Chick-fil-A Bowl preview: Virginia Tech's unit rankings

Yesterday, we looked at Virginia Tech's 9-3 resume and the drive charts for the games they've played. Today, we're going to take a look at the Hokies unit rankings.

Offensive observations. As we suspected, Virginia Tech's quite good on the ground, ranking second in the ACC and 15th nationally with 206.42 rushing yards per game. In the passing game, they're not very productive -- 98th in the nation with 181.83 yards per game -- but they're efficient. They're not very good at all at protecting their QB (or perhaps he holds the ball too long), as they're giving up 2.5 sacks per game. On balance, the Hokies are sort of middle-of-the road from a yards standpoint (55th nationally), but they're good at turning those yards into points, scoring 31.42 per game, good for 28th in the nation.

Defensive observations. Frank Beamer's team are always stout defensively, and this season is no exception. It leads the ACC in pass defense, pass efficiency defense, and scoring defense, marks that are basically all top 10 rankings nationally (scoring defense is actually 11th). If they're weak anywhere on defense, it's against the run, where they're giving up 138.67 yards per game for a national ranking of 52nd. Still, it doesn't hurt them much, as they're still in the top 15 nationally in total defense. The Hokies also appear to get decent pressure on the QB and in the backfield.

Special teams and turnovers observations. The Hokies rank first in their league in net punting, kickoff returns, and turnover margin. They rank only 41st nationally and sixth in the ACC in punt returns, which, when you're talking about Tech, just means that they're due. They have returned two punts for TDs, one each against Marshall and Miami, and one kickoff for a score, against Alabama.