Brennan Armstrong passed for 313 yards, his first 300-yard game of the season, in the sixth game of the season, in UVA’s 34-17 loss to Louisville on Saturday.
Last year, Armstrong averaged 404.5 passing yards per game, which is what had some thinking he could be a Heisman Trophy candidate this year, with him coming back for a senior season with Elliott, the former offensive coordinator at Clemson, where he coached future first-round NFL Draft picks Deshaun Watson and Trevor Lawrence, as his mentor.
Elliott’s decision to throw Armstrong and the talented wideout corps he inherited that had run Robert Anae’s Air Raid to great results – Virginia averaged 515.8 yards of total offense per game last season, third in FBS – into a wholly new scheme seems to have gummed up the works.
The offense is averaging 356.8 yards per game this season, and Armstrong, who completed 65.0 percent of his passes in 2021, has completed just 55.0 percent this season.
The thing you have to think is, Elliott and his offensive coordinator, Des Kitchings, had to have seen this coming.
They had 15 practices in the spring to install the offense, and had to see that Armstrong and his elite receiver corps, working behind a makeshift offensive line, was struggling to get it.
OK, you can fix that with film study, then work on it in training camp.
But at some point in training camp, Elliott, who as offensive coordinator at Clemson called plays for two national-title winners, and Kitchings, who was a coordinator at two Power 5 stops and was in the NFL last year with the Atlanta Falcons, had to see that whatever fixes they hoped were coming weren’t in fact materializing.
Which is to say, it’s not like the offense was humming in the spring, rolling in camp, and then, when the season started, that’s when the wheels came off.
The line still can’t protect Armstrong, who was sacked six times on Saturday. The commitment by Elliott and Kitchings to a balanced offense netted six rushing yards this week.
Receivers are running the wrong routes, turning out when they should be turning in, letting themselves get knocked off their lines by basic coverage, dropping passes they caught last year.
Armstrong, trying to do too much, because it seems that everybody in orange and blue is looking for him to, fumbled in the red zone and threw two picks.
“I just have to protect the ball. I talked about it earlier on, just trying to switch that mindset from trying to make every play to playing within the offense,” Armstrong told reporters after the loss. “The fumble was the fumble, and I’ve been struggling with that all year. And then the turnovers, I’m playing within the offense, but the execution part of it isn’t there.”
No, it’s not.
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Chris Graham
