Official UVA Gameday Thread

3 star dessert! Wake up Mr. Benson, it's time to preheat the gosh darn oven!!!!!
 
Between the lack of week-to-week continuity with so many guys returning from injury and the natural emotional lull a relatively young team is going to have playing the week after a huge upset win, it's not terribly surprising they came out flat today. Fortunately, Virginia's offense was so painfully one-dimensional with a QB incapable of throwing a pass more than 8 yards down the field with any accuracy, they didn't pay for the slow start.

With that said, over the past three weeks (even starting with the debacle against UNC), Lance Austin is really starting to come into his own. If AJ Gray and Step Durham follow the same development path next season, the team is going to have a nice secondary group. They're going to need to be good with 3/4 of today's starting D-line and the best LB on the team graduating (although I really like some of the youth on the D-line coming up next year). Run defense has to be better for next week. Has to be. And, given that we are talking about 3/4 of the D-line being seniors who have pride and understand the rivalry, I'd bet the run defense is going to be.

Offense needs to be more consistent getting in, and then converting, 3rd and shorts. They relied pretty heavily on the big play to get through today because they weren't moving the ball with any consistency on a play-to-play basis. That well can run dry on you pretty quickly. I think Coach Johnson talked about using Jordan for a few series next week specifically for that reason. Time of possession was way upside down. Jordan being able to run some midline and an unsuspended Mills could help.

Best plan for next week, IMO, is to control the ball on offense and be efficient putting touchdowns on the board, load the box to stop the run on defense, and put all the pressure on their golden boy to be the one to keep pace possession-for-possession, hoping he'll take a few too many risks and throw us some INT's.
 
My issues with the offense as it has been all season is we are not throwing enough on early downs, i.e., the dropped pass by Brad Stewart. Secondly when we are getting behind the sticks on 3rd and long we are throwing 40-50 yd bombs down the field. What is the pct's that we will make that completion? It is going to be covered also, so that forces our receivers to out jump the DB's. I am not sure if that is by design(on the coaching staff) or JT making the high risk throw. I say have the receivers cut their routes at the 1st down marker and also send a back out of the backfield and force the LB to cover.
 
stingmeyall said:
Secondly when we are getting behind the sticks on 3rd and long we are throwing 40-50 yd bombs down the field. What is the pct's that we will make that completion? It is going to be covered also, so that forces our receivers to out jump the DB's. I am not sure if that is by design(on the coaching staff) or JT making the high risk throw. I say have the receivers cut their routes at the 1st down marker and also send a back out of the backfield and force the LB to cover.
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We were making the same observation in the stands about throwing the deep pass on 3rd and 8 to 15 yds. The best explanation I can come up with is that our playbook just doesn't have a lot of short passing routes. On obvious passing downs, we don't have plays that are practiced over and over to isolate a receiver to pick up 10 yds. JT's height makes it difficult for him to see receivers in that area, and his throwing angle makes those passes more likely to get batted down. Our limited passing game is designed to be the big play that forces defenses to respect the threat and not commit everyone to our running game. It's difficult enough to execute the offense we have without trying to be an air-raid passing attack when circumstances favor that. Ideally, we pick up 3-4 yds each down and can pass at our own choosing. We've been forced to pass more lately, and JT has been effective with it, but it's not what we really want.
 
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