Big plays again the Achilles heel for UVA D

Remember how the problem for the UVA defense last year was the pass defense giving up big plays? North Carolina ran for 392 yards Saturday night, but the reason was the big plays in the pass game in the first quarter.

Sam Howell was 4-of-5 for 182 yards and three TDs in the first quarter, the TDs coming on passes of 59 and 37 yards to Josh Downs and a 75-yarder to Khafre Brown.

The 37-yarder to Downs was a nice deep ball from Howell. The other two were pitch-and-catches that turned into TDs because of bad tackling, if you can call no one being in position to make a tackle bad tackling.

The long TDs forced the defensive staff to change up the scheme to provide more help behind, which, OK, worked, technically.

Howell was just 10-of-16 for 125 yards over the final three quarters.

Pedestrian numbers.

The extra help deep left the D vulnerable to the run.

Hoo, boy, did it leave the D vulnerable to the run.

North Carolina ran for 246 yards in the second half, and the previously mentioned 392 yards for the game, with Ty Chandler gashing out 198, and Howell going for 112.

And they came in chunks – Chandler had runs of 17, 28, 60, 21; Howell had runs of 12, 20, 13, 16, 14; Caleb Hood had runs of 25 and 15.

That’s 241 yards on 11 run plays, on top of the 233 yards on Howell’s five chunk pass plays of 25+ yards.

This from an offense that two weeks ago, in a 17-10 loss at Virginia Tech, had looked very average, with Howell missing open receivers, throwing three INTs, the run game putting up an underwhelming 146 yards on 30 totes.

The Virginia 3-3-5 scheme is designed to get more speed on the field with the extra defensive back, but it sure didn’t play fast Saturday night, and the extra DB translated into almost nothing in terms of attack at the line of scrimmage from the front six.

It was like a no pads drill out there for UNC, which didn’t have to punt – the only UVA stop on the night coming on an overthrown ball in the end zone that Fentrell Cypress picked off.

Next up for the ‘Hoos: Wake Forest, which put up 484 yards total offense, and 225 yards on the ground, in a 35-14 win over Florida State on Saturday.

The game is Friday night – one less day to get things fixed.

Story by Chris Graham