I didn’t see any questions asked of Tony Elliott in his postgame presser about the porous secondary play, and then I’m reminded, I came of age watching UVA Football in the George Welsh era.
George wasn’t happy with a 59-10 win if it wasn’t perfect.
The 48-20 win over Stanford on Saturday night had a lot of positives – 590 yards of total offense, Chandler Morris throwing four TD passes, Stanford had a net +35 rushing yards.
ICYMI
But two of Stanford’s scores came as a direct or indirect result of big pass plays – a 60-yarder in the first quarter on which Ethan Minter was beat deep by Bryce Farrell that set up a short 5-yard TD pass from Ben Gulbranson to tight end Benji Blackburn; and a 68-yard TD pass from Gulbranson to, yep, Farrell, this time toasting Donavon Platt, in the third quarter.
It’s hard to figure how Gulbranson was 20-of-29 for 286 yards, two TDs, no INTs and a 174.6 passer rating, and still lost by four touchdowns.
Going to have to get that fixed up, because nothing against Stanford, but Stanford ain’t Florida State, the opponent in six days.
I probably need to start attending the postgame press conferences again.
It’s hard for me to understand how I’m apparently the only person who sees the secondary play as the glaring weakness – after tonight, after the loss at NC State two weeks ago.
I’d love to know what Elliott thinks about that.
Anyway.
Even with the secondary making the Stanford QB look a little like the new Stanford GM, we had Morris passing for 380 yards, four TDs and a 219.7 passer rating, and scoring on a 13-yard run that was maybe my favorite play in years – J’Mari Taylor, the tailback, took the direct snap, handed the ball to Morris, who ran to the left of the formation, with tight end Dakota Twitty drawing a double team downfield.
It was the winged T at its best.
Taylor ran for 85 yards on 15 carries, as the run game, again, went over 200 yards on the day.
Trell Harris had three first-quarter TD catches – three yards, 27 yards and 75 yards.
The defensive front had five sacks, led by Daniel Rickert‘s two.
Kam Robinson, returning from surgery to repair a broken collarbone suffered during training camp, led the D with eight tackles, and he had a fumble recovery that set up a UVA score.
“It was just good to see 5 (Robinson) running around,” Elliott said after the game. “I think everybody, man, loves to watch him, because you never know what you’re going to see. I mean, you have a chance to see something special, because of the ability level that he has. But it was good to see him get back in there, play good football, lead us in tackles, come up with a turnover, and you know, now he’s knows that he’s ready to roll. Should have confidence in the shoulder, and that should bring a good, you know, a jolt for us down the stretch.”
The postgame took us into the 11 p.m. ET hour, with a short week ahead – the FSU game is Friday night, primetime, on a network whose name I won’t mention, because the people who run it are benders of the knee.
“There’s a lot of positives, and we’ll enjoy it for 40, I guess 38 more minutes, right? Because tomorrow is actually Monday for us, with the short week, so they got 38 minutes to enjoy it, and then we’ll get back in there, watch the tape, correct it, and then start putting together a plan for a really, really good Florida State team coming in here on Friday,” Elliott said.
The announced attendance for Saturday night was somewhere in the 36,000 range, and I will vouch for that at least being close.
What we were hearing before the game was that early ticket sales for FSU were surprisingly abysmal.
I’m of the mindset – probably overly positive – that what fans who weren’t in Scott Stadium Saturday night, but saw on TV, against my advice, because I was saying, don’t give ESPN and its corporate parent, Disney, any business because of their bending of the knee, but anyway, if you watched on TV, you saw a team that is fun to watch.
If you’re thinking that, I don’t want to support the idiots at Disney for bending the knee, but I still want to see UVA play Florida State, hey, what I’m being told is, there are plenty of good seats still available.
“Don’t make it bigger than what it is, right? At the end of the day, it’s a conference game, right? It’s the next step in the progression,” Elliott said, addressing the importance of the game, trying to keep things on the down low, in the face of the obvious.
A win here over a Top 10 team to get to 4-1 would be massive.
Deep breaths.
“Don’t try to be superhuman, but understanding, you got to have a good understanding of your opponent, like what you’re going up against, and then you got to prepare to the standard,” Elliott said. “You got to block out the noise. The difference in games like this, I think everybody’s going to be ready, right? Everybody’s going to be excited, man, it’s a primetime game, there’s all these things associated with it, but it’s still about the preparation, right?”
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Chris Graham
