UVA Football coach Tony Elliott seemed to concede that the onside kick that he called for with 3:24 to go had little chance of succeeding.
So, why not kick it deep and try to play defense?
“If you have two timeouts, it’s a different decision,” Elliott tried to explain his thought process to reporters, after the unsuccessful kick that gave UNC the ball at the UVA 23 with 3:24 to go.
Virginia had burned two timeouts on punts earlier in the fourth quarter; the other went with a decision by Elliott and offensive coordinator Des Kitchings on a fourth-and-1 at the UNC 46 to try to draw the Tar Heels offside.
Kick deep or kick short, with no timeouts and 3:24 to go, the defense would need to get a stop to get the ball back for the offense.
At least with a deep kickoff, a stop would not give North Carolina a chance for a field goal to extend what was then a 31-28 lead to 34-28 – necessitating a touchdown from the offense once UVA were to regain possession.
So, there’s that, and then there’s the percentages on the expected success of onside kicks.
I haven’t found anything definitive, but what I’m seeing is a range of 18 to 23 percent.
Carolina, as you knew before you clicked, recovered this one, and ended up with the ball at the UVA 23 after a short return and an offside penalty on the Virginia special teams.
And now, about the burned timeouts: after the fourth-and-1 timeout, Elliott sent the offense back out onto the field, and the drive ended with a 1-yard Ronnie Walker Jr. TD run, so, you could say all’s well that ends well.
I could quibble – did they need to burn a timeout to get things right for the 2-yard run by Walker that picked up the first down?
Why the chicanery with the attempt to draw the D offside?
The UVA offense gained 186 yards on the ground on Saturday.
Why not have confidence that the line would, again, blow the Carolina front off the line of scrimmage?
The timeouts ahead of the punts made no sense whatsoever.
The first came on a fourth-and-2 at the UVA 22 with 11:25 to go. After the timeout, the 42-yard Daniel Sparks punt gave Carolina a first down at its own 36.
Take the delay of game instead of burning the timeout, and assuming a similar distance on the punt, it’s first-and-10 at the 41, a marginally better start.
The second pre-punt timeout came on a fourth-and-10 at the UVA 32 with 6:11 to go.
The Sparks punt after the timeout traveled 43 yards. Josh Downs got 38 of that back on a scintillating return, so even with the timeout, the punt-coverage unit couldn’t get its bearings straightened out enough to pin Carolina inside its 30, or even on its side of the 50.
About the substitution issues that led Elliott to decide to burn the timeouts, he had this to say:
“I was really frustrated with that, because that was just the lack of communication,” he said, and it was obvious to anyone in Scott Stadium paying attention that he was “realty frustrated,” as he vented said frustration at special-teams coordinator Keith Gaither.
“I gotta do a better job with the staff, because we got tons of checks and balances to make sure that we got everybody that we needed,” Elliott said. “Coen (King) got subbed out, and Coen was playing multiple spots, and so there was a miscommunication, but we (coaches) need to have more awareness on the sidelines. Coen, too, (has) got to have some more awareness, to be able to communicate that he was being subbed out to whoever his back up was if you’re subbing out at another position, we just got to do a better job there.”
How about this as a radical thought: he didn’t need to burn either timeout to save five yards of field position on those punts.
It’s hard to imagine that there isn’t at least some discussion each week in game prep on what the response needs to be when the punt team is at risk of a delay-of-game penalty.
It should be automatic: let the official flow the flag.
You get three timeouts per half, and both instances here were with Virginia down two scores.
Those timeouts, it was obvious in each situation, were going to be crucial if the margin could be whittled down to a single score.
Much more so than the five yards of field position saved were going to matter.
Let’s close this circle, with Elliott taking us back to the decision to try the onside kick.
“Those are costly because if you have those two timeouts, with three as a change on the game, you don’t have to onside kick. You kick it deep, and you give the defense e a chance to see if you can force a stop and then make them drive the field or in the game,” Elliott said.
“When you have to go and onside kick, the percentage of getting an onside kick are definitely not in your favor, but if you have two timeouts, it’s a different decision.”
He didn’t need to onside kick, didn’t need to burn the timeouts on punts, didn’t need to do any of it.
Elliott blundered his team out of timeouts, and that proved costly in another close loss.
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Chris Graham
