It’s time for Carla Williams to have a Come to Jesus meeting with her handpicked football coach, Tony Elliott, who, if he’s going to stick with Beau Pribula as his starting QB, as he obviously is, either needs to take over the play-calling duties from his offensive coordinator, Des Kitchings, who clearly doesn’t know how to direct an offense led by a QB of Pribula’s limited talents, or … something.
ICYMI
This is three times in four weeks that the Virginia offense bogged down against a defense that otherwise resembles the chairs you set up in the hotel ballroom for the team walkthrough on a Friday night before gameday on Saturday.
The ‘Hoos, in their 28-25 come-from-behind win over Syracuse on Saturday night, could only muster 288 yards against a unit that, a week earlier, against UConn, surrendered 499 yards and 41 points.
Last week, Virginia had 205 yards in a 38-7 loss to a Florida State defense that had already given up 585 yards to SMU and 547 yards to Alabama, then, this week, in a 44-20 loss to Louisville, got gashed for 537 yards.
The West Virginia defense that held Virginia to 354 yards in the 38-27 Mountaineers win on Sept. 19 has, since, been described by its defensive coordinator, Zac Alley, as “the worst defense in college football,” because WVU gave up an average of 593 yards per game in its back-to-back losses to Oklahoma State and Iowa State.
Today, the ‘Neers got touched up for a mere 482 yards in a 52-31 loss to Arizona in Morgantown.
Sensing a pattern there?
Defenses that otherwise evoke Neville Chamberlain in 1938 become, for one week, against Virginia, a Steel Curtain, because it’s obvious to Ray Charles, who, in addition to having been blind, is also, no longer with us, how to defend the UVA offense – stack the box with eight or nine defenders, and dare Pribula to beat you on deep balls.
He did that, once, literally, tonight – connecting with Da’Shawn Martin on a 43-yard TD pass in the third quarter, against one-on-one press coverage.
Pribula was 11-of-19 for 119 yards on the night.
My unofficial tally on his passing game, from a depth perspective:
- at or behind the line of scrimmage: 5-of-5, 34 yards
- passes of 0-9 yards through the air: 4-of-9, 25 yards
- passes of 10-19 yards: 1-of-3, 17 yards
- passes of 20+ yards: 1-of-2, 43 yards
Five attempts of 10+; two completions.
You’re basically telling the opposing D coordinator: we know we can’t beat you deep or even on intermediate throws, so, by all means, crowd the line, stack the box, and make us beat you by playing rugby.
Life won’t get any easier for Pribula with his one reliable receiving threat, Rico Flores, going out tonight with what we have to fear was another ACL injury, given that he ended up on the ground in a heap with a non-contact injury.
It was already just a bunch of Smurfs running around on the perimeter trying to mask that we have nobody with any size to use as a target; Flores, at 6’2”, was, by default, the “big guy” on the edge.
If Flores is out for the duration, this only gets that much more difficult going forward.
Kitchings hasn’t demonstrated an ability to do anything other than what he does, which is, try to force the square peg into the round hole – remember how he inherited the record-setting offense headed up by Brennan Armstrong, Dontayvion Wicks and Lavel Davis that ranked third nationally in total offense in 2021, and turned them into a bottom 20 offense in 2022?
Beau Pribula, if you use him right, can be what Brennan Armstrong was in 2020 and 2021, with his athleticism, but he’s not going to be anything of value if you have him running read-options and throwing screens against eight- and nine-man boxes.
Maybe I’m being too hard here on Des Kitchings – maybe the bigger issue is, Tony Elliott, who won two national titles as a play-caller at Clemson when he had Deshaun Watson and Trevor Lawrence at QB, but, and, no offense to Beau Pribula, Beau Pribula ain’t Deshaun Watson or Trevor Lawrence.
You can win games with a Beau Pribula at QB, but if you make him try to succeed in an offense designed for a #1 NFL Draft pick, sorry, not going to happen, Pribula doesn’t have that skillset.
Which is why I’m addressing this column to, Miss Carla.
Ms. Williams, when you got the job, they called you the football AD, because of your time at FSU and Georgia.
Football is what makes the world go-‘round in your job.
All due respect, but you need to woman up and tell your coach that he needs to grow a pair.
He beat Syracuse tonight because Syracuse was down to its fourth-string quarterback at the end of the night.
Miss Carla, your donors didn’t give you $40 million to field a football team to win five or six games, which is the ceiling if what we have seen over the past four weeks is the final product.
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Chris Graham
