Beau Pribula, the new QB1 at Virginia, acknowledged, in the aftermath of his team’s 34-8 squash match win over NC State on Saturday, that what UVA Football coach Tony Elliott had told reporters a few minutes earlier was correct, that Elliott and offensive coordinator Des Kitchings can’t rely on having Pribula run 15 times a game going forward.
Maybe next time out, Pribula said, the game plan will be for him to drop back to pass more than the 11 attempts we saw in the box score.
Up it to 14, to be fair, and accurate – Pribula scrambled twice, and was sacked once.
ICYMI
I wrote after the game that I wanted to get a question to TE in the postgame presser to gauge his thinking on if he would have thought going in that his team would end up running on 57 of its 68 snaps, but I’m not cool enough, still, to get called on – maybe one day.
My best guess: he would have conceded to thinking going in that Kitchings would have called runs on 65, maybe 70 percent of the snaps.
The thinking that we’ll maybe see Elliott and Kitchings open up the playbook for Norfolk State planted by Pribula – I don’t see it; there’s no need.
If you can pummel an ACC team that had designs a few days ago on competing for the conference title with 57 runs on 68 snaps, you run the ball down the throats of an FCS team that went 1-11 a year ago.
Why? You don’t need to show West Virginia, the opponent in Week 3, anything in terms of what you can do through the air.
For that matter, I’m not sure TE and DK need to game-plan too much to get us past WVU, which is picked to finish in the middle of the bottom half of the Big 12, after going 4-8 in 2025.
Keep things vanilla past WVU, and they can get all the way to the game at Florida State in October without having had to do more than show the fastball.
Which may be necessary anyway: one thing I fear after this past Saturday, the only thing, that is, given how complete that effort was, has to do with the wideout room.
After seeing the wideouts in action, I’m not sold like I was with last year’s group, which had Trell Harris, Cam Ross and Jahmal Edrine as a productive Big 3.
The wideouts weren’t needed on Saturday, given how thoroughly the O line controlled the line of scrimmage against the overmatched Pack front six.
I worry about the missing pieces out there – the lack of a literally big target, like an Edrine or a Malachi Fields; the way we needed to put out a missing person notice on the tight ends, who had a cumulative two targets on the day on Saturday.
Rico Flores Jr., the 6’2” UCLA transfer who had to miss the opener with a lingering hamstring issue, could fit in there, once he’s healthy.
I wouldn’t feel the need to push the issue there.
Make ‘em keep guessing on the shape of the slider and the dip on the changeup as long as possible.
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Chris Graham
