UVA boat raced by depleted Louisville, 34-17: Is this the bottom?

Kaiser Wilhelm met with his war cabinet on Nov. 17, 1914, four months after the First World War began, and concluded that the war was unwinnable.

Carla Williams can surely identify with why they felt they had to fight on anyway.

There was already something of a reckoning going on this week within the UVA Football program, beginning with the first-year head coach, Tony Elliott, who started off his weekly presser noting that he’d apologized to his players and staff for multiple blowups on the sidelines in last week’s ugly 38-17 loss at Duke, a breath before justifying the blowups, citing frustrations over repeated mistakes by players, and threatening, through the media, to bench unnamed players that he held accountable for the mistakes.

Word out of the locker room this week was that players were worried that there will be a mass exodus of their equally frustrated with the state of the program teammates to the transfer portal at the end of the season.

Somehow, some way, the staff and players got on the same page, at least for a few minutes, dominating the first quarter Saturday, getting out to a 10-0 lead, then driving into the Louisville red zone on the third offensive possession, on the verge of making it a three-score game early.

Brennan Armstrong, unfortunately for the cause, fumbled after a 10-yard gain on a draw play.

From that point on, Louisville outgained Virginia 464-170, outscored the Cavaliers 34-7, and posted a 34-17 win, without its starting QB, its top two rushers and its top tackler, and with coach Scott Satterfield, according to some in the Louisville media, on the verge of being fired if the Cardinals were to lose this one.

The bad news is: this is not yet the nadir for UVA Football.

The announced attendance for the annual Homecoming game was 38,000, but there weren’t 38,000 people in the stadium – and there certainly won’t be anywhere near that in three weeks when Virginia welcomes Miami for the first of four straight home games.

The empty seats are dollars, hundreds of thousands per game, adding up to low seven figures over the course of the season, lost for Virginia Athletics, which will impact everything else, even men’s basketball, since everything else relies on the money made in football to balance the books.

The empty seats are also culture, or lack thereof, for recruits – and Elliott’s recruiting hadn’t gotten off to a good start as it is, ranking at this moment 13th in the 14-team ACC and 68th nationally, trailing even nine programs from the Group of 5.

The only bit of good news: Armstrong passed for 313 yards in the loss, his first 300-yard game of the season, in this, the sixth game.

He averaged 404.5 yards per game in 2021 – averaged.

And he’s gone next year, along with his top receiver, Keytaon Thompson, who had nine catches on 13 targets for 98 yards, and who knows who else, because, that talk from the locker room regarding concerns that there could be a mass exodus when the season ends in a few weeks, it’s real.

Which is to say, if you think the track this team is on – at 2-4 now, it’s hard to imagine even 4-8, given how things have gone, and are going – you’re in for a helluva rude awakening next year.

Williams, backed by the money people, may be able to force some staff changes; the one most welcome would be at offensive coordinator, given what Des Kitchings has done, or rather hasn’t, to get the offense moving.

But that’s all she can really do.

For those of you reading this hoping to see me suggest that Williams makes the big move sooner rather than later, she’s just not going to.

Elliott is her guy; like the Kaiser and his war cabinet, it’s her war, and she either wins it, or gets run out of town.

Which is why the next couple of years of UVA Football are going to involve a lot of activity on the portal, going and coming, a lot of hope that recruiting miraculously improves, and a lot of football in Charlottesville played in front of half-empty stadiums, a lot of losing.

A contemporary analogy to what Williams is facing now is Vladimir Putin and Ukraine. Putin is losing that war, badly, but he can’t retreat, because it’s his war, and even Vladimir Putin isn’t immune from the possibility of an internal coup, and so he presses on.

The difference between Putin and UVA Football – and the Germans in World War I – is, Putin has nukes.

Unless he brings about Armageddon by using them in Ukraine, we know how the Tony Elliott story ends, and it ain’t going to be pretty.