Virginia Tech's 10 most influential recruits since 2010: Which Hokies top the list? (2024)

BLACKSBURG, Va. — Something changed in Virginia Tech recruiting around 2010. A seismic shift took place, and the Hokies just didn’t bring in talent quite like they used to.

Sure, they’d pull a few top players here and there, but nothing close to the way they did in the 2000s, when for the most part they were the state’s big dogs, all the way up to the 2009 class when they landed Logan Thomas and David Wilson as top prizes from Virginia on signing day.

Frank Beamer sensed the shift. It’s why he shook up his coaching staff to get younger ahead of the 2011 season, though the returns were about the same. Justin Fuente succeeded him and has had a similar recruiting output, leading to an uneven decade for the Hokies.

But there have nonetheless been many players who left their marks at Virginia Tech in that timeframe, so let’s take a look at which recruits were the most influential.

That doesn’t necessarily mean simply best players of the past decade, though you’ll find many of them on this list. This exercise is to look more at what a player’s recruitment and subsequent career meant for the program. In some cases it’s for that player’s prowess, in some it’s for what his recruitment symbolized, in some it’s for what it led to and in some it’s all of those things combined.

Here the list, in my opinion, of the 10 most influential recruits for the Hokies since 2010.

10. Sam Rogers, FB, 2013

He joined the program as a preferred walk-on, which makes his inclusion on the list all the more remarkable. By now, everyone knows the story: Rogers was being honored as the player of the year at an all-metro banquet in Richmond. Frank Beamer was there, leaned over to his son Shane and asked why weren’t the Hokies recruiting this kid?

Shane hopped to it and brought him into the fold as a walk-on. Rogers rewarded him and the Hokies by leaving an indelible mark on every person he came across at Virginia Tech, as a consummate team leader from the outset who did every thankless role imaginable without complaint. He is an all-time fan favorite.

So respected was Rogers that Fuente, who coached him for only a year, choked up a bit when talking about the kind of person and player Rogers was ahead of senior day in 2016.

If ever there was someone who embodied Virginia Tech’s blue-collar approach and is a somewhat recent testament to the Hokies’ history of successful walk-ons, it’s Rogers.

9. Wyatt Teller, DT, 2013

That position is correct. Teller signed with the Hokies out of Liberty High in Bealeton as a defensive lineman. The blue-chip’s commitment news delighted Bud Foster so much that the defensive coordinator did an extremely gif-able series of cartwheels on the practice field that day to celebrate.

Teller didn’t stick on the D-line, however, as he was plucked by offensive line coach Jeff Grimes (out of necessity, given the state of that room at the time) to come over to play on offense, where Teller’s high school coach always thought he’d end up.

He showed flashes among some early hiccups and finally tapped into his true potential on the O-line despite having a rotating door of position coaches, turning himself into an All-ACC first-teamer his senior year, getting drafted and blossoming into one of the best guards in the NFL today for the Cleveland Browns.

The Hokies coaches had a “trust us” position change example from the 2000s when they moved Duane Brown from tight end to left tackle, where he’s made tens of millions of dollars as an All-Pro blindside protector for the Texans and Seahawks. Teller is another example of that and was at the forefront of a resurgence on the Hokies’ offensive line in recent years.

8. Isaiah Ford and Cam Phillips, WR, 2014

It’s impossible to disentangle these two receivers, who arrived in the same class, were options 1 and 1A for three years together and finished their careers 1-2 on the school’s all-time receiving list. So let’s just put them together for this exercise.

Phillips committed in the summer of 2013 out of DeMatha High in Maryland. Ford was a late addition to the class out of Jacksonville who picked Tech over Louisville. Both were brought in by Aaron Moorehead in his stint as the Hokies’ receivers coach.

What makes their recruitment so significant is it marked a sea change for the Hokies at receiver. Despite having some good receivers over the years and being not too far removed from the Jarrett Boykin-Danny Coale combo, Virginia Tech was never known as a school where receivers could thrive, one of the few in Division I (and one of the only non-option teams) at the time not to have a 1,000-yard receiver in its history.

Ford broke that barrier in 2015 and ’16 and Phillips came close, posting 983 yards in 2016 and coming up 36 yards shy in 2017 after sports hernia surgery kept him out of the Camping World Bowl. Their success made Virginia Tech a little bit more viable of an option for receivers looking to thrive in college.

7. Tim Settle, DT, 2015

Settle’s recruiting ranking was high everywhere but still had a bit of variance (ESPN listed him as a five-star; 247Sports and Rivals slightly lower), in large part due to his academic status. Some schools weren’t quite sure how hard to pursue him, giving pause as they waited to see if he qualified out of Stonewall Jackson High.

Virginia Tech didn’t waver in the process and as a reward landed one of the best defensive tackles in school history.

It wasn’t immediate success. Settle redshirted his first year while slimming down from 360 pounds to 330, then started making an impact as a reserve with a growing role in 2016. He had an All-ACC season in 2017, a Pied Piper of a leader who was a fan favorite. He declared early for the NFL Draft as a redshirt sophom*ore, getting picked by the Washington Football Team, where he’s been a key reserve the past few years.

Though his time in college was cut short, Settle’s recruitment was a testament to the stick-to-itiveness of the coaching staff, who did their diligence, stuck with a recruit on the fringe of qualifying and, when he did, were rewarded for it greatly.

6. Caleb Farley, ATH, 2017

As Farley gets prepared to be selected in the first round of the upcoming NFL Draft, it’s important to remember he wasn’t some can’t-miss recruit. When he committed to Tech as a three-star prospect out of Maiden, N.C., in April 2016, his other offers were from Wake Forest, Ohio and Old Dominion.

He had tremendous upside and athletic ability, though, as someone who’d scored 124 career touchdowns in high school. But his college position wasn’t clear: receiver or cornerback? Even the Hokies wrestled with that idea, eventually settling him in at cornerback after an ACL injury cost him the 2017 season when he was going to play receiver.

Farley had a slow start in 2018, making many wonder if the coaching staff had erred in putting him on defense, but he quickly turned into one of the best cover corners in the country in 2019, dampening the what-ifs about his receiver career that wasn’t.

He’s primed to be an early pick this spring after opting out of the 2020 season, with a chance at being the highest-selected Hokies defensive back ever over DeAngelo Hall, who went eighth overall in 2004 to the Falcons.

5. Trey Edmunds, RB/LB, 2012

Yes, it might seem odd to highlight the Edmunds brother who wasn’t a first-round pick like his younger brothers, Tremaine and Terrell, but Trey’s recruitment is the one who got the Edmunds brothers ball rolling at Virginia Tech, something that yielded returns for years.

Trey was a Parade All-American who played for his dad Ferrell, a former NFL tight end, at Dan River High in Ringgold. The Hokies landed him in a big 2012 class that was supposed to get the Hokies back on track, though it had mixed results.

Trey was one of the cheeriest and most uplifting players to ever don a Hokies uniform, but his career was nevertheless beset by injuries. He emerged as the team’s primary ballcarrier in 2013, rushing for 675 yards and 10 touchdowns before breaking his leg in the UVa game. He was never quite the same after that and transferred to Maryland for his senior year, where he had another injury setback.

But Trey’s recruitment opened the door for the Hokies to bring both Terrell and Tremaine into the fold in subsequent years. Terrell was an overlooked prospect whose other offers were Cincinnati and Hampton when he committed to the 2014 class. Tremaine, at 6-foot-4, 220 pounds and growing, had a bit more recruiting attention in the 2015 class, but with two older brothers already at Tech, was he really going to go anywhere else?

Tremaine and Terrell were mainstays on the Hokies’ defense, Tremaine earning All-American honors after a monster 2017 season, before both left early for the NFL the following spring. All three Edmunds brothers are in the NFL now, with Tremaine a Pro Bowl linebacker for the Bills, Terrell a three-year starter at safety for the Steelers and Trey a running back on the Pittsburgh roster as well.

If not for Trey committing to Tech back in the 2012 class, who knows where everyone else would have ended up?

4. Kendall Fuller, CB, 2013

This seems to run counter to how I treated the Edmunds brothers, listing Kendall, the final Fuller brother to come through Blacksburg, separately, but this one is slightly different.

Whereas there were mixed opinions on how good of recruits each of the Edmunds brothers were, Kendall was unequivocally the most highly touted high-schooler of his family, a five-star recruit who was the No. 17 player in the country. If you know your history about the rarity of elite recruits at Virginia Tech — in the post-2001 internet recruiting era, the only five-stars the Hokies landed before Fuller were Kevin Jones, Marcus Vick and Tyrod Taylor — then it becomes clearer about what a big recruiting win this was.

Everybody wanted him, and, of his non-Tech suitors, Clemson came closest to nabbing him, though the Fuller family’s connection with Beamer and Virginia Tech won out. (By the way, Tech’s signing class that year also included Brandon Facyson and Chuck Clark. What an incredible haul of DBs.)

In a way, Hokies fans got cheated a little bit from the full Kendall Fuller experience. Though he starred as a freshman and sophom*ore and was an All-American in 2014, his junior year got cut short after three games due to a knee injury. He went pro after that season.

But his recruitment was a big one for Virginia Tech, which showed that its history of treating brothers so well and what it could offer a defensive back was enticing enough for a five-star prospect to come and thrive in Blacksburg.

3. Christian Darrisaw, OL, 2018

No parades were thrown when Darrisaw, an unheralded offensive lineman from Upper Marlboro, Md., was a late sign-and-place addition to the Hokies’ 2017 class. Darrisaw’s other suitors were Morgan State, North Carolina Central and Central Connecticut State when Tech took a flyer, with the plan to have him prep for a fall at Fork Union before enrolling in early 2018.

The Hokies look pretty dang smart in hindsight, with Darrisaw developing from relative unknown into a mainstay on the offensive line as a three-year starter from Day 1 who is a good bet to be taken in the first round of this spring’s NFL Draft.

Yes, recruiting is about landing top-notch talent. But it’s also important to find gems through your evaluation, which the Hokies did with Darrisaw, a year after a similar process with offensive lineman Silas Dzansi.

Virginia Tech might not be able to go blow-for-blow on the trail with the recruiting heavyweights out there, but it can even the playing field, as it has for decades, by finding overlooked talent and developing it. Darrisaw is Exhibit A for Fuente’s staff to point to in that regard.

2. Jerod Evans, QB, 2016

Like a shooting star, Evans came to Blacksburg for one year, breaking a bunch of single-season records, guiding the Hokies to the ACC title game and, against the advice of pretty much everybody, declaring early for the professional ranks, where he’s had trouble latching on. But wow, what a year it was here.

Evans was Fuente’s first big-time recruit, the No. 1 dual-threat junior college quarterback in the country out of Trinity Valley Community College. He was trending to join Fuente at Memphis before the coach took the Virginia Tech job, and he followed Fuente to Blacksburg.

He proved to be exactly what that veteran Hokies team needed — a quarterback who could be a difference-maker. Evans set Virginia Tech single-season records in total offense, passing yards, passing touchdowns, touchdowns accounted for and rushing touchdowns by a quarterback.

It’s no accident that the one time in the last nine years that the Hokies won the Coastal Division and made it to the ACC championship game, Evans was the quarterback. His recruitment gave hope that it was the dawn of a new offensive day in Blacksburg, and while that’s been dampened somewhat in recent years, that idea still exists if the Hokies can find the right quarterback.

1. Kyle Fuller, CB, 2010

Find me a recruit from 2010 on who checks more essential boxes for being a Virginia Tech success story than the third of the Fuller brothers.

Kyle was a younger brother of a former Hokie (defensive back Vincent, who played at Tech from 2000-04), a key selling point of the Beamer era. His recruitment certainly helped the Hokies land future Fullers — wide receiver Corey, who’s older than Kyle but transferred in after first running track at Kansas, and Kendall. Each of the brothers got drafted.

Kyle wasn’t a blue-chip recruit, a three-star prospect ranked No. 1,072 player nationally in the 247Sports Composite who, going by rankings at the time, was considered the 15th-best player in what was an underwhelming 2010 class for the Hokies. But man, did he ever develop with Virginia Tech.

He was a perfect embodiment of Tech’s claim as DBU, someone who played right away in a nickel role, emerged as a stopper at cornerback as well as a standout on special teams and earned All-America honors in 2013, staying at Tech through his senior season.

Kyle Fuller ended up being a first-round draft pick by the Bears in 2014 who’s turned himself into an excellent NFL corner, earning All-Pro honors in 2018, twice making the Pro Bowl and leading the NFL in interceptions 2018.

That’s as complete of a resume as you’ll find from a former Hokie and as representative as you can get of what Virginia Tech is trying to and has to be as a program.

(Top photo of Kyle Fuller: Scott Cunningham / Getty Images)