UVA football relied on its defense as the Cavs fought their way through the 2014 season. The defense has been the weak link in the chain through the first two games of 2015, a key reason why Virginia is 0-2.
The biggest reason the ‘Hoos are winless through two is the schedule-maker did coach Mike London no favors, of course. On the road at #13 UCLA and then home after two cross-country flights against #9 Notre Dame is a tall order for anybody.
But that was all known going in. What wasn’t known or expected was that defensive coordinator Jon Tenuta’s defense would leak like a sieve.
Granted, UVA lost a lot on D from 2014: Eli Harold, Max Valles, Daquan Romero, Anthony Harris, Henry Coley.
But Tenuta is nothing if not confident in his ability to develop players and scheme opponents into playing the way he wants them to play.
That hasn’t happened through two weeks. Last week, UCLA threw at will, with true freshman quarterback Josh Rosen completing 28 of his 35 pass attempts for 351 yards, going almost the entire game without getting touched by the guys wearing all white.
This week, Notre Dame gashed the Virginia front seven with a power running game that was nothing fancy, just runs down the A gap, on a 253-yard day that saw the Irish gain 7.5 yards per carry.
Then with the game inside the final two minutes, the run taken away, Notre Dame, with its backup quarterback, Deshone Kizer, passed the ball down the field, ultimately winning the game on a 39-yard TD pass from Kizer to Will Fuller with 12 seconds left.
So the UVA defense can’t stop the run, can’t stop the pass.
The offense this week looked like the offense that some of us expected coming into 2015. Matt Johns was sharp, going 26-for-38 passing for 289 yards and two touchdowns, and running for a third score on a first-down scramble.
The run game gained 4.2 yards per carry, a vast improvement over last week’s 2.9 yards per rush, and after a listless first quarter actually moved the ball consistently the rest of the way.
But the UVA offense isn’t going to outscore teams, in a manner of speaking. It’s no juggernaut. For UVA to put up Ws, it’s got to be a balanced effort, with the offense doing more of what it did today, and the defense figuring out how to stop the run, defend the pass and get off the field.
The 0-2 start has London behind the 8-ball. William and Mary is in town next week, and then comes Boise State.
London is staring 1-3 in the face before getting into ACC play, meaning anything less than a 5-3 conference mark has him on the wrong side of .500 for the fourth straight year, the fifth in his six years, and probably, almost certainly, on the way out.
Don’t count this performance today against Notre Dame as a moral victory in any manner of rendering things. A win was 12 seconds away from being secured, and the unit that you’d have wanted before the season on the field let it slip through its fingers.
Again.
Shore it up, now, or it’s next regime up.
– Column by Chris Graham
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