I think I’ve figured out what the issue is for us UVA Football fans in regard to the play of starting QB Beau Pribula: we’re apparently watching a different game than the one that head coach Tony Elliott is watching.
We see:
- 10 sacks, seven points and 205 yards against a Florida State defense ranked 122nd nationally.
- 104 yards and a TD in garbage time in the fourth quarter on the way to 349 total yards in a loss to a West Virginia team with a defense ranked 131st nationally.
- 288 yards against a Syracuse defense that had just surrendered 499 yards to UConn a week earlier.
And we think, That’s not good.
FSU is 114th in pass defense; Pribula was 14-of-32 for 168 yards against the ‘Noles.
WVU is 136th in pass defense; Pribula was 21-of-33 for 197 yards, but a lot of that came in the fourth quarter with the game out of reach – 9-of-13, 104 yards.
UConn’s Kalieb Osborne passed for 314 yards and three TDs in the Huskies’ 42-41 loss to Syracuse on Oct. 3; Pribula was 11-of-19 for 119 yards against Syracuse last week.
Confronted with these data points, we think out loud, One of those showings could just be a bad day; three of them is a trend.
That’s just us seeing the glass half-empty.
Elliott doesn’t even see a glass – he’s looking at a 24-karat platinum gold diamond-crusted crown floating on a cloud of unicorn farts.
“Do I have an issue with how he’s playing? I don’t,” Elliott told reporters at his weekly press conference today, after having to ask himself the question that no one in the press corps wanted to dare throw his way, because, you know, Coach might not want to be your friend if you ask mean questions.
News flash: a coach making $5.4 million a year isn’t going to be inviting any of the guys or gals running their football blogs around working at the car wash and Door Dashing over to the mansion for dinner and drinks anytime soon.
We’re a part of the job that they hate; that’s why they have somebody at the front of the room telling us, We only have time for one more question, when it seems that we just got there.
Anyhoo.
Good on Elliott for making himself address the elephant in the room.
I do wish he could have just stopped at “I don’t,” but of course with Elliott, you get a word salad.
This was the rest of the answer to his own question:
Like, do I want to see areas where he can improve? Yes, just like the rest of our players. But I think, you know, the circumstances have been different. You know, this game here, it was a function of, hey, we just didn’t have the ball, you know, a ton. And the things that he could control early in the game, he was controlling them, right? And then he gets put in a situation where it’s third-and-long, and we’re asking him, in a six-man protection, so we can get four receivers out, right, and third-and-10, like, you’re kind of rolling the dice, right? So, then, later in the game, we get a third-and-10, and we protect with seven, and they don’t bring pressure, and now we got three receivers out, and, you know, they’re covered. So, the kind of things that he’s going to naturally get blamed for from externally are not his fault, if that makes sense.
Took a while to get there, but, sure, makes perfect sense – it’s the QB being not good, and it’s the coaching staff being not good.
To the actual question he was asked – regarding “decision-making and some of the situations (Pribula has) been placed in” – Elliott went out of his way to defend his QB.
“You know, for the most part he’s managed the game the way we asked him to,” Elliott said, which begs the question – Y’all are actually asking him to miss receivers when he’s not holding onto the ball too long against the blitz?
More from this part of the answer:
You know, I think that, you know, when you evaluate, you look at it like, man, you wish you would have, you know, maybe, you know, pulled the trigger here. But then, you also look at the integrity of the pocket. It’s not where it needs to be. You know, his line of sight is a little bit, you know, a little bit blurred, so he can’t see exactly who he’s throwing to at times, from that standpoint. And so, I mean, it’s a week-to-week deal in terms of how it plays out, right?
Dear gawd, this team is doomed.
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Chris Graham
