Predicting Virginia Tech Hokies Statistical Leaders 2013: Offense

A year ago I nearly published this same post, predicting the 2012 statistical numbers of the offensive players for Virginia Tech. Unfortunately, with the rush of gameday, I was unable to get it out. Luckily for me, it didn't get published, because there were some pretty lofty numbers I had predicted. Of course, we all know how that worked out...

This year is another year where the Hokies' offense will be under a magnifying glass, as not much is settled, including who some of the impact players might be or even how the offense will look exactly. All will be revealed in time, but without the benefit of having seen the offense in action in a competitive game setting, I will be making my statistical projections for the 2013 team. Here we go:

The Hokies averaged more plays each year (with the exception of 2009 and 2012) than the previous year over the last half of a decade (as far as I really cared to go back for this), peaking in 2011 at 995 plays. While I projected even more plays last year, the truth is, even at a faster pace, with more turnovers and an inability to stay on the field, the Hokies fell short of that projection by over 100 plays. The good news is, as we found out last year, faster isn't always better. Scot Loeffler's offense might remedy that to some degree. So I would actually expect the Hokies to run right around the same number of plays as they did in 2012. With a slight bump coming from projecting fewer turnovers and projecting an additional game (the ACC Championship Game), I've got the Hokies going from 944 to 1005 plays, which will guide my projections below.

INDIVIDUAL

Passing

Logan Thomas 258-450-3,126-20 TD's-13 INT

Mark Leal 13-24-145-1 TD-1 INT

Rushing

Trey Edmunds 186-775-6 TD

Logan Thomas 155-557-9 TD

J.C. Coleman 104-530-5 TD

Joel Caleb 41-164-TD

Chris Mangus 16-49-TD

Receiving

Josh Stanford 52-681-3 TD's

D.J. Coles 51-546-4 TD's

Demetri Knowles 38-589-5 TD's

Charley Meyer 26-279-2 TD's

J.C. Coleman 25-271-3 TD's

Duan Perez-Means 19-121-2 TD's

Willie Byrn 15-166-0 TD's

Trey Edmunds 12-78-1 TD

Joel Caleb 9-81-0 TD's

Zack McCray 8-116-1 TD

Darius Redman 4-66-0 TD's

Chris Mangus 2-17-0 TD

TEAM

That would put the total offense numbers at 5,346 yards, considerably higher than the 4,898 yards the Hokies picked up a year ago, but still considerably less than the 5,782 yards the Hokies picked up in 2011 in that number of games. The projected average offense would equate to 381.9 yards per game. So again, a bit of a bold prediction in the form of a little bit of a bounce back year for the offense. Still, nothing earth-shattering and given 14 games, it's completely doable.

For more predictions and all the football information, news and analysis you could ever hope for, Gobbler Country is the place to be. Stay tuned for the defensive predictions coming shortly. Feel free to post your stat projections in the comments.