James Franklin 's arrival in Blacksburg has led to a remake of Virginia Tech's offense. With new faces in several key positions and a fresh coaching staff installing new schemes, there's a real risk that certain contributors get overlooked amid all the roster turnover and portal buzz.
Tight end Benji Gosnell is exactly that kind of player - a name Virginia Tech shouldn't lose track of this fall.
The redshirt senior is back for one final season after anchoring the tight end position for three straight years, and even in an offense that underperformed in 2025, he still started all 12 games and hauled in 12 catches for 86 yards.
Those numbers won't jump off the page, but Gosnell was never given much of a runway to produce in Virginia Tech's previous scheme, one that treated the tight end position as an afterthought more often than not.
That's where this season looks fundamentally different, and it starts with the coaching change. Franklin brought Ty Howle with him as offensive coordinator, and Howle has an impressive track record of developing tight ends into stars. Tyler Warren (John Mackey Award Recipient), Theo Johnson , Brenton Strange and Pat Freiermuth all developed under him at Penn State .
That history alone should have Gosnell excited about his role in 2026, and the spring game offered an early glimpse of what's coming: tight ends combined for 205 of the team's 428 receiving yards, a share that would have been unthinkable in the past four seasons at Virginia Tech.
The complicating factor is the roster around him. Virginia Tech went out and landed Luke Reynolds , a four-star transfer (247Sports) who followed Franklin and Howle from Penn State.
Reynolds was one of the most coveted tight ends available this portal cycle, as in his sophomore season last fall he logged 26 catches for 257 yards across 13 games with the Nittany Lions .
Most projections have Reynolds stepping into the starting role, with Gosnell shifting into a secondary but still meaningful part of the rotation. Virginia Tech also added Matt Henderson from Penn State.
None of that should be read as Gosnell getting phased out. If anything, the presence of Reynolds and a scheme built to actually use tight ends works in Gosnell's favor.
Howle's Penn State offenses regularly deployed multiple tight ends in the same personnel groupings, using one as a mismatch threat in the passing game and the other to anchor the run game. That's the mold Gosnell fits, and it's a real path to him seeing the field just as much as he did a year ago, if not more.
There's also a compelling personal angle here. Gosnell has been part of some of the roughest stretches of recent Virginia Tech football, watching several different quarterbacks and offensive systems cycle through Blacksburg without ever getting consistent infrastructure around him.
Now, in his final year of eligibility, he's stepping into the most talent-rich. scheme-friendly environment of his career, right as the program is trying to reset its identity under Franklin.
If Virginia Tech's offense takes the step forward its coaches are promising, Gosnell's fingerprints will be all over it in ways his box score never fully captured before. He's not the flashiest name in the tight end room anymore, and he doesn't need to be, but forgetting about him could be a big mistake.
This article was originally published on www.si.com/college/virginiatech as One Offensive Player Virginia Tech Can't Forget About This Season .
