Virginia Tech’s Season Begins Saturday Night Against Maryland
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Virginia Tech enters Saturday night’s game against the Maryland Terrapins, sitting at 2-0 on the season for the first time in five years.
For the Hokies, it’s been a solid start to the James Franklin era. Tech has thoroughly beaten two overmatched opponents at home in Blacksburg, and will now head on the road for the first time this season to face the program’s toughest opponent yet this season.
While Saturday may mark the third game of 2026, it is Virginia Tech’s first real test – one that they’ll need to be ready for in order to move to 3-0 at the regular season’s quarterpole.
Virginia Tech’s Season Begins Saturday Night Against Maryland
Virginia Tech travels to College Park as a short road favorite, but Vegas odds cannot fully capture just how big a game this is between two undefeated power-conference teams. For Maryland, it’s an opportunity for a quality non-conference win to temporarily cool a very hot seat for ninth-year head coach Mike Locksley. After taking the Terrapins to three consecutive bowl games, Locksley’s program has gone 4-8 in each of the last two seasons. At a basketball-driven school where making a bowl game in a tough Big Ten is the expectation, Locksley has fallen short in back-to-back seasons and in five of his eight full seasons in College Park.
For Virginia Tech, Saturday night provides the school an opportunity to turn the page on a pair of ugly streaks against non-conference opponents from the Power 4. Virginia Tech has not beaten a power conference opponent outside of the ACC since September 3, 2017, when the Hokies opened up the season by beating West Virginia in a neutral site game at FedEx Field.
When it comes to beating a power conference opponent outside of the ACC on the road, the dry spell is even longer for the Hokies. You have to go all the way back to the 2015 season when the Hokies beat Purdue in West Lafayette. It doesn’t make things too much better, but it is good to note that Tech was able to knock off a bad Notre Dame team in South Bend in the 2016 season as well.
Regardless, the Hokies have a huge monkey to get off their program’s back, and Saturday provides a golden opportunity.
There’s Plenty of History Between Virginia Tech’s James Franklin and Maryland’s Mike Locksley
Both Franklin and Locksley served as assistants on Ralph Friedgen’s staff at Maryland in the early 2000s, with Locksley coaching running backs and Franklin coaching wide receivers. They cut their teeth together in the business, and there remains a healthy amount of mutual respect between the two. Franklin was named coach-in-waiting in a return stint to College Park in 2009, but never took the head coaching job as he left for Vanderbilt in 2011 prior to Friedgen’s retirement. Locksley returned to Maryland to become the program’s head coach in 2019 after serving in various roles at other schools, most notably as Alabama’s offensive coordinator under Nick Saban in 2019.
During Franklin’s stint at Penn State, he frequently went up against Locksley and Maryland during conference play. The last meeting came on November 30, 2024, when the Nittany Lions cruised to a 44-7 win over the Terps. In that game, Penn State threw a touchdown pass in the final minute while up 38-7, leading Locksley to confront Franklin for running up the score during the postgame handshake. The two have since reportedly buried the hatchet, but it’s something to note heading into Saturday night, with the two head coaches squaring off for the first time since.
The Hype Around Virginia Tech’s Rebuild Could Accelerate With A Win
The hype around the initial hiring of Franklin in Blacksburg led to much fanfare at the outset. Virginia Tech has largely been a downtrodden program since Frank Beamer’s departure, and Franklin is seen as the hire who could finally turn the school’s fortunes back around. Virginia Tech begins conference play a week from Saturday on the road against Boston College, which is a game where the Hokies are expected to be a favorite.
If Tech beats Maryland on Saturday night in a primetime spot, the national coverage of the Year 1 rebuild for Franklin could be taken to another level. It’s not inconceivable that the Hokies could vault themselves into the ACC Championship Game conversation in what’s viewed as a relatively wide-open league outside of heavy favorite Miami.
A loss would not be backbreaking, but it would tamp down expectations for the remainder of the season after a dominant start for the Hokies through the year’s first two weeks.
Main Image: Brian Bishop-Imagn Images
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