Man, did Chandler Morris struggle with the North Carolina defensive front on Saturday.
UNC, as I wrote in my pregame, had recorded just eight sacks total in its first six games of the 2025 season.
Naturally, the Tar Heels got a sack on UVA’s first play from scrimmage – the first of six sacks of Morris on the afternoon.
ICYMI
- UVA Football: What’s wrong with the ‘Hoos on offense? It’s not Des Kitchings
- UVA Football Notebook: ‘Hoos win with more complementary football
- Team of destiny? #16 UVA wins another one by the skin of its teeth
Diving into the numbers from Pro Football Focus, it wasn’t like Morris was under that much more pressure overall than usual.
Per PFF, Morris faced pressure on 16 of his 42 dropbacks – 38.1 percent.
For the season, Morris has been pressured on 32.6 percent of his dropbacks.
Back to the Carolina game: UNC blitzed on 18 dropbacks.
None of the six sacks came on those blitzes.
Even with a clean pocket, then, Morris wasn’t all that accurate – 15-of-26 (57.7%), 140 yards (5.4 yards/attempt), 1 TD, 1 INT, 69.4 NFL passer rating.
Compare that to his season numbers: 71.8 percent completion rate, 7.7 yards/attempt, 8 TDs, 3 INTs, 102.2 NFL passer rating.
Number that jumps out at me: the average time to throw on the pressure dropbacks was 4.23 seconds.
Season average there: 3.66 seconds.
Suggests to me one of two things: indecisiveness by the QB, or the receivers weren’t getting open.
Could be both there.
Ground game: Grounded
But it wasn’t as bad as the main counting number – 59 net rushing yards – would indicate.
Sacks, in the college game, count against rushing, not net passing, as in the NFL.
Take the sack yardage out, and Virginia averaged a borderline-not-terrible 3.8 yards per rushing attempt, and finished with a modest 106 sack-adjusted rushing yards.
J’Mari Taylor had 69 yards on 21 attempts.
The issue was: nothing explosive.
Taylor had rushes of seven, eight and 10 yards.
Morris had an eight-yard scramble and a seven-yard keeper – the one that set up the eventual game-winning score by Taylor.
Outside of that, it was a lot of running into the teeth of the Carolina front for a couple of yards.
Take these moderately decent gainers away, and it was 66 yards on 23 attempts – 2.9 yards per.
O line grades
Center Brady Wilson, the top-graded offensive lineman on the season, was back for UNC, after going down in the third quarter of the Week 4 win over Stanford with a high ankle sprain.
Didn’t help, with the O line getting its second-lowest aggregate grade of the season in the win.
Wilson had his lowest-graded game of the season – 61.5 – after getting dinged for a sack, a hurry and a holding penalty among his 72 offensive snaps.
Left guard Noah Josey (57.0) and left tackle McKale Boley (54.2) also had their lowest grades of the season.
Right guard Drake Metcalf (55.3) and right tackle Jack Witmer (52.7) didn’t have games worthy of writing home about, for their part.
Third downs
Virginia still ranks 20th nationally in third-down conversions (49.6 percent), but that’s all the first five weeks.
Over the past three, the ‘Hoos are 18-of-48 (37.5%) on third downs.
The glaring issue on Saturday was on third-and-shorts – one to four yards.
Virginia was just 4-of-8 on third-and-short vs. UNC.
Prior to Saturday, UVA was 28-of-38 (73.7%) on third-and-shorts.
Virginia had trouble on first and second downs on Saturday, but when you actually do stay ahead of the chains, man, gotta convert those at a better than 50 percent rate.
Missing Cam Ross
Cam Ross missed the UNC game after taking a hit to the head in the second quarter of the win over Washington State in Week 8.
We were told by Elliott earlier in the week last week that Ross would be available.
I hate being used to provide a cover when a guy is actually hurt and won’t be available.
UVA has an Honor Code; you may have heard about it.
Without Ross in the slot, Kam Courtney got 30 snaps there, and did nothing with them – one catch on five targets, one drop, two yards receiving.
Gonna need Ross back going forward.
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Chris Graham
