trio of freshmen linebackers in 2016, the first time that had happened in the program's 90-year history. That group was and is pretty good, though it had its rough moments that first year (particularly in a 37-16 beatdown in Blacksburg, when the Hokies ran for 251 yards). In time, Tech's linebackers should be good. The Hokies have recruited the position better than they have since they landed Hall and Adibi. It's just a matter of how long the maturation process takes.