On the one hand, Virginia’s 31-24 loss at #11 Louisville on Thursday was … just weird.
It felt like something that a wrestling booker had a hand in, with the odd penalties, flags being picked up, the no-call on the kill shot by the Louisville DB on Perris Jones.
That’s how you lay out a match putting a heel over while trying to protect the babyface.
I hate writing about the refs, but damn, if there’s been one game in my life where it felt like the fix was in, this was it.
And then, on top of that, there was the status of Jones, who was motionless on the field after taking that helmet-to-helmet hit from Cam’Ron Kelly for what seemed like forever, days before the anniversary of the shooting deaths of three UVA football players that have cast an obvious pall on the Virginia program.
I lay that out to say, it felt like the ACC had its finger on the scales, and the UVA kids had a lot on their mind in the fourth quarter after watching one of their guys … who knows, we didn’t know at the time what had happened to Jones, but it looked bad, borderline life-threatening there for a few minutes.
OK, that all said, it was still a football game, and there’s stuff that happened in the game, the fifth one-score loss for Virginia this season, that needs to be broken down, because it’s stuff that keeps happening.
The biggest thing: the blocked punt for a TD in the second quarter.
Would you believe that this is the second time this season that Virginia lost a one-score game in which it allowed a touchdown on a blocked punt?
That’s bad enough, that it happened in the 36-35 loss to JMU back in Week 2, and happened again.
But even last night, Louisville almost got through to UVA punter Daniel Sparks on his first punt.
When that kind of thing happens, a competent special-teams coach looks at what happened, says out loud, thinks to himself, whatever, hey, they found a flaw in our blocking scheme, and then fixes whatever the flaw was in the blocking scheme.
Keith Gaither, whose special teams were so bad a year ago that he probably shouldn’t have been retained as it was, didn’t fix the issue, and Louisville, the next time it was in punt-block, got to Sparks, blocking the kick, leading to a Cardinals score.
This kind of thing simply can’t happen, either in-game, when you’ve just barely avoided disaster, or even just in-season.
If you have a punt blocked in a season, that should be it – just the one.
You fix it, and it never happens again, and really, nobody comes close; that’s how much you’ve got everybody in on what you need to do.
The other things are little things that, as has been the case all season long, ended up adding up to being bigger things.
The fumble on an ill-advised reverse in plus territory that took away one scoring opportunity is one.
Why go trick-play there?
And then later, a reverse wideout pass inside the 10 almost ended in disaster, with the pass attempt from Malik Washington to Grant Misch thisclose to being picked off.
You’ve got a QB throwing for 300+, and you need to get cute?
Another: the decision to try a field goal on fourth-and-short on the edge of the red zone late in the second quarter that ended up being no good.
Will Bettridge has been very much hit-or-miss this season anyway. When you’re 2-7 playing at #11, with nothing to lose, no one would have issue with you if you decide to go for it and come up short.
You’d be showing confidence in your guys doing that.
One bit of credit for the staff: Tony Elliott and his hires don’t have a reputation for their in-game adjustments, but the offense, in particular, was at its best in the second half, putting up 307 yards on a Louisville D that hadn’t given up 300 in a game since the end of September.
That’s a positive.
The comeback from a 14-0 halftime deficit to take a 24-17 lead at #11 is a positive.
The negatives: the blocked punt leading to a TD, getting too cute with the play-calls leading to points coming off the board, the head coach going with a 50/50 kicker from 40+ instead of putting game pressure on the ranked team.
There’s a lot of reasons Virginia is 2-8 this season and 5-15 over the last two.
The devil is in the details.
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Chris Graham
