Brent Pry looking to block outside noise surrounding Virginia Tech

The 2025 season got off to a rocky start for the Virginia Tech Hokies, as head coach Brent Pry watched his team drop its first two games to SEC teams. Now, there’s increasing outside noise that he is working to block out.

Going into Week 3, Pry explained that he’s looking to focus and find positives to build on. Doing that, while blocking out that outside noise, is going to be how the Hokies get off this skid and bounce back as the season continues.

“Always,” Brent Pry said. “I think you guys know I’m always going to find the positives. I think the guys need to, you know, the external noise is always, if you lose, it’s negative. I don’t want them listening to that. Listen to what’s fair, where the expectations weren’t met, where we have to be better, you see it, we see it, as coaches and players. But let’s not lose sight of the team that we’ve been at times, also that’s a pretty good football team.”

Coming into the 2025 season, Pry has struggled to find consistent success at Virginia Tech. He got to the program in 2022, facing a rebuild. Within that, he’s gone to bowl games in 2023 and 2024, but only had a 16-21 record coming into the season, and the most wins he had in a single season was seven. With the two losses to open the year, Pry has seen his record fall to 16-23.

The hot seat, whether Pry wants to pay attention to outside noise or not, is very real. ESPN recently named him as one of the names on the hottest seats after Week 2. Certainly, he knows that at a Virginia Tech program that expects to compete for ACC Championships, which hasn’t happened during Pry’s tenure.

Pry has a relatively affordable buyout. If Virginia Tech were to make this move, it would cost $6 million to move on from Pry. That money would be paid in installments over the remainder of his contract, which runs through December 31, 2027. Pry would receive $750,000 per quarter until the end of 2027.

Brent Pry reaffirms belief he can turn around Virginia Tech program, avoid hot seat

Pry may be looking to avoid the outside noise, but he is aware of it. He’s also aware that the Virginia Tech program needs to turn things around. That’s a job he believes he’s ready to handle moving forward.

“Absolutely. I like this team. I don’t like how we played in the second half, but I like this team. There’s a lot of season left. The beauty of it is you wake up, you got six days to play the next one. You got to fix things. You got to get a plan together. And this is a good group of kids. They’ll stick together. They’ll wake up and they’ll own it, and look to be a better team come Saturday,” Pry said.

“Yeah, I’m not. I tell the players to ignore the noise. I learned that a long time ago. This is not the first time that we’ve been in situations like this. So, the expectations here are to win. I get that. That’s why I wanted to be here. I’m not happy with where we’re at right now. Not from a win standpoint. But I like this team and we’ll regroup and there’s a lot of season left and I’m still excited about what we can do.”

Virginia Tech is set to play Old Dominion at home on September 13th. That’s a game Pry and the Hokies will hope to use to launch themselves into the next part of the season. Kickoff is currently scheduled for 7:00 p.m. EST.