Let’s look back at the pregame scouting report that I came up with ahead of the UVA Football game with West Virginia.
And let’s keep in mind: I’m a hack politics writer.
At least that’s what a lot of y’all say.
(Note: I’m not saying you’re wrong.)
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With the West Virginia offense, it was all about Michael Hawkins Jr., who’s not exactly adept at throwing the ball – he won, and then lost, the starting job at Oklahoma in 2024, which is why he’s at WVU.
Where he is good is running the ball out of the backfield. He had 206 sack-adjusted rushing yards in the first two games of the 2026 season, all on designed runs, averaging 7.6 yards per attempt.
The tailback who gets the bulk of their carries, Cam Cook, a Jacksonville State transfer, had the bulk of his production in the first two games on a long 72-yard TD run in the 31-24 win over Coastal Carolina in Week 1.
Outside of that long one, Cook was averaging 3.1 yards per attempt on the ground.
Hawkins attempted a total of 21 passes in WVU’s first two games.
Seemed pretty obvious – assign a linebacker or safety as a spy, keep Hawkins in the pocket on dropbacks, make Cook tough some yards out on first and second downs, get them into third-and-mediums and third-and-longs, harass the crap out of Hawkins on third down, get off the field.
What happened: Hawkins put up a career-best 128 sack-adjusted yards on the ground and scored three times on runs.
Cook piecemealed, for the most part, his way to 123 yards – just three of his 30 attempts went for 10 or more yards.
Guy just churned his way to keep WVU ahead of the chains.
Through the air, Hawkins started 3-of-10, finished with seven straight completions, for a cumulative 127 yards.
The UVA D, the best that the donors’ money could buy, was gashed for 437 yards, 247 on the ground, by a version of the winged-T offense that most small-enrollment high school teams see most Friday nights – a direct snap to a wildcat QB who sometimes gives it to the fullback on a dive, and occasionally throws the ball to try to keep you honest, and is able to complete passes mainly because the secondary is caught staring at the ball thinking it’s going to be a run.
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The weak link with the West Virginia defense was, clearly, its secondary – Coastal Carolina, for god’s sake, passed for 373 yards against WVU in its Week 1 loss.
That was a guy named Deuce Bailey, a three-star prep recruit who transferred after a year at Missouri State, who was able to make toast out of the DBs for the better part of three and a half hours.
Over two games, the WVU secondary had a 105.4 NFL passer rating against.
For context there: just three NFL QBs had a 105.4 NFL passer rating or better in 2025; their names – Drake Maye, Matthew Stafford, Jared Goff.
The WVU secondary made the QBs at Coastal Carolina and UT-Martin into the top 3 QBs in the NFL for two weeks.
My thinking going in, and keep in mind, I’m a football idiot; I can’t even beat the average 10-year-old at Madden – you probably want to throw the ball some, to make those DBs who can’t cover guys at Coastal Carolina and UT-Martin have to do some work.
Naturally, the game plan from offensive coordinator Des Kitchings was run-heavy, which worked in the first quarter, when the ‘Hoos put up 121 sack-adjusted rushing yards and scored on two of their three possessions.
Second quarter, Zac Alley, the West Virginia D coordinator, made the obvious adjustment – pack the box with eight or nine guys and dare Kitchings to keep running the ball.
Which, naturally, he did – to the tune of gaining 12 yards on the ground on eight attempts in the second quarter.
Five of QB1 Beau Pribula’s first-half pass attempts were at or behind the line of scrimmage.
Passes at or behind the line of scrimmage aren’t going to test a shaky secondary.
Overall, Pribula was 6-for-10 for (gulp!) 43 yards in the first half, with the passing game being basically long handoffs.
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As the game played out in the second half, it started to become obvious why Kitchings was so reluctant to put the game on Pribula’s arm.
Pribula is, himself, basically a glorified wildcat QB, just not as talented as Hawkins is – from what we saw tonight from Hawkins, anyway.
Think back to Virginia’s third play coming out of the locker room after halftime – a third-and-4 from the UVA 31.
As the offense came out of the huddle, Pribula decided, inside of 12 seconds left on the play clock, that he’d sent the two tight ends, Dakota Twitty and John Rogers, to the wrong side of the formation.
He motioned them over from the left side to the right – the play call was, it seems, a screen to the slot guy, Kam Courtney; the tight ends were supposed to set the wall to free Courtney up after the catch.
Tony Elliott had to burn a timeout – 36 seconds into the second half! – to prevent third-and-4 from turning into third-and-9.
Didn’t matter – the fresh play call coming out of the timeout was a quick pass into the flat to tailback Jekail Middlebrook for no gain, resulting in a punt.
Alley dialed up at least half a dozen double-A-gap blitzes – two linebackers coming basically through the center, who has to choose between blocking one of the two blitzing ‘backers or the defensive tackle, leaving the other two guys for the tailback, who can only get one of them.
Pribula didn’t see any of these blitzes presnap – he ended up getting sacked on two, and had to get rid of the ball to avoid the sack on the rest.
Another sack was the result of left tackle McKale Boley, a preseason All-ACC guy, seeing a double-A-gap blitz in development, and at the snap, sliding toward the blitz to try to help the guard pick it up.
Leaving the edge rusher to manhandle Pribula untouched.
***
Why am I bringing up the issues with the blocking up front here, in a review of the QB’s play?
Because the QB, standing a few yards behind center in the shotgun, has the best view to see what the defense is doing, and, based on his film study, should be able to use what he sees to help the O line adjust its blocking scheme.
Later in the game, with Virginia down two scores – the outcome no longer in doubt at that point – Pribula, on a third-and-5, changed the play call at the line, but again, too late, and with the play clock ticking, 3 … 2 … 1 …, the confusion, and the rushed snap, resulted in Pribula just chucking a 50/50 ball 20 yards downfield in the direction of Rico Flores Jr., which, predictably, didn’t work out.
Why is it that I can see what WVU is doing presnap, and again, I’m an idiot politics hack, who can’t beat the average fourth-grader at Madden, and the fifth-year Power 4 QB with access to all manner of high-dollar coaching can’t see it?
The QB needs to see things sooner, to get the play call right, and needs to be able to read the defense when it’s snapped.
Pribula seems ill-equipped to do any of the above.
Doesn’t matter that he has elite athleticism; QB is a position where the guy needs to be able to process things quickly.
Pribula is a fifth-year guy, and he is still too slow in terms of his processing to be effective at anything more than wildcat plays.
***
So much was exposed here.
I wrote a piece on the eve of the season about how Pribula ended up at Virginia, his odyssey across four time zones, six campus visits, which began with the coaching staff that knew him best, the one run by James Franklin down the road in Blacksburg, taking a hard pass, going with another former Penn State backup, Ethan Grunkemeyer.
How did we get through the spring, summer, training camp in July and August, and all the way to Week 3 in the regular season, with nobody seeing that Pribula would turn into a deer in headlights against a defense that couldn’t stop a guy who played at Missouri State last year, and is only at Coastal Carolina this year because Coastal Carolina was able to come up with a handful of half-off coupons on a Whopper and medium fries at Burger King to pass as an NIL/revenue-sharing deal?
How did Eli Holstein not get his number called, even late, when WVU opened it up in the fourth quarter?
I know the answer there – Elliott doesn’t want to create a QB controversy three games in.
Whether he likes it or not, he has one anyway.
As it is, Pribula gets the start next week against Delaware, in a game that means nothing going forward, ahead of the start of the rest of the ACC schedule, at Florida State, on the first Saturday of October.
The issues on defense, to get back to what the heck happened on that side of the ball, I can’t explain.
Competitive depth is worthless if the staff doesn’t line guys up in the right spots.
The donors ponied up a lot – I’m told at least $40 million – to give Elliott and Co. this roster, which we all have read about being the most experienced in all of college football.
This $40 million roster just got pantsed by a team running a high school offense and a defense that got stops because our coaching staff was afraid to put the game in the hands of its one seven-figure QB, and was afraid to try to win the game at the risk of creating a media controversy through subbing in its other seven-figure QB.
Speaking as a media guy here, f— the media, and what we might write; if you’re afraid to try to win the game, you’re in the wrong profession.
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Chris Graham
