James Franklin's first camp puts Grunkemeyer in front, little else set
Virginia Tech's new coach says every job but quarterback is still open, last season ended on a four-game skid, and the Hokies open September 5 as 50.5-point favorites over VMI.
James Franklin's first fall camp is about habits, not names on a depth chart
Virginia Tech hired James Franklin on November 17, 2025, pulling him in just over a month after Penn State let him go, and the early read on fall camp has been about process rather than a printed two-deep. "Every position remains open, with no starting job guaranteed," Franklin has said during camp, per SI's Virginia Tech coverage — a line that covers the whole roster but really centers on the quarterback race he brought south with him. His pick to lead that race is Ethan Grunkemeyer, the redshirt sophomore who followed him from State College after throwing in 11 games and a Pinstripe Bowl win for Penn State last season, and who is the only one of the four Hokies quarterbacks in the mix with actual college snaps on his résumé.
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Franklin has talked more about the meetings than the depth chart so far. After sitting down with the team's leadership council early in camp, he said the concerns players walked in with "are gone now," crediting the staff with having "been able to kind of answer a lot of those concerns and questions they've had," per SI. The next step, in his words, is "translating that work into results on the practice field" after a spring and summer he has framed as Virginia Tech winning the offseason — talk that means nothing until September 5, but is the real texture of a first Blacksburg camp under a coach who spent twelve seasons in State College before this one.
Last season ended on a four-game skid, capped at Virginia
Whatever this camp becomes, it is trying to replace a finish that cost the previous staff its job. Virginia Tech closed last season on a four-game losing streak — a 16-28 home loss to Louisville, a 14-34 defeat at Florida State, a 17-34 loss to Miami, and finally a 7-27 defeat at Virginia on November 30 that sent the rivalry trophy back to Charlottesville. The one bright spot in that stretch was a 42-34 win at home over California on October 24, a track meet that showed the offense could still move even as the defense came apart around it.
That is the roster Franklin inherited, and it is why the record resets to 0-0 with almost no benefit of the doubt attached: last year's team lost its final four by a combined 47 points with its head coach out of a job before the season even ended. Everything happening in Blacksburg this month, from the Grunkemeyer competition to Franklin's talk of winning the offseason, is aimed at making that finish read like an old team's problem, not this one's.
Franklin's debut is a 50.5-point number, not a measuring stick
Franklin's Hokies debut comes on September 5 vs. VMI at Lane Stadium, kicking off at 6:30 PM. The line opened at Virginia Tech -50.5 with the total set at 57.5, a number that says less about VMI specifically than about an FBS program built to blow out an FCS opponent that finished last season 6-48 against Western Carolina.
VMI has the tougher travel of the two: the Keydets open their own season August 29 at Idaho State before turning around and making the trip to Blacksburg six days later. For Virginia Tech, the score matters less than the tape — this is the first live look at Grunkemeyer, the rebuilt offensive line, and whatever Franklin's roster looks like once it's on a field instead of in a leadership meeting.