All the Hits: Viewers at home are still recovering from Virginia Tech linebacker Brett Warren’s assassination attempt on Darrius Heyward-Bey, a hit that had the Maryland wideout reeling as he left the field on Thursday night. (Speed ahead to 6:45 or watch it here close up about a third of the way in.) Then there was Hokie running back Darren Evans’s arguably NSFW assault on Terps free safety Terrell Skinner, just one of a lineup of Terps defenders whose jerseys wound up stamped with #32 in maroon and gold as the red-shirt freshman rusher set the one-game rushing yards record for his school. Highlight hits: Hokies have them.

What Virginia Tech didn’t have, at least going into Thursday night’s game, was a bowl-game berth to prove. Ranked #23 before their 23-13 loss, Maryland still had an uphill battle to overtake #22 Florida State for the Atlantic Division lead in the ACC. Three losses doesn’t put you out of contention in the ACC (what a conference), but there’s no clear-cut path by which the Terps could proceed.

Continue playing like they did Thursday, and Maryland’s rightly out of it. They looked small against the Hokie rush game and defenders when there weren’t any legitimate size differences. Virginia Tech’s offense hasn’t mobilized this season, and even in Thursday’s victory, notwithstanding Evans the team’s performance was unremarkable: 127 yards passing — numbers consistent with its average 120 passing yards per game, second to lowest in the ACC—and a mere 6 successful third-down conversions on 15 attempts.

September photo of Maryland pyrotechnics by Flickr user Rob Shenk used under a Creative Commons license.