UVA lost two one-score games in 2023 because it gave up a punt block that ended up scoring a touchdown for the other side.
You’d think that would be a focus for special-teams coach Keith Gaither, and that you wouldn’t see another punt block again anytime soon.
So, when Virginia, facing a fourth-and-8 near midfield, lined up to punt with eight seconds left in the first half at Wake Forest last weekend, it seemed pretty clear what the direction to the punt unit would be.
Guys up front, block, and Daniel Sparks, the punter, you, kid, you need to get it out of there, because the only way Wake can score here is to block the kick and return it for a TD.
We got lucky on that last part.
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Deuce Alexander streaked from the gunner position past the edge and the second line of blockers to get the ball of Sparks’ foot, but fortunately for Virginia, it didn’t go backwards, just sideways, and the Deacs recovered the ball at the UVA 39, but with just two seconds on the clock.
There was no damage in terms of the scoreboard, but that was providence, in what turned into a 31-30 Virginia win.
Very well could have been, and maybe should have been, another one-score loss for the good guys in a game with a massive special-teams blunder.
“The way it’s designed is, we can’t block them all. The operation time has to, where we did not do a good job as coaches, is really stress the point of, hey, let’s one-step punt this and get it off,” head coach Tony Elliott said Tuesday.
I’d noted as much in my Live Coverage column during the game, that it seemed to me that the fault for the blocked punt should go to Sparks, who took his sweet time getting rid of the ball.
Credit to Elliott here for not throwing his guy under the bus.
“We were kind of in the moment just making sure we had everybody up there. We could have done a better job of just really stressing how quickly we’ve got to punt off, and just very similar to the last punt of the game. So, it was kind of the same situation,” Elliott said.
At least there was a lesson-learned aspect to the block. As Elliott noted, there was a similar situation late in the game.
After Virginia had taken the 31-30 lead, Sparks had to go in to punt from the UVA 36, and Wake, with the clock inside the minute mark, sent the house at him.
Sparks one-stepped the punt, got it up and away, and with nobody back to stop its progress, got 56 yards on the kick with the roll, with UVA downing the ball at the Wake 5.
“We corrected it, we got the ball off, and it ended up being a big play,” Elliott said.
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Chris Graham
