The UVA Football team was 103rd in the nation in red-zone offense going into last week’s game with Louisville, and this isn’t a new issue for Tony Elliott and his offensive coordinator, Des Kitchings.
The ‘Hoos were 122nd nationally in 2022, scoring on 24 of their 33 red-zone possessions, averaging 4.1 points per possession; and in 2023, Virginia was 100th nationally, scoring on 34 of their 43 red-zone possessions, averaging 4.4 points per possession.
After the 24-20 loss to Louisville, the UVA offense is 104th nationally in red-zone scoring, with 21 scores in 27 possessions, averaging 3.8 points per possession.
This is pretty consistently bad, obviously, as is the odd flex that has Virginia leading the nation in made field goals in the red zone, with 11.
The good news is, the offense, at least, is getting into the red zone more regularly – 4.5 times per game in 2024, versus 3.6 times per game in 2023, and 3.3 times per game in 2022.
That’s because the offense, overall, is much more productive this season – averaging 435.0 yards per game in 2024, versus 368.8 yards per game in 2023, and 344.1 yards per game in 2022.
If you didn’t sense this already, everything to this point in this article has been preface.
What I’m getting at here is the decision by Elliott, late in the second quarter, the score tied at 7-7, to leave the offense on the field on a fourth-and-goal from the Louisville 3.
No one in the media corps felt it important enough to ask about after the game, so we don’t know what Elliott’s thinking was there, so we have to imagine that he’d say something about having confidence in his team, and the analytics flip chart suggesting that the win probability increases 2 or 3 percent by going for it as opposed to taking the three there.
On the one hand, it’s hard to quibble with having generic confidence in your team, and for consulting the analytics; but on the other, the flip chart can’t be specific to the UVA offense, because, I mean, look at the numbers I went to pains to lay out above.
Now, I can understand Kitchings having issues in the red zone in 2022 and 2023, when the roster didn’t have a decent pass-catching tight end, which is an essential element in red-zone efficiency.
You need a big guy lining up in the slot to keep defenses honest in the middle of the field in the pass game, and give you another option as a blocker on the edge in the run game.
Kitchings has an NFL-quality tight end now, though, in the form of Tyler Neville, who has 19 catches on 27 targets through six games in 2024.
Having Neville at tight end, and Malachi Fields, a big, athletic, 6’3”, at wideout, should open things up on pass snaps for slot receivers like Kam Courtney and Chris Tyree (when Tyree is healthy), and help spread things out to help create running lanes for the backs, Kobe Pace and Xavier Brown, and Anthony Colandrea on designed QB runs and scrambles.
With a solid lineup of skill guys, and an offensive line that ranks in the top half nationally in pass blocking, and the upper 20 percent in run blocking, there’s no reason that the UVA offense should be so inefficient in the red zone.
I can only imagine that Kitchings is aware that his red-zone offensive play-calling is a weakness, and that he’s spent time the past couple of off-seasons trying to figure out why, and how to fix it.
And yet, here we are.
His play-calling between the 20s, this year, is what has the Virginia offense nearly 100 yards per game better than the 2022 group.
But it still bogs down inside the 20.
Elliott needed to factor that in when he was making his decision on the fourth-and-goal.
The UVA offense should be better in the red zone, and should be good enough to score in those situations.
It’s not right now.
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Chris Graham
