The UVA offense, in its first five games, averaged 539.6 yards per game; over the last two games, the offense has put up a total of 538 yards.
We know that QB Chandler Morris and lead tailback J’Mari Taylor are dinged up, that the offensive line has had to shuffle guys around due to injuries.
Is it anything more than that, though?
“Offensive football is very rhythmic, right, and then it’s also about being explosive,” said head coach Tony Elliott, who comes from the world of play-calling, which he did for two national champs at Clemson.
The trick to play-calling: the guys on the field have to make plays for the play-caller to look like he knows what he’s doing.
And that includes: the QB making the right read, O linemen making blocks, receivers running their routes, backs hitting the hole at the right angle.
And it’s not just the big plays that count here.
An extra yard on a first-down run, a couple of extra yards to turn a third-and-medium into a third-and-short.
ICYMI
“When you go back and watch the tape, I felt like the guys were playing hard, but we could have strained just a little bit more. I think when you strain a little bit more, you capture some of the inches in the game,” Elliott said.
Inches, in a game measured in yards – the first and most important measure is: 10 yards, which keeps the chains moving.
The Virginia offense was solid in its first five games at keeping the chains moving, converting 57 percent of its third downs, but the past two weeks – 6-of-15 against Louisville, 5-of-15 against Washington State.
The struggles were in the third-and-mediums – between third-and-5 and third-and-9.
Combined over the past two, Virginia was just 2-of-11 in the last two on third-and-medium.
Third-and-longs were similar – just 1-of-11 combined in the last two.
“You got to stay ahead of the chains, so you stay out of the long yardage,” said Elliott, and the numbers for the past two sort of bear him out on what the problem has been.
Virginia averaged 2.4 yards per play on first down in the Louisville game, and while the average on first downs in Washington State seemed to have corrected for the problem – UVA averaged 7.3 yards on first downs in that one – 105 of the 175 yards gained on first down came on five of the 24 first-down plays.
Translation: on the other 19 first-down plays, Virginia averaged 3.7 yards.
Second-and-longs that turn into third-and-mediums have been resulting in punts, fourth-down conversion attempts and field-goal tries.
“But if we’re efficient on first down, more efficient, right, which is the inches that I’m talking about, your third downs are more manageable as opposed to third-and-long,” Elliott said. “And then establishing that rhythm, staying ahead of the chains, right, it allows you to be a little bit more aggressive, maybe takes the aggression out of the defense and the calls that they’re calling. But if you get in the third-and-long, then now you got seven up on the line of scrimmage versus zero coverage, man, it’s hard to defeat that.”
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Chris Graham
