The schedule algorithm was kind to UVA Football coach Tony Elliott, giving his team a decent shot at a 4-0 start before the first bye week.
Yeah, I know, I’m setting the bar high out of the gate for a program that is coming off back-to-back three-win seasons, and a coach who more than a few fans think is heading into a win-or-else season.
But right now, everybody is 0-0, and you don’t lift all those weights and run all those sprints in the spring and summer thinking you’re going to have another losing season.
“I think the perspective and the mindset that we have to have is, every game is the most important game on the schedule. You want to get off to a fast start. We talk about how we want to start each game, we want to get off to a fast start,” Elliott told reporters at the 2024 ACC Football Kickoff in Charlotte on Tuesday.
Sorry, I forgot to issue the coach-speak alert ahead of that one, but the point from Elliott here is well-taken.
Just like you want to get out to a fast start on gameday, you need to have the same approach to the marathon that is a football season.
Virginia opens at home on Aug. 31 with Richmond, an FCS school coming off a 9-4 season in 2023, which included an FCS playoff berth, so, yes, I’ve used the term FCS three times now in this sentence, but Richmond will not be a pushover.
Week 2 has the ‘Hoos heading down to Winston-Salem to face Wake Forest, which actually finished below UVA in the final 2023 ACC standings, if you can believe that, with a 1-7 conference record, and a 4-8 overall mark.
Maryland, which defeated Virginia, 42-14, in College Park on its way to an 8-5 mark last season, comes to Charlottesville in Week 3; and then Week 4 has UVA traveling to Myrtle Beach to face Coastal Carolina, a Group of 5 school that was also 8-5 in 2023.
That’s three games against teams with winning records, and a fourth with a team that is two years removed from an ACC Championship Game appearance, so you probably think I’m crazy to think a 4-0 start is possible.
But it is, if only because the kids think it is.
Asked about the team’s goals for 2024, it was seventh-year senior defensive end Kam Butler who used the words “four-and-oh.”
“First, just to start the season, just go out on a fast start. Obviously, I want to start off 4-0, then roll into that bye week, and just carry on the momentum for the rest of the season,” Butler said.
Starting quarterback Tony Muskett took it up a notch from there.
“I’d be lying if he said the standard wasn’t a bowl game, ACC championship and a spot in that College Football Playoff,” the fifth-year senior said. “I know for a lot of people in years past, that hasn’t been the standard for UVA. We’re trying to be the top program in the country and become the model program. With that comes championships, bowl games, College Football Playoff berths. That’s the standard we’re chasing, so that’s the standard we’re going to set.”
Shoot for the moon, right?
Realistically, you’re happy if UVA is going into that first bye week with a 3-1 record, and then if the ‘Hoos can get to the second bye – after a stretch that includes games with Louisville, Clemson and UNC – at 4-4 going into November.
Figure out a way to get two more wins from among Pitt, Notre Dame, SMU and Virginia Tech, and Virginia gets a game in Fenway or Yankee Stadium on a cold late December early afternoon.
Yay.
But if, somehow, some way, the season starts 4-0, hey, all bets are off at that stage.
Stranger things have happened, is all I’m saying here.
(I’m not inspiring a lot of confidence, am I? Give me credit for trying.)
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Chris Graham
