I remember, back in Year 1, getting upset, a few times, with UVA Football coach Tony Elliott when it seemed he would throw his guys, particularly his QB1, Brennan Armstrong, under the bus, when things weren’t going well, which in Year 1, was often.
It’s Year 5 now, and, credit to TE, he’d have every reason to be rethinking his decision to anoint Beau Pribula as his QB1 back in the spring, based on Pribula’s deer-in-headlights showing in the 38-27 loss to West Virginia last week, but, whatever Elliott might be saying behind the scenes, he’s publicly standing with his guy.
ICYMI
- UVA Football: Trying to figure out what happened with the offense in loss to WVU
- UVA Football: Anatomy of the meltdown that we just witnessed in Charlotte
“What did I see from Beau? Man, his leadership put us in position to tie the ballgame late, you know, made an unbelievable play on fourth down to keep a drive alive to go score,” Elliott told reporters, who, to their credit, gave the coach multiple opportunities to address Pribula’s many shortcomings that were made evident in the WVU game.
Pribula never did look comfortable against the West Virginia defense, with WVU D coordinator Zac Alley giving him multiple looks at all three levels – the D line, the ‘backers and the secondary – to mask for the relative lack of talent that Alley has in his secondary, which was torched by Coastal Carolina for 373 yards through the air in Week 1.
“I think what happened is, we checked to some things based off of what we saw on the front, didn’t take into account what was on the back end, and we made the wrong check, right? That’s going to happen, especially early on in the season,” Elliott said.
Narrator: but Pribula is a fifth-year QB.
Shouldn’t a fifth-year guy be a little more prepared than that?
We’ll leave that one hanging out there.
TE did address one question about the game plan and play-calling, which seemed to emphasize not doing anything too sophisticated through the air, explaining the approach as being:
- one, “strategically, we wanted to keep the ball away from their quarterback, because we knew how explosive he was.”
- and then two, “we knew going against Zac that he was going to be aggressive, they were going to rush, they were going to take chances, and we didn’t want to get into a dropback passing situation.”
Which sounds an awful lot like what Elliott is saying there is, We don’t trust our QB in dropback passing situations.
As you read on, you’ll see Elliott say that out loud himself.
Going forward, Elliott is cognizant that football is a game of copycats; what Zac Alley and the WVU D did to bring the Virginia offense to a standstill after the first quarter is going to be the blueprint for other defensive coordinators, until offensive coordinator Des Kitchings and his staff figure out an answer.
“I know one thing, I’m not panicking about the situation,” Elliott said. “Like, it’s one game, and it was a one-possession game in the fourth quarter, where we wanted to be, right? We got to finish.
“Now, do we have to evaluate and see, OK, what can we do to create some more explosives? We really wanted to lean on the run, which you saw in the first drive, like, the first drive, when we leaned on the run, and we stayed ahead of the chains, right? We could throw the ball, you know, how we wanted to throw the ball.
“But just being able to sit there and drop back and throw it up and have jump balls, I don’t know if we’re built for that. But I think we can do a better job of off the play-action manufacturing some more explosives.”
That comes across to me as doing the same thing that got exposed by WVU and hoping for a different result, but that may just be me thinking that way.
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Chris Graham
