Nick Jackson on the Virginia defense: ‘Last year was last year’

The Virginia offense was an unstoppable force in 2021, leading the ACC and ranking third nationally in total offense. The defense, unfortunately, was a movable object, ranking 13th in the ACC and 121st nationally, allowing 466 yards per game to opponents.

Give record-setting QB1 Brennan Armstrong any kind of help last season, and UVA’s 6-6 turns into 8-4, maybe 9-3.

New head coach Tony Elliott has a new defensive coordinator, John Rudzinski, heading things up, and Rudzinski and his staff spent the spring installing the 3-4 stack attacking scheme that worked for him at Air Force, which ranked fourth nationally in 2021 in total defense.

Middle linebacker Nick Jackson, who led the ACC in tackles a year ago, said the biggest thing he sees from Rudzinski is getting everybody on the defensive side of the ball on the same page.

“Last year was last year, and now that we have Coach Rud, he is just pushing the envelope. He is making us better every single day. A lot of individual work, a lot of tackling work, just helping us get better at our craft individually and collectively with the team teach segment,” Jackson said.

To Jackson, the issues on the defensive side last year were just “fundamental,” which you could see for yourself watching.

Opponents gained 225.8 yards per game on the ground against Virginia a year ago, gashing the front seven for 5.8 yards per carry, both ranking dead last in the ACC.

When teams can run at will at you, they keep the chains moving, control the clock, basically control the game.

That was the case in Virginia’s four-game losing streak to close out 2021, in which the ‘Hoos allowed 532.5 yards and 42.8 points per game.

Rudzinski’s 3-4 stack that is a variation on the 3-3-5 scheme used under former Virginia coach Bronco Mendenhall, so there’s at least some familiarity for the kids, and the advantage that they were recruited to play in the system.

“Cover 4 is Cover 4, and Cover 3 is Cover 3, so it’s just learning like the different signals, learning different variations, learning stuff like that, I mean, that’s the transition right now,” Jackson said.