Learning Curve
Holmes’ Bumpy Debut
Posted: December 13, 2012
HARRISONBURG – A few months ago, Michael Holmes was a hero in Blacksburg. He shot through a hole in his offensive line, bounced off tackles and carried defenders for 18 yards to just shy of the goal line, setting up Virginia Tech’s game-winning field goal in overtime in the season-opener.
As the fall wore on, those moments became less frequent … and lately, he’s had none of them at all.
Holmes, a former Harrisonburg High School great, began the 2012 season as Tech’s starting tailback, a position as prestigious as any in the Atlantic Coast Conference. He ended the regular season with three straight games of never touching the football.
That doesn’t mean Holmes has been a disappointment. It’s just a testament to the vagaries of college football, where luck – be it injuries, the strength of your offensive line or competition from other talented athletes – can quickly dash expectations.
Michael Holmes isn’t a complainer. But when the shy Harrisonburg native was pressed in a recent interview, he acknowledged that his redshirt freshman season at Tech was a bumpy one – especially dealing with a deep thigh bruise late in the season that all but sealed his descent down the depth chart.
“I think I’ve been doing pretty good,” Holmes said by phone from Blacksburg, when asked how he would evaluate his play this season. “I’m just trying to work hard, you know what I’m saying? But an injury cost me a couple games.”
The 6-foot, 207-pound Holmes started the season at a position once manned at Tech by the likes of David Wilson, Ryan Williams and Branden Ore, players whose names are synonymous with 1,000-yard rushers and who arouse memories of stirring seasons. He ended the year on the bench for a mediocre, 6-6 team that barely qualified for a bowl.
But his fall wasn’t exactly that drastic – or, really, all that surprising.
A SLIGHT EDGE
From all accounts, Holmes had earned the starting tailback job by impressing his coaches – Frank Beamer among them – in practice. But it also had something to do with his competition. Although Holmes had yet to appear in a college game, Tech’s other tailback options were nearly as unproven – or, in at least one case, even less experienced.
Tech’s other choices included J.C. Coleman, a true freshman; senior Martin Scales, who had played only fullback in his career; and junior Tony Gregory, who had game experience but was also coming off a season-ending knee ligament injury (an ACL tear).
“At the beginning of the season, we really weren’t quite sure what we had,” Tech running backs coach Shane Beamer said. “All we were going off of was J.C. Coleman’s high-school video, Martin Scales’ fullback reps last year in practice and in games, and then spring practice. We hadn’t gotten game action.”
And while Holmes had won the starting job during spring and summer practice, the coaches made it clear during preseason that all four tailbacks would play a role.
Holmes, though, did get the most carries initially, starting in the Hokies’ Sept. 3 20-17 win over Georgia Tech. On a Monday night at Lane Stadium, his debut began with a so-so performance – he ran for 30 yards on 11 carries in regulation – but he was the star of overtime, running for 24 yards on two consecutive rushes to set up kicker Cody Journell’s game-winning field goal.
“That definitely helped me,” Holmes said. “It took away some of my shyness, and just being nervous.”
He started four of the next five games and had a pair of serviceable outings – two touchdowns in a win over Austin Peay (Week 2), 11 carries for 60 yards and a score in a loss to Cincinnati (Week 5). But he also ran for just 6 yards on nine touches in a loss to Pittsburgh (Week 3) and had eight carries for 19 yards in a loss to North Carolina (Week 6).
Of course, Holmes wasn’t all to blame. Tech also started four new offensive linemen and a tight end, in addition to the new tailbacks, this season.
Plus, he didn’t exactly get a ton of chances.
FOUR TOO MANY?
The four-man tailback rotation may also have been part of the problem.
“Playing four backs in a game is not what you want to do,” Holmes said. “You want to just get two backs so you can give them probably the most carries, and so they can thrive and start getting in a groove.”
Holmes, who ran for 6,390 yards in high school, acknowledged that he, especially, is that kind of back.
“The more, I guess, I get the ball, the more comfortable I get back there,” he said. “And I probably start seeing things better.”
He never really got that chance. Instead, his reps started decreasing, and his competition started taking them. Coleman and Gregory, in particular, began to see more touches – Coleman had a season-high 13 carries for 183 yards and two TDs in a win over Duke, a game where he also supplanted Holmes as the starter.
Shane Beamer said he started altering the reps at tailback because he wanted to “shake things up.” Tech’s running game simply wasn’t consistent enough with Holmes in the backfield.
“We were struggling trying to get some things going, and we were struggling a little bit on the offensive line, and struggling a little bit on offense to run the football period, and just trying to shake things up and do something different,” Beamer, in his second season as a Tech assistant, said.
“Nothing against Michael Holmes, but J.C. Coleman had been productive, and Tony Gregory had brought some speed and make-you-miss ability, a little different style than Michael.”
Beamer agreed with Holmes that the four-back rotation wasn’t ideal, and said he won’t repeat that in 2013. That’s exactly why the coaching staff decided, in the week leading up to a game against Florida State on Nov. 8, that they would shrink the rotation to two primary ball-carriers.
That decision couldn’t have come at a worse time for Holmes.
THE INJURY
Holmes and the other tailbacks were told in advance that the rotation would be reduced for the game against the Seminoles. Holmes said he didn’t know if he would be one of the two backs chosen, but, he figured, “my performance would just show that I was or not.”
During practice that week, he took a knee to the thigh, he said. The deep thigh contusion forced him to sit against Florida State, and Coleman and Gregory got all 24 tailback carries.
“I think it came at the wrong time personally,” Holmes said of the injury. “We was trying to find – cutting down on the backs. They told me that before my injury, they were trying to get two main backs. And the injury came during that time…Now I’ve gotta just keep working hard to earn that back.”
He traveled with the team for its next game against Boston College, but Shane Beamer said he was “hesitant to play” Holmes because he had been so limited in practice, and Holmes admitted he wasn’t 100 percent. He was fully recovered for the finale against Virginia, but he again didn’t touch the ball.
“The competition’s stiff, and just like in the pros and a major college like that, if you get hurt, you drop down to the bottom of the food chain, and then the others are back ahead of you,” said former Harrisonburg High School coach Tim Sarver, who said he’s occasionally been in touch with Holmes this season. “You’ve got to work your way back out of it.”
The question is, will he?
TALENTED ENOUGH?
Of course, it’s often unfair to judge a player’s ability on his first college season. But there are certainly people out there who aren’t surprised by Holmes’ lack of productivity given his recruitment history.
He was rated a three-star recruit by Rivals.com (on a 1-5 scale), but Virginia Tech was the only Division I-A school to offer him a scholarship. (James Madison, a Division I-AA school, was the only other program to offer.)
Sarver maintains that Holmes would have gotten more offers if he had made more of an effort pursuing them.
But he also admitted that Holmes’ speed was “a borderline thing for him” in terms of his major-college prospects.
“Most of the people that would see him would think that he’s very fast, but at that [college] level, I think he depends more on his ability to cut and run inside than he does on his speed to the outside,” Sarver said.
In other words, Holmes is fast, but not that fast. Gregory, for instance, is faster – his 40-yard dash is reported to be in the 4.3-second range. Holmes is more elusive than fast, with a 40 time reported in the 4.5 to 4.6 range when he was in high school.
On the other hand, Holmes is big enough — but Scales is bigger at 5-11, 222.
So Holmes doesn’t have any “wow” qualities, at least at this point, which might have been part of the reason he didn’t separate himself from the pack. When asked what Holmes needed to improve on for next season, both he and Shane Beamer said there wasn’t anything in particular – just that he needs to get stronger and become a more experienced, complete back.
It’s no different than any of the other returning tailbacks.
“We want somebody to take it and run with it, and say that ‘I’m the guy, and nobody’s going to beat me out, and I’m your tailback,’” Beamer, the head coach’s son, said. “And that’s what we’re looking for from all those guys.”
IS HOLMES THE GUY?
The competition likely won’t get any easier for Holmes next season.
Scales is the only one of the four primary tailbacks who’s not returning, and the Hokies have two redshirt freshmen who also could compete for time: Trey Edmunds and Chris Mangus.
Shane Beamer said the competition will be wide open in spring practice for all of those candidates, and that a couple of incoming freshmen could be in the mix. Presumably, one of those would be Drew Harris, a four-star recruit from Fork Union.
Holmes could see especially tough competition from Edmunds, who was given a higher Rivals rating (four stars) than Holmes out of Dan River High School, and is bigger (6-1, 212) and comparably fast (40-yard dash reported in the 4.5 range).
Of course, after running for 282 yards on 69 carries with four TDs in the regular season, Holmes also has a bowl game against Rutgers on Dec. 28 in Orlando, Fla., and the preceding practice time to prove himself. Then, it’s time for the offseason, where, as a high school player, Holmes was “one of the hardest workers we’ve ever had,” Sarver said.
“I’m just going to work incredibly much harder than I did last season,” Holmes said. “I’m going to come back a way better player than I was this year.”
Good enough for his name to be remembered in Tech lore?
“I’m going to try to make it one,” he said.
As the fall wore on, those moments became less frequent … and lately, he’s had none of them at all.
Holmes, a former Harrisonburg High School great, began the 2012 season as Tech’s starting tailback, a position as prestigious as any in the Atlantic Coast Conference. He ended the regular season with three straight games of never touching the football.
That doesn’t mean Holmes has been a disappointment. It’s just a testament to the vagaries of college football, where luck – be it injuries, the strength of your offensive line or competition from other talented athletes – can quickly dash expectations.
Michael Holmes isn’t a complainer. But when the shy Harrisonburg native was pressed in a recent interview, he acknowledged that his redshirt freshman season at Tech was a bumpy one – especially dealing with a deep thigh bruise late in the season that all but sealed his descent down the depth chart.
“I think I’ve been doing pretty good,” Holmes said by phone from Blacksburg, when asked how he would evaluate his play this season. “I’m just trying to work hard, you know what I’m saying? But an injury cost me a couple games.”
The 6-foot, 207-pound Holmes started the season at a position once manned at Tech by the likes of David Wilson, Ryan Williams and Branden Ore, players whose names are synonymous with 1,000-yard rushers and who arouse memories of stirring seasons. He ended the year on the bench for a mediocre, 6-6 team that barely qualified for a bowl.
But his fall wasn’t exactly that drastic – or, really, all that surprising.
A SLIGHT EDGE
From all accounts, Holmes had earned the starting tailback job by impressing his coaches – Frank Beamer among them – in practice. But it also had something to do with his competition. Although Holmes had yet to appear in a college game, Tech’s other tailback options were nearly as unproven – or, in at least one case, even less experienced.
Tech’s other choices included J.C. Coleman, a true freshman; senior Martin Scales, who had played only fullback in his career; and junior Tony Gregory, who had game experience but was also coming off a season-ending knee ligament injury (an ACL tear).
“At the beginning of the season, we really weren’t quite sure what we had,” Tech running backs coach Shane Beamer said. “All we were going off of was J.C. Coleman’s high-school video, Martin Scales’ fullback reps last year in practice and in games, and then spring practice. We hadn’t gotten game action.”
And while Holmes had won the starting job during spring and summer practice, the coaches made it clear during preseason that all four tailbacks would play a role.
Holmes, though, did get the most carries initially, starting in the Hokies’ Sept. 3 20-17 win over Georgia Tech. On a Monday night at Lane Stadium, his debut began with a so-so performance – he ran for 30 yards on 11 carries in regulation – but he was the star of overtime, running for 24 yards on two consecutive rushes to set up kicker Cody Journell’s game-winning field goal.
“That definitely helped me,” Holmes said. “It took away some of my shyness, and just being nervous.”
He started four of the next five games and had a pair of serviceable outings – two touchdowns in a win over Austin Peay (Week 2), 11 carries for 60 yards and a score in a loss to Cincinnati (Week 5). But he also ran for just 6 yards on nine touches in a loss to Pittsburgh (Week 3) and had eight carries for 19 yards in a loss to North Carolina (Week 6).
Of course, Holmes wasn’t all to blame. Tech also started four new offensive linemen and a tight end, in addition to the new tailbacks, this season.
Plus, he didn’t exactly get a ton of chances.
FOUR TOO MANY?
The four-man tailback rotation may also have been part of the problem.
“Playing four backs in a game is not what you want to do,” Holmes said. “You want to just get two backs so you can give them probably the most carries, and so they can thrive and start getting in a groove.”
Holmes, who ran for 6,390 yards in high school, acknowledged that he, especially, is that kind of back.
“The more, I guess, I get the ball, the more comfortable I get back there,” he said. “And I probably start seeing things better.”
He never really got that chance. Instead, his reps started decreasing, and his competition started taking them. Coleman and Gregory, in particular, began to see more touches – Coleman had a season-high 13 carries for 183 yards and two TDs in a win over Duke, a game where he also supplanted Holmes as the starter.
Shane Beamer said he started altering the reps at tailback because he wanted to “shake things up.” Tech’s running game simply wasn’t consistent enough with Holmes in the backfield.
“We were struggling trying to get some things going, and we were struggling a little bit on the offensive line, and struggling a little bit on offense to run the football period, and just trying to shake things up and do something different,” Beamer, in his second season as a Tech assistant, said.
“Nothing against Michael Holmes, but J.C. Coleman had been productive, and Tony Gregory had brought some speed and make-you-miss ability, a little different style than Michael.”
Beamer agreed with Holmes that the four-back rotation wasn’t ideal, and said he won’t repeat that in 2013. That’s exactly why the coaching staff decided, in the week leading up to a game against Florida State on Nov. 8, that they would shrink the rotation to two primary ball-carriers.
That decision couldn’t have come at a worse time for Holmes.
THE INJURY
Holmes and the other tailbacks were told in advance that the rotation would be reduced for the game against the Seminoles. Holmes said he didn’t know if he would be one of the two backs chosen, but, he figured, “my performance would just show that I was or not.”
During practice that week, he took a knee to the thigh, he said. The deep thigh contusion forced him to sit against Florida State, and Coleman and Gregory got all 24 tailback carries.
“I think it came at the wrong time personally,” Holmes said of the injury. “We was trying to find – cutting down on the backs. They told me that before my injury, they were trying to get two main backs. And the injury came during that time…Now I’ve gotta just keep working hard to earn that back.”
He traveled with the team for its next game against Boston College, but Shane Beamer said he was “hesitant to play” Holmes because he had been so limited in practice, and Holmes admitted he wasn’t 100 percent. He was fully recovered for the finale against Virginia, but he again didn’t touch the ball.
“The competition’s stiff, and just like in the pros and a major college like that, if you get hurt, you drop down to the bottom of the food chain, and then the others are back ahead of you,” said former Harrisonburg High School coach Tim Sarver, who said he’s occasionally been in touch with Holmes this season. “You’ve got to work your way back out of it.”
The question is, will he?
TALENTED ENOUGH?
Of course, it’s often unfair to judge a player’s ability on his first college season. But there are certainly people out there who aren’t surprised by Holmes’ lack of productivity given his recruitment history.
He was rated a three-star recruit by Rivals.com (on a 1-5 scale), but Virginia Tech was the only Division I-A school to offer him a scholarship. (James Madison, a Division I-AA school, was the only other program to offer.)
Sarver maintains that Holmes would have gotten more offers if he had made more of an effort pursuing them.
But he also admitted that Holmes’ speed was “a borderline thing for him” in terms of his major-college prospects.
“Most of the people that would see him would think that he’s very fast, but at that [college] level, I think he depends more on his ability to cut and run inside than he does on his speed to the outside,” Sarver said.
In other words, Holmes is fast, but not that fast. Gregory, for instance, is faster – his 40-yard dash is reported to be in the 4.3-second range. Holmes is more elusive than fast, with a 40 time reported in the 4.5 to 4.6 range when he was in high school.
On the other hand, Holmes is big enough — but Scales is bigger at 5-11, 222.
So Holmes doesn’t have any “wow” qualities, at least at this point, which might have been part of the reason he didn’t separate himself from the pack. When asked what Holmes needed to improve on for next season, both he and Shane Beamer said there wasn’t anything in particular – just that he needs to get stronger and become a more experienced, complete back.
It’s no different than any of the other returning tailbacks.
“We want somebody to take it and run with it, and say that ‘I’m the guy, and nobody’s going to beat me out, and I’m your tailback,’” Beamer, the head coach’s son, said. “And that’s what we’re looking for from all those guys.”
IS HOLMES THE GUY?
The competition likely won’t get any easier for Holmes next season.
Scales is the only one of the four primary tailbacks who’s not returning, and the Hokies have two redshirt freshmen who also could compete for time: Trey Edmunds and Chris Mangus.
Shane Beamer said the competition will be wide open in spring practice for all of those candidates, and that a couple of incoming freshmen could be in the mix. Presumably, one of those would be Drew Harris, a four-star recruit from Fork Union.
Holmes could see especially tough competition from Edmunds, who was given a higher Rivals rating (four stars) than Holmes out of Dan River High School, and is bigger (6-1, 212) and comparably fast (40-yard dash reported in the 4.5 range).
Of course, after running for 282 yards on 69 carries with four TDs in the regular season, Holmes also has a bowl game against Rutgers on Dec. 28 in Orlando, Fla., and the preceding practice time to prove himself. Then, it’s time for the offseason, where, as a high school player, Holmes was “one of the hardest workers we’ve ever had,” Sarver said.
“I’m just going to work incredibly much harder than I did last season,” Holmes said. “I’m going to come back a way better player than I was this year.”
Good enough for his name to be remembered in Tech lore?
“I’m going to try to make it one,” he said.