Brent Pry spent the past eight seasons on the sideline at Penn State, including the last six as defensive coordinator, a span in which the Nittany Lions were statistically one of the top defenses in the country.
Barry Reeger | AP file photo
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In the middle of one of college football’s wildest coaching carousels in history, James Franklin stayed put. But his closest and longest-tenured assistant did not.
A week after Franklin finalized a new 10-year deal to stick with the Nittany Lions, defensive coordinator Brent Pry got a major opportunity and will be leaving Happy Valley to become head coach at Virginia Tech.
The Hokies announced the hire at noon on Tuesday. Yahoo Sports first reported that Pry was finalizing the deal.
Though he was born in Altoona, Pry spent part of his youth in Virginia. After getting his coaching career started at East Stroudsburg when Franklin was a player there, Pry spent three years on the Hokies’ staff under Frank Beamer as a grad assistant.
But his longest coaching stop was at Penn State. Pry’s ties to Franklin landed him a job on his first staff at Vanderbilt, and the two spent the last 11 seasons working together, including the last eight with the Lions.
“I’m truly excited for Brent and his family,” Franklin said in a Virginia Tech news release. “He’s a passionate leader who’ll inspire his team to play their best football; but his greatest strengths are his dedication, relatability and humility. It’s those characteristics combined with his deep understanding of X&O’s that will serve Virginia Tech and the entire Blacksburg community best.”
Originally the linebackers coach, Pry was quickly promoted to defensive coordinator after the 2015 season when Bob Shoop left for the same job at Tennessee. The Lions won the Big Ten the next season, and Pry’s defenses — outside of a sizable drop-off during the 2020 pandemic season — have been a strength for the program.
Pry had previously been a candidate for smaller head coaching jobs, including at Georgia Southern, where he was defensive coordinator before being hired by Franklin. But he had turned down those opportunities in the past, saying that he enjoyed working with Franklin in particular.
Virginia Tech, though, is much bigger and more prestigious than any of those previous suitors — one that would be hard to turn down. And, in an interesting coincidence, one of several other rumored candidates for the job was former Penn State head coach Bill O’Brien, now the offensive coordinator at Alabama.
“Working for Coach Beamer and (long-time Hokies defensive coordinator Bud) Foster as a graduate assistant in the 1990s, I was privileged to have been a part of this program as the Hokies established themselves as a national power, consistently proving they could beat anyone in the nation,” Pry said through the school.
“Even after I departed Blacksburg, I always continued to appreciate Virginia Tech, its great players, its championship teams, and its wonderful traditions from afar. The resources, facilities, university backing of athletics, and phenomenal fan support that Virginia Tech enjoys made this a very desirable situation.”
Pry will take over for Justin Fuente, who didn’t make it through his sixth season in Blacksburg.
Fuente was hired when school legend Beamer retired after the 2015 season. He delivered 10 wins and an ACC Coastal Division title in his first year, losing the conference championship game by only a touchdown to eventual national champ Clemson.
But with his record at 5-5 two weeks ago and the Hokies headed for their third losing record in four years, Tech athletic director Whit Babcock told Fuente that he couldn’t guarantee he would bring him back for next season. Fuente opted to step down immediately rather than finish the year out.
Babcock and the Hokies are looking to return to being the perennial top-25 program they were under Beamer, who led the team to the 1999 national title game with Michael Vick at quarterback.
Beamer himself gave Pry his blessing for the job.
“Virginia Tech is getting a great coach and a wonderful fit for our football program in Brent Pry,” the Hall of Fame coach said through the school. “Not only is Brent exceptionally intelligent, he also possesses a great deal of football knowledge. Growing up as the son of a coach, he’s been around the game all of his life. I’m confident that he’ll do a tremendous job as head coach of the Hokies.”
Coaching in the ACC Coastal means Pry will have a chance to make his mark in what has been the country’s most wide-open title race. In seven seasons from 2013-19, the division had seven different champions, with each team winning once.
Pry becomes the fourth assistant from Franklin’s staffs at Penn State to land a head coaching job, joining Joe Moorhead (Mississippi State), Ricky Rahne (Old Dominion) and Charles Huff (Marshall).
Moorhead and Rahne left directly to be head coaches while Huff initially left to be an assistant at Alabama before landing the Marshall job this year. Moorhead lasted only a few seasons at Mississippi State, but his work as offensive coordinator at Oregon reportedly has him in the mix to be a head coach again, possibly at Akron.
With Pry gone, Franklin has just one assistant remaining from his inaugural staff from back in 2014 — cornerbacks coach and Penn State grad Terry Smith.
This will be the third straight offseason that Franklin will be replacing a coordinator and the sixth time overall. Rahne took the Old Dominion job in December 2019 and was replaced as offensive coordinator later that month by Kirk Ciarrocca. Franklin moved on from Ciarrocca after the 2020 season to bring in Mike Yurcich.
As fate would have it, Pry’s first game leading the Hokies next September will come against Rahne’s Monarchs.
At one point Penn State had been scheduled to host Virginia Tech in 2025. But when the Lions’ trip to Blacksburg in 2020 was canceled by the pandemic, the second game was eventually called off as well. The two schools have, surprisingly, still never played each other.