Brent Pry Speaks After Hiring New OC, ‘Montgomery Was Our Best Candidate’

Pry found his guy.

Jul 23, 2024; Charlotte, NC, USA; Virginia Tech head coach Brent Pry answers questions from the media during the ACC Kickoff at Hilton Charlotte Uptown. Mandatory Credit: Jim Dedmon-Imagn Images / Jim Dedmon-Imagn Images

It didn’t take a long search and now Virginia Tech has a new offensive coordinator. After Tyler Bowen left for Ohio State, the Hokies’ offensive coordinator was left vacant, and Phillip Montgomery fit all the parameters of what the Hokies needed at that coordinator position.

Brent Pry seemed pretty excited about Montgomery as a hire in his introductory press conference. Among some other topics, Pry had plenty of notable quotes regarding Phillip Montgomery.

In the order that they happened, here are some of the most important, interesting, and notable quotes from Pry’s first press conference after hiring Montgomery.

• ”It was a good search. Obviously not as long, didn’t need to be, but, a lot of candidates to be excited about.”

• “It was clear to me that Coach Montgomery was our best candidate. And we had some good candidates, but he was the best. He checked the most boxes for what we're looking for to continue to move not just our offense but our program forward.”

This next quote I think is the most interesting. Directly after the previous quote, Pry begins to speak on the specifics of Montgomery as a coach, and one of the first things he mentions, and one of the things he returns to in his opening statement, is Montgomery’s ability to work with quarterbacks. That seemed to be an important piece of this hire.

• “He's a veteran offensive coach. He has, uh, a proven track record developing quarterbacks. He's a proven play-caller. He's had, uh, numerous really successful seasons statistically and with wins as a play-caller. When you look at his time at Houston—Case Keenum, Kevin Kolb—some high-powered offenses. I did coach against Coach [Montgomery] when I was the DC at UL Lafayette and he was at Houston. We had a barnburner. Obviously, at Baylor with RG3, a Heisman Trophy winner, Bryce Petty, Nick Florence—multiple quarterbacks there and a bunch of successful years and a bunch of wins.”

• ”He's got a genuine approach, a forthright approach. He cares about the players. He's in it for the right reasons. He really wanted this opportunity. He wanted to be at Virginia Tech, which is always important to me.”

• ”Coach Montgomery had offered Kyron out of high school when he was at Tulsa.”

• “I think his run game has a lot of similarities to what we've had success with here—what I want to do. The run plays, the run schemes that I believe in, that Matt Moore believes in—that was an important piece to this, that he and Matt saw eye to eye on things.”

• ”They're going to use the whole field… I think we need to grow our passing game. I think Philip gives us a great opportunity to do that. He's, you know, he's had a lot of success throwing the football. He's had a lot of success developing quarterbacks. I think we all feel if we get Kyron Drones to play his very best football and be closer to his potential, that bodes well for our offense and our football team.”

• ”Coach Montgomery's experience with quarterbacks was an important piece to the hire.”

• ”We just didn’t want to reset this whole thing. You know, we've got a good foundation laid… I think we didn’t want to go two steps backwards to get this thing rolling in the right direction and be successful in the fall.”

• ”You go through an interview process, and then when you have questions, you're going to have questions. You're going to have things that you want to learn more about on each individual after the interview. So, you go back to the phones and you dig a little deeper. If you have a concern, you dive into it and learn more. In the end, that’s what separated guys, and that’s what led me to Philip.”

• ”I think, number one, we need to trust Kyron more. We need to get to a point where he's confident in what he sees and what he can do. We need to throw the ball down the field more. And I think it starts with him—with Kyron—being able to feel better about what he sees, what he can do with the football, the trust, and the confidence there.”

• ”I tell you, Coach Foster had a ton of respect for Coach Montgomery”

• After being asked about if Pry and Siefkes’s adjustments to defensive assignments have been made, Pry said, “They have. There's nothing earth-shattering. I'd probably rather not discuss it right now, but in due time here, we'll roll out any reshuffling we've done on both sides of the ball.”

• Speaking on Montgomery’s year at Auburn, “I’m not going to dive into it in detail, but he was pretty forthright about what happened—where he could have done better, where the situation could have been better. But we also made some phone calls and talked to multiple people on the staff at that time and got their perspective on it. It was a tough situation, I think, for several people. But again, he grew. He learned from it. I think we’re getting the best version of Philip Montgomery right now.”

• ”I wanted some change. Change is good. There will be some new things on each side of the ball. Our guys, defensively, are already excited about it. Offensively, I think it gives us a great chance to grow, and they’ll be excited. Fresh ideas are good—especially when they’re good ones.”

• ”Before we interviewed Philip in person, he and Matt spent an hour and a half on the phone talking through things: protections, run game, how you block wide zone. That was important to me. I probably didn’t do a good enough job of that in my first three years here—making sure those guys are vibing with each other and have a similar belief system.”

Additional Links:

Virginia Tech Football: Grading the Hokies’ Hire of Phillip Montgomery as Offensive Coordinator

Virginia Tech Baseball: Hokies Start the Season With a Series Win

Virginia Tech Football: Hokies Officially Name Phillip Montgomery as Their New Offensive Coordinator