Virginia skirted by the past three weeks with defensive touchdowns, a late safety, a stop on a two-point play in OT.
On Saturday at Cal, the ‘Hoos dominated, outgaining the Golden Bears by 193 yards, while gashing the Cal D for 194 yards on the ground.
But they still had to skirt by, winning 31-21, the final margin punctuated by a final-minute picksix, the game closer than it should have been because of points the Cavaliers left off the board in the red zone, and because Cal took advantage of Virginia mistakes to score two short-field TDs.
The key sequence
The game came down to a two-play sequence inside of a minute to go, with UVA clinging to a 24-21 lead.
With a fourth-and-2 at the Cal 14, and Cal out of timeouts, Virginia coach Tony Elliott decided to go for the first down and the win.
The pass from Chandler Morris intended for tight end Sage Ennis was tipped at the line by defensive end Derek Wilkins, giving Cal the ball back with a glimmer of hope, and 45 seconds to get into field-goal range.
For what it matters, I go for that first down 100 times out of 100.
Field goal still leaves it a one-score game.
Get the first down, the game is over.
On the next play, the true freshman Cal QB, Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele, was picked off by linebacker Kam Robinson at the Cal 35; Robinson ran through the middle of the field and to the right sideline basically untouched into the end zone to complete his second picksix of the season.
KAM. ROBINSON.
📺 ESPN2 pic.twitter.com/Opa5lAagD2
— Virginia Football (@UVAFootball) November 1, 2025
He could have taken a knee, and UVA would have won, but not covered; the ‘Hoos were 4.5-point favorites.
The only people who care about that part of the game-sealing play either way are the degenerates who had money on the betting line.
For UVA Football fans who just had their hearts and souls on the lifeline, the picksix was the finishing touch on a 31-21 win that has their 15th-ranked Cavs 8-1 overall, 5-0 in the ACC, and still on the march for an improbable berth in the ACC Championship Game next month.
After winning by three (in OT), two (on a late safety) and one (stopping a two-point conversion in OT) in the past three weeks, a 10-point win cemented by a final-minute picksix feels like a cakewalk.
And really, this one should have been.
Before the drama
UVA scored on its first three possessions, but the middle score was a short field goal by Will Bettridge after the offense stalled, having set itself up with a first-and-goal at the Cal 5.
It was 17-7 at the break, with the Cavaliers having a 246-106 advantage in total offense.
After the D forced a three-and-out, and Cam Ross returned a Cal punt to the edge of the red zone, the offense went three-and-out, and Elliott dialed up a fake field goal on a fourth-and-6 at the Cal 19.
Daniel Sparks, the holder, who has been in and out of the lineup with a hip flexor injury the past few weeks, took the snap, got up to run, and was stopped a yard short.
Maybe not the brightest idea there; but was that Elliott showing a lack of confidence in Bettridge, after he yanked a 48-yarder at the end of the first half?
Cal would eventually flip the field, and make it a one-score game on a trick play that saw tight end Mini Mason, a high school QB, connect with tailback Kendrick Raphael for a 42-yard TD.
Virginia answered quickly, going 75 yards in 11 plays, getting the score to 24-14 on what went into the scorebook as a 3-yard TD run by tight end Eli Wood, who caught a pass from Morris that traveled slightly in the direction of being a lateral.
Sparks shanked a fourth-quarter punt 14 yards, setting up the Cal offense at the UVA 25, and setting up a quick two-play drive that got the score to 24-21 with a lot of time – 12:57 – left on the clock.
The teams traded punts, back-and-forth, back-and-forth again, before the Virginia offense took over at its own 19 with 5:20 on the clock, hoping to get a couple of first downs to bleed some clock.
A 26-yard pass to Ross on third-and-6 helped, and then J’Mari Taylor, who had 105 yards and two TDs on the ground on the day, got a most important one-yard run to convert a third-and-1 on the edge of the red zone around the two-minute timeout.
One more first down, and that would be a wrap.
It came down to the fourth-and-2, and that pass fell incomplete, ahead of the picksix that meant more to the gamblers than the rest of us.
Survive, and advance
It was nice to see the Virginia offense, which had averaged just 265.7 yards per game over its past three games, finish with 456 yards.
And to see Morris, who had averaged 176.0 yards per game with a 59.3 percent completion rate over the past three, put up nice counting numbers – 24-of-36 (66.7 percent completion rate) for 262 yards, with an additional 49 sack-adjusted yards on the ground.
The defense, which was largely responsible for the past three wins, was again solid – holding Cal to 263 yards, including a net 8 yards rushing, with five sacks and two INTs.
It’s almost like there was some karma at play here: UVA’s last three opponents had won the stats battles, but Virginia got the wins by making the plays.
This one played like a three-score Virginia win, but Cal was the one who made the big plays to keep it close.
The difference: a Virginia team that has shown that it knows how to win games did what it needed to do when it needed to do it, once again.
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Chris Graham
