It’s looking more and more that Lindell Stone will be the starting quarterback for Virginia on Saturday on the road at Wake Forest.
Offensive coordinator Robert Anae told reporters on a Zoom conference call on Wednesday that he didn’t see Brennan Armstrong, the starter for the first three games, at practice, and that Stone, a senior who replaced Armstrong at QB after Armstrong was knocked out of the game by a helmet-to-helmet hit in the second quarter of last weekend’s 38-21 loss to NC State, was “the guy” today.
He later answered a question asking his thoughts on how the offense would look with Stone at the helm by referring to the Woodberry Forest grad as “our starting quarterback.”
So, yeah.
Sounds pretty official.
“Now that he’s our starting quarterback, we believe there are things that he does well, so we want to start there. And we also believe there are things that we can do running the football, and we want to start there. So, I guess, yeah, when it’s time to run the ball, let’s do it, and when it’s time to throw the ball, let’s do it,” Anae said.
Stone entered the game with the ‘Hoos already down 24-0, and as a result the focus of the offense was on putting the ball in the air to try to move the ball quicker to get back in the game.
Virginia twice got the margin down to 10 on Stone TD passes, so the improvised strategy did what it was supposed to do, to a degree.
It also resulted in Stone throwing a jaw-dropping 54 passes in a little more than two quarters of action.
His stat line for the day: 30-for-54, 230 yards, three TDs, one INT, a picksix.
If Stone gets the start on Saturday, as is now expected, it would be the first in his career.
“One real good thing that came out of the game was Lindell got cold called, jumped in there, getting hit, getting to having to deliver the ball. I thought, for the most part, he was able to do what we were asking, and what the team needed him to do. Just not quite at the level we were hoping for,” Anae said.
Story by Chris Graham