Lavel Davis Jr. was nowhere to be seen. Keytaon Thompson and Dontayvion Wicks were in street clothes. But it wasn’t the mutiny that I’d been hearing could be coming, not officially, anyway.
According to UVA head coach Tony Elliott, Wicks was held out of Saturday’s 31-28 loss to North Carolina with a bone bruise that the coach said after the game could be “longer term.”
Thompson, the team’s leading receiver, and Davis missed the game with undisclosed injuries.
Wicks and KT were on the sidelines in street clothes. Davis was not with the team on Saturday.
All three had been listed as starters on the depth chart that was released on Tuesday.
Elliott said he “found out” on Thursday that the Big Three were going to be out, and that he was going to have to go with Billy Kemp IV and Demick Starling as the starters at wideout, with more snaps at the wideout spots for freshman Sean Wilson and sophomore Ethan Davies.
Elliott and Des Kitchings also increased the role of tight end Sackett Wood in the passing game, and Wood had a career day – six catches on eight targets for 94 yards.
“They’re not there, so next man up. And Sackett took advantage of his opportunities today,” Kitchings said.
Wilson had good counting numbers – five catches on eight targets for 61 yards – but made a key mistake on a third-and-10 near midfield, running his defender, Storm Duck, into a pass intended for Kemp.
Duck knocked the pass down, forcing a punt, and North Carolina scored on its next possession to go up 10 early in the fourth quarter.
Starling had one catch, for 40 yards, but QB Brennan Armstrong targeted him six times.
Davies had one catch on two targets for seven yards.
“Those guys have just been chirping for an opportunity, right? Demick, JR (Sean Wilson), Ethan Davies, Sackett Wood, and they responded today,” Kitchings said.
“Thursday and Friday were really good, walkthroughs, practices. This morning was our best walkthrough of the season. Those guys were locked in, they were focused, and they came out and played good football,” Kitchings said.
Good football, but not great – Armstrong, throwing to the makeshift wideout corps, was 17-of-35 passing for 232 yards, an INT and a 98.5 passer rating against a North Carolina defense that ranks last in the ACC in passing defense (277.6 yards per game) and pass-defense efficiency (143.9).
The offensive line was blowing the Carolina front seven off the ball all afternoon – Virginia put up 186 yards on the ground on the day.
You’d love to have been able to see how the offense would have done with the Big Three in the lineup.
“When we’re missing our three biggest playmakers, we know we’ve got to come together as a group and really work to score. We haven’t been doing that well in the past. So, it was good to see that today by this group. Once we get those guys back, we’ll be able to get better,” Wood said, hopefully.
Elliott hopes Wicks, a first-team All-ACC guy last season – Elliott loathes any mention of “last season” – is back this season.
“There’s nothing that’s going to be too long term. It’s more of it being a pain tolerance as to when he can come back,” Elliott said.
Thompson’s absence “was a decision that was trying to do what was best for him and the football team, and we felt like, not risking it this week and being able to give him a little bit of time to recover. But we expect him to be back in practice next week ready to go,” Elliott said.
Davis “will be a day-to-day situation,” Elliott said.
The loss Saturday drops Virginia to a 3-6 mark, and 1-5 in ACC play, in Elliott’s first season at the helm.
There’s been obvious frustration on the field dating back to Elliott blowing up at players on the sideline in the Week 2 loss at Illinois that heightened Saturday with the head coach jawing at special-teams coach Keith Gaither after Elliott burned timeouts on back-to-back fourth-quarter punts because the unit didn’t have enough players on the field.
Word out of the locker room is that players have been concerned for weeks that teammates may start to check out because their own frustrations with how the season has gone, and particularly with players on the offensive side of the ball, with how poorly the offense has been performing after the great success from last season.
So when you see three star players, and a fourth starter, tailback Perris Jones, not dressed out, it’s natural for your mind to go there.
But don’t let it go too far in that direction just yet.
Officially, anyway, it was just a slew of mid-week practice injuries.
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Chris Graham
