Virginia Tech head coach Justin Fuente has a lot of pondering to do after Friday's loss to Duke. He did some of it with the media Monday afternoon. Read here.

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“This week we go on the road versus Miami, coming off a bye week. [Miami is a] very talented team, as I’m sure you all have seen. They’re really good on both sides of the ball – skill players, defensive lineman, and the two linebackers that seem like they’ve been playing for a long, long time. We’ll have to have a great week of preparation as we prepare to go on the road.”

On if the injury to Senior OL Tyrell Smith is season ending:

“Yes. It’s unfortunate for Tyrell, but it’s significant. I believe it’s his patellar tendon, so he’ll have surgery coming up in the next day or so.”

On the quarterback situation:

“We’ll continue to evaluate all of those things as we go through this week. We’ve got to find a way to be more efficient. We’ve got to be more productive. It starts with those guys; it involves everybody. It’s kind of the same thing we talked about 10 years ago or 15 years ago when you mention quarterbacks, is that you’ve got to have predicted outcomes. You’ve got to execute the play call, distribute the ball to the correct place.”

On whether he will be more involved in the offensive play calling now the rest of the season:

“No, that’s not what’s needed. We evaluate all of those things, I’m sure there’s plenty of people out there that think they know the answers and that’s their right, but being inside of it every single day, that’s not the answer.”

On what he believes needs to happen for the offense to be more productive:

“We’ve got to find a way to play a more efficient game from now on and it’s really collectively, as a football team. If you look at that game last week, in no area were we consistent, were we able to execute on a consistent basis – in any of the three phases, and that’s very disappointing, and that’s my responsibility 100 percent. We’ve got to find a way to get that across. We’ve got to be tough enough – mentally, emotionally, and physically to go execute at a high level in all three phases of the game on a consistent basis regardless of circumstance.”

On whether he’s considering making wholesale changes:

“You can’t, it just doesn’t work that way. You’ve got to continue to improve and work, and focus on technique. Surely, you can tweak things, absolutely, but you can’t [fix everything], it just doesn’t work that way.”

On how the team responded after the fumble that led to a Duke touchdown:

“It’s pretty disappointing from that standpoint. We talked about that as a team, and I’m not going to get into everything we talked about, but we certainly have to be mentally and emotionally tough enough to respond. There’s going to be bad things happening, that’s just the way it is, and we collectively didn’t do a good job responding from that event. That’s disappointing and that’s my responsibility, so that’ll be the first thing on the list.”

On whether he’s previously used QB rotation and if he’s considering doing it going forward:

“I would say that all things are open to be considered right now. No, I can’t recall a time - I may be mistaken, but I can’t recall a time we’ve really rotated guys. I’m sure it’s happened at some point through my career but it’s not usually the normal way that we operate, but it is what it is.”

On the team’s practice schedule over the weekend after the Duke game:

“We had to give them a day off during the week, so we gave them Saturday off. But we did more yesterday. So, we had a much more ‘real practice’, as opposed to the day after the game.”

On whether the coaching staff does anything differently to motivate the team after a big loss:

“I don’t know, all losses hurt the same. We try and teach and correct and coach. First of all, we would evaluate what we had going in, why things did or didn’t work – the same thing we’d do after a victory and teach that to the kids. Obviously, there’s a tremendous amount of work that needs to be done after something like that, or after any game. We won a couple of games too and they weren’t dominating performances by any means, so it’s not like anyone’s been walking around with a smile on their face. Whether you won or lost it’s about the performance, so that’s been our focus.”

On QB Ryan Willis’ confidence and how you gain confidence:

“I don’t know, you get confidence by doing the right thing over and over again. You can’t give it to somebody, you can show them how to earn it, but in my opinion, you get confidence by competing with the correct performance or the correct execution time after time. He knows that. He’s done it before, he knows he can do it again. It’s a matter of buckling down and finding a way to do it on a more consistent basis.”

On whether the coaching staff has a bigger role to motivate a young team after a loss:

“I think we do have a huge role for our guys. But we would have that role if things were going really well, too. We have to continue to do a great job with our young guys. I don’t know if motivated is the right word or the wrong word, but we need to be focused in on the opportunities that lie in front of us, where we can improve, and how much better we can be.”

On OL Zachariah Hoyt’s health and his availability:

“We’ll see. He has to be healthy first. He practiced a little yesterday and was better. There’s no reason for me to get into it until he’s healthy and fully able to go. When that happens then we’ll worry about who’s going in there. But I’ve been really impressed with Bryan Hudson, a true freshman who certainly has a lot of work to do but to be as competitive and hardnosed as he’s been in a short time playing center, that’s been a good spot. We’ll figure it out when [Hoyt] gets back. [Hoyt] has worked at guard as well, so when he gets healthy, we’ll figure out where he needs to go or what we need to do.”

On evaluating WR Damon Hazelton after his season debut against Duke:

“Health wise? He’s fine. He just needs some more work. I think that’s the biggest thing for Damon. He just hasn’t practiced a lot. Not just for conditioning but he needs work versus good people.”

On QB Hendon Hooker’s ability in the passing game:

“I feel good. He’s taken a whole bunch of reps in the last several years.”