function and dysfunction

Let's tell a tale of two programs.

The baseball team - profiled last week as they kicked off a road sweep of the Tar Heels - has lifted themselves off the NCAA bubble and is looking at a probable 2 seed in the tourney.  They're just about out of contention in the ACC tournament after a bullpen meltdown against Miami - to get to the final they'll need to win out and hope Miami loses out - but even getting where they are now has been a pretty gutty performance.  Especially Tuesday, when they mercy-ruled Georgia Tech right out of Durham.

Sign of a healthy program.  (Figuratively speaking.)  They might've not made the ACC tournament at all.  Then they might've not made the pool play.  Instead, over a four-game stretch, they dominated against supposedly level competition.  The announcers during the UNC series couldn't stop talking about how UVA looked like a team ready for the postseason while UNC looked flat and uncompetitive.

It's a mindset, perpetuated by a coach who knows how, when, and why to push the buttons, and enabled by veterans with expectations.  There will be 16 regional hosts.  UVA will not be one, but one of them will be awfully chagrined to see the Hoos come to town.  And that doesn't mean UVA will be the favorite to come out of whatever regional, but if someone else does, they'll feel just a little like they dodged one.

There are, of course, obstacles, starting with that aforementioned bullpen.  It's thin because there are two starters laid up with injury and thus two guys who, in a four-game (or God forbid, five-game) regional, will be starting when ordinarily they wouldn't have.  The best shot we have is to just go 3-0; if it stretches out against the 1 seed, we'll run out of depth before they do.  But even in a down year, UVA commands respect with its play.

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Contrast that to everyone's favorite facepalm inducer.  Remember, the football team went 5-7 last year.  That's bad, but on the surface, it's not that bad.  It's not like, Duke-under-Ted-Roof levels of walking, talking incompetence.  But that's what it feels like.

Normally a team with a pretty good share of upperclassmen coming off a 5-win season would be expected to improve and go bowling.  But if UVA's not picked last again in the Coastal by every observer from Boston to Miami, it'll be an upset.  This is a team that doesn't know how to succeed, coached by someone who just mashes the buttons randomly hoping to land a hit.  As you might've learned from playing Mortal Kombat growing up, that works just often enough to have you keep trying it.  Unless you're going against someone who knows what they're doing.  Then it just becomes a slaughter.

This week the dysfunction came erupting to the surface when two - two! - quarterbacks announced their intention to take the hell off.  One eventually stayed after a meeting with the coaches to "clear the air," or beg him to come back, or whatever.  The aftermath of all this saw two incredibly sobering facts come to light.  I can't take credit for either, but I repeat them here anyway:

-- 2011-2012 was the last time the UVA quarterback who started the last game of one season also started the first game of the next season.  It won't happen this year, making three offseasons in a row UVA has either benched or lost its previous starter.

-- Not one quarterback recruited by Mike London has finished his career at UVA as a quarterback.  Michael Strauss, Mike Rocco, David Watford, Phillip Sims, and Greyson Lambert all transferred out.  Brendan Marshall and Miles Gooch switched positions.  Jake McGee switched positions and transferred out.**  And Corwin Cutler had to be convinced to stay.

We'll see if Matt Johns can last two more years.  Nobody else left on the roster has ever thrown a college pass.

It's not really worth wasting much more time on the whole situation.  I had plans for a much longer diatribe, but there's no point anymore.  Either you already know Mike London is a complete drooling bungler when it comes to the subject of developing and managing quarterbacks, or you've got denial issues sort of the way Hitler insisted the war was still winnable in April 1945.  Some men you just can't reach.

Cutler's about-face doesn't really fix anything.  It's certainly helpful.  Johns has two years, free and clear, to do something with the job, after which Cutler will be badly needed if he fends off Nick Johns and Sonny Abramson.  Patience on Cutler's part gives him a chance to be The Future.  Assuming any or all of them stick around, which is no guarantee.  But Cutler is essentially a tool in the toolbox.  For a man who needs an instruction manual for a hammer, that's not much use.  Cutler stays, but so does the dysfunction, until the broom finally comes out.

**That might not be fair since he was never really recruited as a QB, but hey, while we're piling on, let's just point out that the only really good tight end London recruited did in fact transfer, which is not exactly a sign of a healthy program.

flip

I could've told Louisville fans that Bobby Petrino's QB switch wasn't going to work.  You could've told them.  Maybe you even did.  It was obvious because we've seen that movie before.  Louisville fans, they've been a bit spoiled what with Teddy Bridgewater running the show lately, and I think they've noticed.  Reggie Bonnafon wasn't going to stop Max Valles from channeling Brent Urban, nor make Daquan Romero and Anthony Harris any worse at sniffing out screens, nor make Eli Harold turn off beast mode.

Watching someone else go through the quarterback gyrations, though, that by itself is satisfying enough.  Especially since our own problems should be solved.  (Should be, because the history of this staff doesn't allow for absolute pronunciations where this position is concerned.)  One QB controversy starts, another (mostly) ends - such is the rankings-shuffling nature of college football in September.  Just like that, the script is flipped.

I don't know if this is only temporary.  It feels like the kind of win that you could point to, months later, and say, "that was the turning point, right there."  It also feels like it could be fools' gold - but just the feeling that you did strike gold is good enough for now, and in deference to the pure positivity that should emanate from being 1-0 in the ACC after being 0-8, negative details are excised from this post and put off til later.

Last week, some Louisville sportswriter wrote a boilerplate column that called UVA "Northwestern with a larger stadium and lovelier campus."  The whole thing would've been infuriating if it weren't so damn irrefutable.  That's pretty much how folks have been viewing UVA lately, whether we wanted to believe it or not.  Now instead of the ACC's worst team facing the #21 team in the country, UVA has more votes than Louisville in the media poll this week.  Flip.

The general feeling these days is that there are seven teams in the Coastal and any one of them could win it.  Actually, what interests me is this: Rare is the year in which all teams in a division are bowl-eligible (it's only happened once since 2002, in the ACC Atlantic) and it could certainly happen this year.  For UVA to hold up its end of the bargain, the upcoming BYU game is a big one.  Win it, and UVA should only need to find two more wins in ACC play (Kent State is horrendous.)  Lose it, and we need three - the difference looms large.

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Predictions time.

-- No UVA RB tops 70 yards rushing.  Correct, as Kevin Parks came closest with 66.  Parks's run to seal up the win, though, was Manly Man Football at its finest.  Have I mentioned I'm a fan?

 -- Canaan Severin builds on his Richmond game, with at least five more catches.  Severin had a nice little four-catch game, but only managed 19 yards.  I probably got a little carried away with what constitutes a good game, but the fact remains that Severin looks like he's starting to live up to his four-star rating.

 -- Greyson Lambert begins to take hold of the QB job, with stats that start to separate him from Johns. For one, he throws no picks while Johns throws at least one.  Well, Lambert threw a pick, but I'm gonna break this up into two predictions because I think I deserve credit for the the first one.  So that's a make and a miss.  But a pretty big make.

 -- Will Gardner completes 2/3 of his passes or more.

 -- UVA's sack numbers fall to no more than two.  On both of these, it's obvious I didn't give the pass defense enough credit.  Gardner was something like 1-for-13 at one point.  The Hoos had three sacks, two picks, and eleven PBUs.  They're on pace to break up 92 passes.  And everyone is getting in on the sacktion; Henry Coley, in case you're wondering, is on pace for 24 TFLs and 14 sacks.  This is a good-ass defense, which, if they're not careful, might start to get some major national recognition for it.

 -- Louisville has at least twice as many passing yards as running yards.  Now you're talking.  I mean, Louisville's pass offense wasn't much, but their run game was stuffed - this prediction comes true even when removing sacks from the equation.

Prediction stats on the year:

5-for-13 specifics
1-1 straight up
0-1 ATS

There are some negatives to take away that'll leak out probably in next week's game preview.  Til then, bask in the ACC-undefeatedness of it all, and send a little love East Carolina's way while you're at it.

$#!T or get off the pot

Sweeping narratives about the just-completed game are usually the order of the day on a Sunday, but this was Richmond and absolutely nothing took place that hasn't been foreseen in the last few months.  So, let's try a position paper instead.

To tell the truth, there's no way to tell from the statistics of two games whether Greyson Lambert or Matt Johns should be the starting quarterback for the rest of the season.  There was no telling from the Richmond game, and there was no telling by listening to the announcers.  (That is, in the postgame highlights posted on ESPN.  During the game they had inexplicably anointed Johns after a few plays, which I think was the result of not having an understanding of the coaches' plan.  It's not the first time there's been a substitution at quarterback that the announcers read way, way, way too much into.)

But there's a wealth of information that the coaches have access to that we don't.  Game film, sideline demeanor, command of the offense, practice habits, and so on.  This is the fundamental reason in the first place, why there's such a thing as fans bitching on message boards that so-and-so should get more playing time when he doesn't.  The people with the highest possible level of information are the coaches.

So, it's time to put it to use.  I realize that the difference between Lambert and Johns doesn't appear to be much right now - it's small enough that I don't even have a preference.  But I'm not the one being paid millions of dollars and a BMW to make those decisions.  When it comes to job duties, filling out the QB depth chart is one where London and his offensive assistants have been singularly derelict.  But now he's in a dogfight for his job and a conference opponent is coming to town.  When, if not now, is a good time to make a goddam choice?

If there's still an OR on the depth chart come Monday when it's released, it'd be another very strong point in the case for a change at the top.  Neither Johns nor Lambert are going to hurt the team as the starter - or at least, not any worse than the other.  What does hurt is having a coach who's incapable of making the biggest decision a coach has to make.

I had been thinking that there'd be some optimism to be found in the passing stats, where Lambert got way more attempts (thus, fueling the idea that he was a little higher up the food chain) but the stats and my memory fooled me.  What actually happened is that Lambert got the 1st and 4th quarters (until garbage time) while Johns got the 2nd and 3rd.  Johns just ended up with way better field position most of the time.

So it's basically back to square one.  Let's hope London decides to put on the big boy pants this week: pick someone, give him a reasonable leash, and worry less about hurting feelings and more about doing the stuff he's getting paid to do.

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A quick prediction review is in order, as is tradition:

-- Both Johns and Lambert throw for over 150 yards, and their final stats are not very distinguishable from each other.  Half right is a zero the way I usually account for things.  Actually, the offense sputtered, badly.  Of six touchdowns, one was defensive and only one was scored without the benefit of good field position, which I tend to define as starting beyond one's own 35.  I'm not impressed.

-- A UVA receiver grabs at least 8 receptions.  This would've gone hand-in-hand with the expected semi-explosion of offense, and the closest we got was Darius Jennings's 4.  No other WR had more than 2.

-- Taquan Mizzell finally breaks the long gain we've been waiting to see - 50 yards or more.  He compiled a total of 16 all day long.  Here's a sobering thought: UVA's rushing game was barely better against Richmond than non-scholarship Morehead State's.

-- Rocco's presence is basically a non-issue, with Strauss throwing at least 2.5 times more passes than him.  Right on, as Strauss tried 36 passes to Rocco's 11 - and most of the latter's came with the game slipping badly away from the Spiders.

-- UVA picks up at least four more sacks.  Troof.  The official-site box score credits the Hoos with four sacks, two of which turned into turnovers.  The pass rush is one thing we have going here that makes opposing coaches crap their Jockeys.

-- Richmond's offense is held scoreless in the first half, but not the whole game.  Sooo close.  The Spiders got a field goal on their first drive and that was it for the half.  This is what I get for going too far out on a limb (and why I consider a 40% success rate pretty good.)

The season starts off 2-for-6, and 1-0 straight up on score predictions.  Not that picking us to beat Richmond is very hard to do.

worst-case scenario

Last week I wrote about best-case and worst-case scenarios for the season, albeit summarily.  Good thing, too, because if I'd wasted too many words talking about worst-case, I'd have just been reminded how much more elegantly it can be said by moving pictures.  This weekend was designed purely to make UVA fans go insane.

Play well enough to win, but lose?  Check.  Fire up the quarterback shitstorm all the way to 11?  Check.  Throw in one hair-pulling mistake, and the only thing missing is a season-ending injury to some really important player.  But don't give anyone any ideas.  Henry Coley's knees thank you in advance.

(As a substitute, we can just go ahead and go 5-7 this season now, so that the schedule-for-success crowd is given a whole free offseason to never shut up.  That should complete my trip to the nuthouse.)

The real way to see this game, though, is however you damn well please.  If you're the Kool-Aid type, the defense was fantastic against a hyped-up quarterback and the quarterbacks at least provided a reason to believe someone will be worth a damn; plus, our offense outscored UCLA's.  If you're more the Eeyore persuasion, we beat a pretty damn good team last year to start the season and then watched every other coach actually coach the season while our staff bumbled around and forgot to make any adjustments; plus, the game was more a reason to crash-sell all your UCLA stock than to start buying UVA's.  You wouldn't be the only one thinking that.

I'm pretty confident in saying UVA will get its first win next week.  Beyond that, we learned nothing whatsoever about this team, mainly because most every unit performed about as expected.  The D-line was a terror and the linebackers made hell of plays.  The O-line was a steaming pile of.... yeah.  The receivers looked good sometimes and lousy sometimes.  About the only unexpected thing was the QBs, which of course answered nothing either.

So, check back, I guess, in two weeks, after the game I'm dubbing The World's Most Artificial Rivalry.  We'll have to wait that long to find out who the quarterback really is.  If we still don't know, watch out, because the season is then likely to be one full-bore controversy.

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-- I could probably devote a full post and a half to what happened under center the other day, but let's see if I can make this compact enough to read.  Having read about the game before I saw it (I was traveling, and my limit for keeping away from the score before I can get to my Tivo is overnight) I wasn't surprised to see Matt Johns come in.  I was surprised that Greyson Lambert didn't suck.  I mean, that's why you'd pull a quarterback, right?  Here's my theory, actually: London did this to fire up the offense, not because of anything in particular that he saw or didn't see out of Lambert, and the move having worked beyond his wildest dreams, he was left with no choice but to keep this going.

I mean, only one of those three UCLA touchdowns can even remotely be pinned on Lambert (although the third one is 100% his.)  Lambert played just fine.  I wish the playcalling would've asked more of him, but he was fine.

The reason this is now a problem is that Johns was way more than "fine."  Johns was actually good.  Really good, sometimes.  I mean, those touchdown throws.  Give a ton of credit to Andre Levrone and Darius Jennings for fine catches in tough coverage, but those throws were professional throws.  Johns just plain looked comfortable - more so than Lambert, even with the O-line failing to protect either one of them.  The one thing that makes this not really a fair fight is the playcalling, which got a lot gutsier with Johns in the game, and I don't just mean deeper throws.  Johns also rolled out of the pocket at least once, which Lambert was not asked to do.

I fully expect to see both of them against Richmond.  There's no way the coaches can make a proper decision now.  Johns clearly outplayed Lambert; in fact, Johns outplayed UCLA's Brett Hundley (though Hundley was let down by his receivers quite a bit.) and there's no way to toss that aside and hand Lambert the ball without a qualm now.  But there's no way to throw away all of spring and fall camp without a qualm either.  It's the last thing I ever wanted to see, but we're just gonna have to fire up the competition again.  And they'll probably both play very well against Richmond, because Richmond.

-- It's amazing how one team can have such a terror for a defensive line and such a flimsy offensive line.  The only decent running plays came on misdirections and from Kevin Parks's YAC-generating thunder thighs.  But the D-line - wowz.  David Dean was double-teamed almost the whole game, I think, and Hundley was flustered not just because he was pressured, but because he could never be too sure where the pressure would come from.  Some of that is the mad blitzer in the coaches' box, but the line didn't really need the help to make a collapsy mess of Hundley's pocket.

-- I know player safety is important and all but a 15-yard penalty for putting your helmet back on and continuing to play is a truly fart-brained rule.

-- No major new wrinkles in the offense, which isn't surprising when breaking in a new quarterback, but I did like the changing tempo.  Maybe that counts as a major wrinkle.  I think that'll be a plus going forward, though; there's no need to try to be Oregon, and race race race around the field, but a little unpredictability helps.

-- I'm not actually kidding.  Please solve this quarterback thing soon.

the recruit: Nick Johns

Name: Nick Johns
Position: QB
Hometown: Washington, DC
School: Gonzaga
Height: 6'3"
Weight: 220

24/7: 86, three stars; #21 P-QB, DC #6
ESPN: 78, three stars; #31 P-QB, DC #7, East #79
Rivals: 5.7, three stars; #17 P-QB, DC #4
Scout: three stars; #27 QB

Other offers: Maryland, NC State

UVA whiffed, and whiffed badly, in recruiting the so-called DMV hotbed in 2014.  Unless you count Purcellville and Fredericksburg as part of the region - quite a stretch, really - the first commitment from the area came in January, and that was Cory Jones, a two-star flipped from Toledo.  UVA's recruiting efforts were a near-total failure in what should be a pipeline the size of the Trans-Alaska.

Mike London got an early start on reversing that this year, with a springtime commitment from a top WCAC program.  The WCAC - which includes Good Counsel and DeMatha - is an extremely high-profile league, to the extent that any commitment to any school east of the Mississippi gets fans of that school boasting about "establishing a pipeline."  It's generally not easy to pull anyone out of there because you're constantly fighting off the sharks.

Nick Johns is quarterback at a Gonzaga program that's moved past "up-and-coming" stage and has turned what used to be a big two in that league into a big three.  There were a lot more schools "showing interest" than actually offering, because round about the time you might start to offer a talented quarterback from a high-profile school (which is to say, his junior season) Johns broke his collarbone.  UVA extended their offer in the summer of 2013, and the only other school to make a serious push was Maryland, who would certainly have had plenty of familiarity with him.  (NC State offered too, in March, but that didn't go far.)  A fair amount of big names were testing the waters here too, but wanted to see Johns in person before taking the plunge.

Johns is unequivocally a pro-style passer with good size at 6'3", and ESPN even lists him at 6'4".  He plays with good polish already - he hit the camp circuit hard in the spring and Rivals often mentioned his arm strength and "ability to make all the throws," particularly on sideline routes.  His mobility is good for his size; he's definitely not going to be confused with a dual-threat quarterback, but he's got good pocket mobility.  His highlight tapes have a larger number than you'd expect of escape throws.  Elite arm strength isn't quite there; the phrase that comes to mind is "good enough."  ESPN called him "a slight pusher" and this is borne out in those highlight tapes: his release point is a little bit odd, probably a bit early and behind where it should be.  His arm strength will appear to improve if he can learn to release the ball a little later and more out ahead of his body, extending a his arm a touch more, and keep his accuracy the same.

In the big-picture intro post, I wrote that neither taking a quarterback or not taking a quarterback would surprise me, and then brought up Johns as the kind of name who'd be good enough that the coaches would take a QB despite already having five.  UVA will now go into 2015 with six on the roster if there's no attrition, which is a lot but is also fine by me, as I've at times lamented the fact that we have never had a decent QB conveyor belt going.  We could reverse that trend if Greyson Lambert turns out to be the real deal this year; we'll have the depth to make it happen especially if Corwin Cutler redshirts.  Taking a quarterback in every recruiting class is not at all a bad policy, and if you find one you like and can zero in on, you absolutely do it.

This is a roundabout way of saying that Johns won't be needed in 2015 or even 2016 unless a coaching change nukes the depth chart.  In the best-case scenario, Lambert will be a three-year starter and graduate after 2016, which would be Johns's redshirt freshman season.  Cutler would be a redshirt junior by then with two years to make his mark, and only then would Johns pop up on the conveyor belt.  That's how it works with good programs.

We'll also have to consider competition from later recruiting classes.  Johns is sort of in a limbo world in the recruiting rankings - lower-ranked guys usually look like they're headed for clipboard central, and it usually takes a higher ranking to be called the Future Of The Program.  Johns, having been to a lot of camps, has managed to earn very consistent rankings from the gurus, and I think his offers and interest also line up with those rankings too - they're just about what you'd expect given what he's shown so far and the collarbone injury.  Based on the evidence so far, we have a pretty good picture of Johns from the tools that are supposed to give us these pictures.  A good season this year, which is very possible as he's surrounded by a lot of talent, could conceivably give him a fourth star.  (It might also attract vultures should the coaching transition come to pass - as a quarterback, in the WCAC no less, Johns should be considered a much higher risk than the average recruit to see extra attention.)  But if the best case is Johns hopping the conveyor belt, the worst (obviously besides him leaving at some point) is that he provides a solid option and a blanket of security during the same kind of turbulent times the program has already seen at QB for the past decade.

weekend review

Woo-hoo, I partook in the annual ritual of watching the no-defense festival that is the annual loss to Duke on the lacrosse field.  Well, I take it back somewhat: not every game against them is completely without defense.  We never play it, but sometimes Duke does.  Sometimes we lose by a lot and sometimes by a little, but one thing is usually a given: Duke will wear out the netting, usually around 15 times.  The last time there was a low-scoring affair against those guys: 2007, a 7-6 loss for us.

This happened to be one of those days where UVA could keep pace somewhat.  UVA has been in the game in every one of its losses but the Notre Dame one; even more interesting, we've been able to play any kind of game the opponent wants.  Defensive slugfest?  Sure.  Shootout?  Sure.  And therein, I think, lies part of the problem.  When have we seen UVA impose its will on the other team?  Only in games against much lesser opposition, and even then you saw problems against Rutgers and Richmond, to name a few.

Goalie play took a dump, of course, which didn't help.  I was surprised to see that Duke's Luke Aaron failed to reach a .500 save percentage, because it seemed like he was saving basically everything, which may have been only in comparison to our own goalies, who saved nothing.  That's "goalies" because Matt Barrett got yanked for Dan Marino, who was just as bad.

I'm not prepared to guarantee UVA will make the NCAA tournament because I'm not prepared to guarantee this team can beat Bellarmine; they absolutely should and I think they will, but the flaws are such that you just never know.  How often do they look like they know what they're doing?  I'd say, not much.  The offense doesn't know whether to be patient or to run'n'shoot; the defense doesn't know whether to sit back or be aggressive, and they try all of them at various times and don't get consistent results.  The coaches have tried all they can think of to win faceoffs and have resorted to an apparently random pattern of choosing the ineffective short stick or the ineffective long stick.  Likewise they can't decide who should run the offense from the X; they don't seem to have confidence in either Owen van Arsdale or Ryan Lukacovic, and have equally inconsistent substitution patterns there as well, to say nothing of the midfield.  The whole operation stinks of throwing crap against the wall just to see what sticks.

I don't think this season is a total loss.  Any time you beat Hopkins and Syracuse you've succeeded at a portion of the goals that UVA lacrosse sets out to accomplish.  Then again, any time you lose to Maryland, UNC, and Duke, and get to mid-April not 100% sure about making the NCAA tournament, not to mention not even playing in the ACC one, you've fallen short of quite a few others.  The atmosphere around the program is starting to look like the one around Debbie Ryan's hoops program a couple years before her resignation.  When a respected Sabre poster lets loose on the coaching staff and program with cannons blazing like this and this, and is not told out of hand to stuff it, you can tell the cracks are appearing.

I link those epistles for you, and even find them well-reasoned, but I don't (yet) fully endorse them.  I'm painfully aware this is the worst two-year stretch for UVA lacrosse in quite some time, but I'm also painfully aware of what happens when fans let expectations run too wild, revolt, and accelerate the downward spiral.  Tennessee boosters pitched Phil Fulmer overboard because they were tired of Outback Bowl seasons and he had the audacity to go 5-7 that one time, and in the five years since they've won 7, 6, 5, 5, and 5 games.  People around here got tired of Debbie Ryan because we didn't win enough in the ACC and didn't go far enough in the NCAAs, and Joanne Boyle has only managed to spin her wheels at best.  Is Dom Starsia getting lazy at recruiting and allowing the program to get bogged down in the mud?  Maybe.  Are we capable of screwing this up by running him off and spending six winless years in the ACC?  More than.

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-- It's amazing how a shutout can feel like anything but a dominant pitching performance.  Brandon Waddell combined with Whit Mayberry and Nick Howard to hold Clemson entirely scoreless on Sunday and take the series, and yet it sure had none of the feeling of the same result a week prior.  Waddell was dominant against Pitt, and forever walking the edge against Clemson.  Much better team this week, yes.  And honestly, a pitching coach will be at least as happy, if not happier, to see his charges battle back against multiple basepath incursions, than to see them breeze through with little trouble.  The Pitt shutout showed a lot of ability; the Clemson shutout showed ability and character.

Miami managed to sweep the same Pitt team that we took only two of three from, however, and thus UVA finds itself tied atop the division.  This means less than it did last year, though, now that the ACC tournament has moved away from pool play and to a basic double-elimination format.  The 1 and 2 seeds used to get their choice of game times, and that mattered much more then.

-- If this doesn't impress you or do anything for you at all, you're in the wrong place.  How about the ACC all-sport record for most consecutive conference wins?  Men's tennis brought that distinction to UVA by winning its 117th straight conference match - counting both regular season and tournament play, meaning, NCAA tournament as well.  117 straight wins against ACC foes, no matter when or where the competition.  That's a mark that, if it's ever topped by anyone, will take a good ten years to achieve, minimum.  (Though I haven't checked to see if anyone anywhere is working on a streak of like 70 or so right now, which is possible but not real likely.)

-- I wouldn't have bothered watching the spring football game even if it had been on, honestly.  It just doesn't excite me; for one, because the affair is never a real game; two, because you can never really tell whether one side's dominance is a good thing or a bad thing and therefore the thing is not all that instructive; three, because 2-10.  (#1 is that way because coaches are always concerned about injuries and depth - there's no way we could've put together two full teams' worth of O-linemen - but it's also easily fixed such that my attention could be restored.  Play a full speed 7-on-7 game.  Problem solved.  Injury risk is minimized and fans get something to watch.)

However, Jeff White's article answered the one question we all want to know, even if Mike London is still playing coy.  Greyson Lambert, besides being voted a team captain, threw 31 passes while Matt Johns threw 19 and David Watford just 14.  I leave you to draw your own conclusion, with every confidence you'll decide the same as I did.

quarterbacks, finally

I've avoided this subject on purpose for a while now.  Mike London has always insisted on making it a pretty painful one, because he refuses to make a decision.  His waffling on this issue is without doubt the most frustrating thing about him as a coach.  More so than his constant haranguing of the refs or his exceedingly questionable decision to have the not-strong-armed Mike Rocco try to lead a game-winning drive into gale-force winds down in Blacksburg.  These are frustrating as a fan.  The quarterback thing is frustrating as both a fan and a blogger, because it makes any prediction I try to make turn to dust a few days later.  Analysis is what I do, more or less, and analysis is pointless when not even the head coach knows who's going to take the next snap.

Why the change?  Because London appears committed to change.  Or less change.  He told the assembled media throng at ACC media days that he would pick a quarterback early in camp, and that guy would actually be the guy.  What a helluva concept.

A quick review of the spinning carousel in the three years of London: In 2010 it was Marc Verica, while some backups came in and tossed the ball a little as well.  This was not offensive to my sensibilities, since there was an established starter, but the signs were there even if we missed them.  Mike Rocco and Ross Metheny split the garbage-time snaps, a pretty clear indication that London had no idea what to do with the #2-on-down pecking order.  2011 was a wishy-washy disaster in August, September, and October, until London appeared to come to his senses, put Rocco in for the rest of the season, and watched him win four straight to clinch a Peach Bowl trip.  It might've stayed that way if Phillip Sims hadn't arrived on scene, and suddenly it was back to the well of indecision.  Depending on who you believe, it might've been fueled by London promising to give Sims the starting job, followed by Sims not exactly seizing it.  Politics, in other words.

Rocco left last winter, not knowing that Sims's eligibility wouldn't survive the spring.  Spring practice saw more of the same ol' stuff, too, but Sims's departure took a chunk out of our depth yet cleared up the picture.  Also clearing up the picture: almost certainly Tom O'Brien.  London by himself might have been moving toward the realization that the waffling wasn't helping, but TOB was brought on for his experience and sage counsel, and no doubt delivered some on the subject.

So, at the moment, there are two contenders for the job.  Matt Johns and Brendan Marshall will be on the roster as well this season, but Johns sat out spring and is naturally behind, and Marshall is a true freshman.  That leaves David Watford and Greyson Lambert.

Lambert probably has the stronger arm, and he's been putting in the appropriate work.  Watford redshirted in 2012 after the snaps he played in 2011 proved that, more or less, he wasn't ready.  That redshirt could turn out to be one of the best things the program has done for itself, because almost every observer labels Watford the frontrunner.  It makes one think about the merits of a redshirt season after a season on the field.  There's something to be said for learning what you don't know and then having a year-plus to work on that stuff.

Besides that, there are more than a few people praising Watford's leadership efforts.  Not that Lambert hasn't also been making himself known in that regard, but Watford seems to have a good combination going for him: leadership, command of the offense, and the ability to move around a little bit.  Watford isn't going to be an electric runner, but he can keep a play alive with his feet longer than Lambert is ever likely to be able to.

If Watford gets the nod, it'll be a new experience for our new OC, Steve Fairchild.  The vast majority of his experience (if not all of it) comes from dealing with big-armed pocket passers, QBs much closer to Lambert's style than Watford's.  I couldn't find any examples of quarterbacks Fairchild has worked with that have a skill set like Watford's.  That said, I don't know how adaptable Fairchild is but it's a little on the encouraging side that the coaches are picking a quarterback based on who's the best quarterback, rather than who's the best fit with the coach's history.  We're not talking about a Rich Rodriguez here, who has done one thing all his life, done it very well, and wouldn't know how to run a pro-style offense in a hundred years.  Fairchild is still going to run whatever offense he runs, he'll just have to figure out how best to use Watford's skills in it.

In any case, though, we'll be going into the season with yet another brand-new starting quarterback.  No matter who gets picked.  Watford has some starts under his belt....two years ago, and with a different OC, and frankly very little he did in 2011 was effective.  I don't think his freshman season is a useful indicator of anything.  Lambert is a redshirt freshman and therefore has never taken a game snap.  Sims was a likewise unknown commodity in 2012, just like Rocco was in 2011.  UVA hasn't had the same quarterback take the majority of snaps in two consecutive seasons since 2006-2007, with Jameel Sewell.  That won't change this year, either.  However, if Mike London has truly decided to join the rest of college football and stop indecisively platooning his quarterbacks, he might just be laying the foundation to end that streak.  Which in turn would mean the kind of stability that one frustrated blogger has never had the privilege to write about.

too late review, too early preview, part 1: offense 2012-2013

Alright, I have had this post planned for this particular day for like two weeks, and I will be damned if I'm going to let the sorry events of the past 24 or so hours change that.  By which I mean Wake Forest and Jeff Banks.  I can sum these events up with something you already know: this is Virginia, and we can't have nice things at Virginia.

I will, however, elaborate just a touch on Banks, who is leaving after less than two weeks to take a similar job, only with more money, at Texas A&M.  Man, we must have really hit a home run with that hire for him to be that much in demand.  Banks is probably getting something like twice the salary he was going to get in Charlottesville; it would be only natural to assume the extra money A&M is making in the SEC is the reason they were able to pull Banks away, and that our place in the ACC makes us financially uncompetitive.

Not so.  The SEC is the hotter place to be for an assistant coach, yes.  Even if we had matched A&M's offer dollar for dollar, the SEC would still be the better place for a coach's career, and besides that, Banks is buddy-buddy with Kevin Sumlin.  His UVA Twitter account follows Sumlin's, Sumlin's old Houston account, and a Sumlin parody which actually owns the name @KevinSumlin.  Besides, UVA's athletic department has revenues of over 80 million dollars; it's not a question of whether they can shuffle around some money to find an extra couple hundred grand, it's a question of how much they want to.

So now it's back to square one to find a special teams coach, and if London just hands those reins back to Poindexter I'll kill him myself.  Probably they'll go hire one of their other finalists, but at any rate now there's now more work to do.  One train of thought would say that Banks did a damn sleazy thing to "the people here" in Charlottesville that he claimed to have fallen in love with.  Show up, do a couple days' work, parlay that into a new gig, take the hell off and leave the people who gave you a great opportunity in the lurch.  Another train of thought is that it's hard to pass up a chance to coach a better team in a better conference for twice the money and work for a pretty old friend.  Coaching, after all, is that kind of a profession.  Both are correct.  But really, the least Banks could do is return whatever paycheck UVA may have given him or "owes" him for the "work" he did.

As for the Wake Forest thing, all I can say is the selection committee is probably going to spend more time on UVA than all the rest of the teams under consideration combined, if this keeps up.

Right, now for the part I had intended for this all along.  One last look at the 2012 football season and the first one at 2013.  There's no such thing as an offseason.

QUARTERBACKS

This year....

For this post last year I wrote of 2012: "There's no reason to think there will be any kind of competition in camp this year."  At the time, of course, there was also no reason to think Phillip Sims would transfer to Charlottesville.  He did, and just when it looked like we might finally have a drama-free season under center, instead the drama kicked into overdrive.

Sims and Mike Rocco were the only two players to take a quarterback snap, as David Watford and the rest of the gang redshirted.  Neither played well.  Sometimes they did, but more often they played worse, and you could never tell which you were going to get out of either.  And yes, that's the scientific version.

After letting Rocco start the season and quarterback his way into a few losses, Mike London had Sims take over, and Sims's play went straight downhill until London decided on a full-on platoon.  Sims's arm strength and beautiful spirals looked great except for when they landed harmlessly 20 yards from anyone who could catch them.  Rocco's leadership and superior knowledge of the playbook were an asset until he led the ball straight into the hands of a defensive back.  Ultimately the season was living proof that when you have two quarterbacks, you really have none; the only plausible justification for the platoon was that whatever skill one had, the other did not.

Next year....

It's totally possible we'll see more of the same.  One really, really hopes that London will learn his lesson about QB platoons, or else let Bill Lazor and Tom O'Brien convince him to pick one guy and stick with him.  At any rate, spring and fall camp will be interesting; with Watford, Matt Johns, and Greyson Lambert all having used up their redshirt (not to mention Sims) it will be a full-blown, no-holds-barred competition in the camps.  Again.  Brendan Marshall and Corwin Cutler will not be factors in 2013, so it's a four-way race.  The favorites will be Sims and Lambert.  Both are strong-armed pocket passers, which is a good thing if you're like me and in the pick-one-dammit camp; the differences between the two will be easier to spot because they won't be obscured by different styles.  I'm not stupid enough to try and actually predict in January who'll take the snaps in September, though.

RUNNING BACKS/FULLBACKS

This year....

The biggest story was either Perry Jones's regression or the lack of use (yet no redshirt) for Clifton Richardson.  Jones actually was UVA's top receiver, but somehow morphed from the one-cut back he was in his junior year to an indecisive nibbler, and ran for barely half his 2011 rushing total.  Baffling.  Richardson, meanwhile, got basically garbage-time carries and ran for fewer yards than both Rocco and Khalek Shepherd.  If he was going to be so little-used there was really no reason for him to play at all.  Also baffling.

Kevin Parks, meanwhile, emerged as UVA's top back, albeit with not many more rushing yards than he had in 2011.  But he did show up as a much bigger threat in the passing game, and was an effective goal-line option when the line deigned to block for him.  Parks, in short, has demonstrated the capability to be a workhorse; UVA probably will not ever use him like one, but he could carry the load if he had to.

Zach Swanson stepped in as the starting "fullback" but never carried the ball; he did get eight receptions but was rather a disappointment in the blocking game.  Since Billy Skrobacz pretty much never got in the game after making a few waves in fall camp, UVA basically didn't have a fullback, since Swanson was more of an H-back anyway.

Next year....

There will be a new coach at the position and an embarrassment of riches on the field.  Jones will be gone, which will deprive us of a pass-catching threat out of the backfield but also remove the temptation for the coaching staff to try and use a near-midget as a short-yardage sledgehammer.  Parks will return, of course.  Richardson will return, hopefully with too much talent to be wasted like he was this year.  (He likely will need to work on his pass-blocking, though, or risk ending up like Torrey Mack, who was unplayable due to the fact that his presence on the field screamed run play.)  Khalek Shepherd flashed some talent at times, and Kye Morgan comes off a redshirt year.

There will be an odd man out somewhere, though; UVA's freshman class will include a super-elite talent in the form of Taquan Mizzell, who ain't redshirting.  Mizzell is an excellent pass-catcher to the point that he was asked to play slot receiver in the Army All-American game, and should more than make up for the loss of Jones in the receiving game.  And he might just have the best pure running skills in a UVA uniform since Thomas Jones.  If the offensive line improves and actually opens some holes, this is a group of running backs that will make life miserable for opposing defenses.  They'll go as far as the line will let them.

WIDE RECEIVERS/TIGHT ENDS

This year....

He was only fifth on the team in receptions and sixth in yardage, but clearly, the biggest revelation in the receiving corps was tight end Jake McGee.  He announced his presence in style against Penn State with a one-handed catch of a Rocco desperation heave - while being interfered with - on a drive that culminated in the game-winning touchdown.  McGee made a few other early-season spectacular catches as well and proved to be one of the most difficult covers on the team.

There were a few disappointments in this group.  Dominique Terrell wasn't very consistent and dropped too many passes, and he wasn't the only one guilty of the latter sin.  Tim Smith had another injury-hampered season, and McGee was the only true pass-catching threat among the tight ends.  But the good ultimately outweighed the bad.  When on, Terrell was a very valuable slot receiver.  When healthy, Smith was the dangerous medium-to-deep threat he was advertised to be.  Darius Jennings emerged as a sophomore to be UVA's best and most versatile receiving threat, and E.J. Scott did a very nice job too as a guy who could keep defenses honest.  There were problems here, but on balance the receivers were a clear asset.

Next year....

If those problems diminish with experience, things could go really well for these units.  The only losses to graduation will be tight ends Colter Phillips and Paul Freedman, who were respectable blockers but didn't make a dent in the passing game.  There are so many receivers that it would be hard to see this group not losing one or two more to regular attrition and transfers, but it's a very deep group and can take the hit.

I would expect Jennings to continue to develop into a potential all-ACC player.  Scott, Smith, and Terrell will keep doing their thing, though Terrell is the most likely of those three to be marginalized if he doesn't fix the drops issue.  McGee, if he can put on weight and still be a big athletic receiving target, has a chance to develop from a curiosity to a real terror.  You'd like to see room for contributions from guys like Adrian Gamble and Canaan Severin, maybe Miles Gooch, but they'll probably be stuck on the fringes for another year unless something happens to one of the upper-echelon guys.  Part of it will depend on who wins the quarterback derby; the winner may favor certain receivers over others, it's just the nature of quarterbacks.

OFFENSIVE LINE

This year....

Uck.  The supposed strength of the line (the tackles) was a liability at times, and the supposed liability (the interior) was still a liability.  Let's start on the inside.  Cody Wallace was the chosen replacement for Anthony Mihota at center, but was replaced by Luke Bowanko in fall camp and bumped to guard.  Then he was bumped to the bench by Conner Davis, who was better but not by a lot.  Bowanko struggled with the transition, his shotgun snaps were noticably slow and floaty which threw off the timing of a lot of plays (though that improved as the season went on), and he had a tough time getting the snap off and immediately executing a blocking assignment.  A lot of the pressure on the quarterbacks came straight up the middle.  Sean Cascarano was OK at guard, but Matt Mihalik's snaps, when he came off the bench, were generally a waste of time.

Oday Aboushi was getting first-round talk as an NFL draft prospect, but murdered his draft stock this season and probably will not go earlier than the middle of the second round, or maybe the third.  He was still good - he did earn a place on the all-ACC first team, after all - but not as good as the preseason hype.  He racked up too many holding penalties.  On the other side, Morgan Moses was abused all season by speed rushers taking advantage of his poor side-to-side footwork.  He simply could not shuffle to his right quickly enough.  The basic sum of it was that Aboushi was a very solid pass blocker and usually took his holding penalties in the run game, where Moses was still a devastating run blocker who got killed in pass protection.

Next year....

With any luck, adding TOB to the staff will be a boon for the offensive line.  Aboushi will have to be replaced, and as much as I might have been down on him, he'll leave some big shoes to fill.  Kelby Johnson probably gets the first crack at his left tackle job, but Jay Whitmire will push him.  Moses will stick at right tackle.

The only graduation losses, though, are Aboushi and Mihalik, so there will be some good continuity.  I suspect the center position will be up for some competition between Bowanko and Ross Burbank, the latter of whom has been groomed for the position for about a year and a half now.  Cascarano and Davis are excellent candidates for improvement.  The guards will be more critical than the tackles; there's less depth and therefore less margin for error.  Two tackles - Michael Mooney and Sean Karl - are coming off redshirt seasons, but only one guard is (that'd be Ryan Doull.)  Something tells me those positions aren't set in stone; London and Scott Wachenheim have shown a penchant for flexibility on the line and some of the depth might be moved around where it's needed.  Burbank, for example, might get some work at guard if Bowanko hangs on to the center job.

Ultimately, this group will be the limiting reagent in the offensive chemistry equation.  Plenty of talent exists at the skill positions, and we'll assume against all hope that not only will London settle on a quarterback, that quarterback will actually play pretty well.  But Phillip Sims was awful under pressure and everyone else but Watford is a totally unknown quantity, so the line must improve its protection.  And the offense's red-zone struggles were in direct proportion to the line's inability to block in short-yardage situations.  You can't score in the red zone if you can't run the ball in the red zone, and we couldn't.  Fix the line and we fix the offense.

***********************************************

Next week: the defense, assuming Jon Tenuta doesn't get offered a zillion bucks to go coach at Auburn or something.

weekend review

Agh so much crap.  Why the University of Virginia football program insists on continuing to torture me in the winter after spending 13 weeks doing so in the fall is a thing inexplicable.  The fortitude it takes to be a UVA fan is really something.  Fortunately I'm prepared: I've pulled for the Detroit Lions since I was like 8.

Sad to say, however, the recognizable stench of dysfunction is again oozing out of the football offices.  It takes UVA to screw up a coaching staff shakeup this badly.  It wouldn't have been so bad if only the offensive staff had undergone a makeover, because it needed it.  (And it got one, although not in all necessary areas.)  I wrote my ITA article this week on the absurd upheaval in the staff, which you can read when it's posted sometime Tuesday, and I don't want to steal their thunder too much.  At any rate I'm not duplicating more than one or two things, so you'll have to read it to get the whole picture.  I'm getting my MBA, and we call that "marketing."  According to the marketing textbook, everything is marketing.

Suffice it to say, however, I think somebody, somewhere, made a really stupid decision in firing Jim Reid and Jeff Hanson.  I'll come out and say it: Hanson was almost certainly the best position coach on staff, and if not the best, top three, easy.  (Consideration must be given to Vincent Brown, and perhaps Bill Lazor's quarterback work; remember we're talking about the guy who squeezed a remarkable amount of talent out of Marc Verica, before you scoff.)

It has the pawprints of outside meddling all over it.  It might be a disgruntled fat-cat donor who doesn't know shit except for "Duke, 42 points" and is still butthurt about that.  It might be Jon Oliver, who can usually be seen during games, standing, for some reason, on the sideline, like a sunspectacled watchdog.  It might be Craig Littlepage, who showed his lack of confidence in Al Groh by making head coach decisions for him.  (Such as sending Peter Lalich packing, a decision which I still say was not his to make.  Such as firing Mike Groh as OC - admittedly necessary - and bringing in Gregg Brandon and telling Al Groh to shove a square peg into a round hole or else.)  If they follow that pattern, they'll probably find some dude who runs a 3-3-5 defense.

One hopes, at least, that whatever forces out there fired Jim Reid, already had a replacement idea halfway locked up.  At the moment I'm not especially interested in a search of my own to evaluate replacements.  Having been made to look a fool by expecting common-sense changes, and being presented with evidence of erratic and unpredictable decision-making by the athletic department, I'm not especially confident I'll get it right, and I'm not especially confident they will either.  Of course the top two names for now are Jon Tenuta and Randy Shannon, because they're well-known.  Shannon is probably not one of the odds-on favorites; Tenuta may be, but he's sort of coaching NC State in a bowl game that doesn't take place til New Year's Eve.  (Just to fuck with people maybe we should get on a Tennessee message board with the rumor that Jon Gruden is our pick.)

Obviously, waiting almost 30 days may not be a good idea; Reid and Hanson recruited several members of this recruiting class, and the snakes are in the grass as we speak trying to pull them to State College and Chapel Hill and College Park and Blacksburg and Buddha knows where else.  There are lots of bridges to be rebuilt here, and a few decommitments and/or transfers are to be expected.

********************************************************

-- Why, speaking of transfers, the first one of the offseason hit the bricks this weekend, and it's somewhat surprisingly Mike Rocco.  And he had some things to say on the way out.  Things he probably shouldn't have said, because dirty laundry stays in house.  It's bad enough the program looks like it's run by bumbling fools, going 4-8 and then firing the wrong coaches, but Rocco's comments didn't help.

That said, it's certainly more defensible than Jared Green's parting shots, which were easily exposed as flat lies.  And Rocco sort of clarified a few things thought to be true and now more strongly thought to be true.  People wondering if Bill Lazor and Mike London are quite on the same page when it comes to the QB rotation?  "'In the Penn State game, Mike fumbled a snap and, the next series, totally unbeknownst to anybody, London made a decision to put Phillip Sims in. And nobody knew about it. Mike didn't know about it. The offensive coordinator didn't know about it."

Maybe the offensive coordinator should know about it.  Rocco also flat-out confirmed what a lot of us had been thinking: he plays better when his leash is longer.  Shorten the leash and he ties it into a noose, didn't I say something like that a little while back?

At any rate, the bad thing about Rocco's transfer is that it takes away our security blanket at quarterback.  Phillip Sims hasn't made any moves to seize the job, David Watford redshirted, Greyson Lambert has never taken a college snap, and neither has Matt Johns.  The competition is likely to be wide open.  The good thing about Rocco's transfer, though, is that it takes away our security blanket.  London earns a D+ for quarterback management so far, and he might well have been tempted to put Rocco in next season at the slightest sign of shakiness by whoever won the competition (assuming it wasn't Rocco.)  At some point, London is going to have to learn to pick a winner of the derby before the season starts, and stick with him all season.  If Rocco's public comment about being jerked in and out of the lineup drives home that point, it'll have been worth it.

-- The coaching change wasn't even the first thing to set everyone on edge this weekend.  Some guy at some local TV station decided to start the old UVA-and-GT-to-the-Big-Ten rumor, and of course wound up with egg on his face when it didn't come true.  Lemme give you a hint about conference realignment: big moves like that will never be broken by local TV stations unless they're also broken by like twenty other outlets.  Newspaper reporters are still more plugged in than local TV hacks.  Doug Doughty was the first guy that I saw with the Maryland news.

I don't want to be in the Big Ten, of course, but a small part of me was still hoping that this Kevin Jones guy somehow had a dead-on source that nobody else had, if only because that's the same part of me that rips off a scab even though I know damn well it'll bleed.  I don't think any of UVA's various sports will prosper in the B1G, any more than they do in the ACC, but at least I could stop chewing my nails over the ACC's fate.

-- The ACC looks like its in trouble this bowl season, as usual, and this year you can blame, in part, UNC and Miami.  Particularly UNC, who should be playing in the ex-Tangerine Bowl against Rutgers, instead of VT.  That would've bumped everyone down to more manageable matchups; instead, most teams in the ACC are fighting above their weight class, and it's going to hurt.  At least the ACC will win its BCS matchup.  Or it should, anyway.  You might now see the problem with a threshold for the non-BCS teams to earn automatic bids.  Did the voters objectively come to the conclusion that Northern Illinois is really and truly slotted where they should be?  Or did they decide to play God and put NIU into the BCS on purpose?  Judging by the MAC CG announcers' giddy proclamations that Kent State could crash the BCS with a win, and thinly veiled disappointment that they didn't get it done, I'm guessing the latter.  Nor do I particularly think it's a coincidence that both BCS polls ranked NIU exactly 16th.  (Edit: My theory may be rather undermined by the fact that I voted NIU 16th in the Blogpoll, in a system, remember, that blindly ranks resume games against each other without me knowing who played them.  So I am less suspicious than I was.  But then, like the pollsters, I also put Oklahoma ahead of them.  And why the pollsters think Boise is #15 is an eternal mystery, except that they're simply used to having them on the ballot.)

game preview: Wake Forest

Date/Time: Saturday, October 20; 12:30

TV: ACC Net., ESPN3

Record against the Deacons: 34-13

Last meeting: Wake 28, UVA 17; 11/8/08**, Winston-Salem

(**I never miss an opportunity to remind you that this is stupid and the fact that the ACC is doing nothing but exacerbating the situation is stupider.  My last football season as a student was 2003.  If you had told me that I would graduate, and then UVA would play Wake Forest twice between then and 2012, which is exactly what has happened, my jaw would've hit the floor.  Are we in the same conference or what?)

Last weekend: Md. 27, UVA 20; Wake Forest bye

Line: UVA by 3.5

Opposing blog: Blogger So Dear

Injury report:

Virginia -

OUT FOR SEASON
S Pablo Alvarez, DT Marco Jones, WR Mario Nixon

OUT
DE Billy Schautz

DOUBTFUL
None

QUESTIONABLE
OT Morgan Moses

PROBABLE
DT Justin Renfrow, WR Tim Smith

Wake Forest -

(pending)

Such is my appreciation for you readers that I just spent the afternoon watching the Tigers sweep the Yankees and win their 11th American League pennant, and I have put off getting shitty drunk and dancing naked in the streets just so I could write you this post semi-on-time.  (This is not to say that this is a sober post, mind you.  A number of posts over the years have been brought to you by the juice of the barley or some other fine liquid intoxicant.  This is one of them.)  Anyway, the Hoos host Wake Forest in the final game before a badly-needed bye week.  Silly me, I thought I could spend this bye week examining bowl possibilities.

-- UVA run offense vs. Wake run defense

Top backs:
Kevin Parks: 93 carries, 475 yards, 5.1 avg., 3 TDs
Perry Jones: 86 carries, 318 yards, 3.7 avg., 2 TDs

UVA offense:
139.57 yards/game, 4.04 yards/attempt
82nd of 124 (national), 7th of 12 (ACC)

Wake defense:
206.33 yards/game, 4.49 yards/attempt
84th of 124 (national), 9th of 12 (ACC)

I'm no coach, but it sure looks like Kevin Parks is taking over - if he hasn't taken over - the primary tailback role here.  The way things have gone at tailback this season, that's a good thing; Perry Jones has been weirdly inconsistent and indecisive, not at all what you'd expect after seeing him play last year.  Parks, on the other hand, has seized the opportunity.  He's been looking like the guy who changed the North Carolina high school record book to one page that just says KEVIN PARKS.  To top it off, lately he even looks like a better pass-catcher than Perry has.

Wake suspended a host of players for the Maryland game two weeks ago, but it looks like they'll be back, with the exception of a couple more dunderheads who were suspended this week.  By and large it won't affect anything, however.  Wake isn't really good at defending the run regardless.  They play a 3-4, but instead of asking their nose tackle (Nikita Whitlock) to gum up a bunch of space, they want him to use his excellent quickness to get into the backfield and force running backs outside, where the linebackers will theoretically go find them.  The problem this year is that Whitlock has been slowed by a bum ankle.  Normally his job is to line up right over the center and make the center guess which way he's going, but with that ankle, even if the center guesses wrong he can still recover and get a block on Whitlock.  This has turned Wake's run defense problematic.

It even offers a slight glimmer of hope that UVA's biggest issue can be fixed: that of suddenly turning incompetent inside the 20 and being utterly unable to gain one yard when one yard is needed.  Maybe, just maybe, if Whitlock's ankle is causing him problems, he can be blown off the ball, along with the rest of Wakes line - they use a very undersized group, especially for the 3-4.

Expect UVA to be able to at least move the ball.  That hasn't been the problem; you're well aware of how we've infamously outgained basically everyone we've played and still gotten our asses beat.  Another five yards a carry from Parks is a strong likelihood; the only I-A team that hasn't gashed Wake is Maryland, and Maryland is bringing a loaf of bread to a gunfight in this respect.  The real question is whether or not we'll once again be a living embodiment of Zeno's paradox, and get halfway to the end zone on every play.

-- UVA pass offense vs. Wake pass defense

Quarterback:
Phillip Sims: 62/116, 53.4%; 747 yards, 6 TDs, 3 INTs; 6.44 yards/attempt

Top receivers:
Darius Jennings: 26 rec., 370 yards, 1 TD
Perry Jones: 23 rec., 228 yards, 0 TDs

UVA offense:
283.6 yards/game, 7.1 yards/attempt
76th of 124 (national), 11th of 12 (ACC)

Wake defense:
216.0 yards/game, 7.2 yards/attempt
77th of 124 (national), 9th of 12 (ACC)

Ayyy.  If we're not already at the territory where if you have two quarterbacks you have none, we're moving rapidly toward it.  It was probably a gracious and merciful God that caused Khalek Shepherd to be just slightly late in looking for that first-down pass from Mike Rocco last week, because if he'd caught it he'd probably have scored.  And if he'd scored we might have won, and if Rocco had coolly and calmly driven UVA to a win after Phillip Sims spent most of the day floundering, the resulting quarterback controversy would have melted everyone's head.

This is the one area where a suspension might affect things; starting safety Duran Lowe is out.  However, he's replaced by Kenny Okoro, who's well-experienced in his own right, although he's managed to watch his playing time steadily decrease since his freshman year.

It looks as though Tim Smith will finally get back on the field.  Will it much matter?  I kind of doubt it, as I expect Smith to be eased back into it.  Unlike last week, Darius Jennings doesn't appear on the injury list, and should be at full speed, and E.J. Scott has of course been impressive.  So I don't think there'll be a big rush to toss Smith right back into the fire, but I do expect him to be targeted a little bit early just to get him back into the groove.

However, Sims must have a good day against a highly unremarkable pass defense.  Wake can be carved up by dinking down the field, which of course is Rocco's specialty and which Duke did almost perfectly to the Deacs.  Sims is less consistently accurate and doesn't have the timing down right.  He's proven a fast learner in certain areas - after obvious missed opportunities against Duke, he scrambled for a few yards against Maryland and at least one first down.  As Sims goes this weekend, so goes the offense.

-- Wake run offense vs. UVA run defense

Top backs:
Josh Harris: 88 carries, 377 yards, 4.3 avg, 3 TDs
Deandre Martin: 57 carries, 279 yards, 4.9 avg., 5 TDs

Wake offense:
123.17 yards/game, 3.54 yards/attempt
99th of 124 (national), 9th of 12 (ACC)

UVA defense:
154.43 yards/game, 4.36 yards/attempt
74th of 124 (national), 7th of 12 (ACC)

Last week's game finally freed me, for the most part, from having to always caveat the Georgia Tech game in an effort to point out why the run defense doesn't actually suck.  The stats are now a lot more normal-looking and better reflective of the actual effort being put forth here.

Wake's Josh Harris continues to be a boom-or-bust kind of back, though he's done a better job of smoothing out his production spikes this season and being more consistent.  The Deacs have also found a solid change of pace in redshirt freshman Deandre Martin, a big bruiser who's been used as a short-yardage back but is very capable of a workhorse role and is very hard to bring down in the open field.

Wake's offensive line is slowly coming together.  In the preseason I called it one of the biggest disaster units in the whole conference.  It's better than that, but it's still working toward respectability.  In later games it's been improving after having been completely throttled by Florida State (no surprise there.)

However, I think you have to at least nod your head appreciatively at the work done by the UVA defensive line.  It has missed Billy Schautz, but it's learned to cope without him, and Ausar Walcott and Eli Harold have been improving each game in his absence.  Wake will absolutely need a running game, as we'll see in the next segment, so this could well be the deciding factor.  If their backs can generate some life, and they've been able to do so in Wake's most recent games, they'll have an offense.  If our front seven can get another inspired game from guys like Laroy Reynolds (who played very well against Maryland despite the nonsense with the PF penalty) and the front four can continue to do some quality unsung work, Wake will struggle mightily.

-- Wake pass offense vs. UVA pass defense

Quarterback:
Tanner Price: 98/188, 52.1%; 1225 yards, 7 TDs, 4 INTs; 6.52 yards/attempt

Top receivers:
Michael Campanaro: 38 rec., 429 yards, 3 TDs
Terence Davis: 18 rec., 280 yards, 1 TD

Wake offense:
210.2 yards/game, 6.6 yards/attempt
91st of 124 (national), 12 of 12 (ACC)

UVA defense:
223.0 yards/game, 6.9 yards/attempt
58th of 124 (national), 5th of 12 (ACC)

The first thing, and probably second through seventh things, that you need to know is this: no Campanaro.  Wake's leading (and only good) receiver has a broken hand and won't be playing.

That alters things immensely.  Campanaro had potential to be a nightmare.  Our safeties generally don't do well when assigned to do tricky things like help out the cornerbacks on one particular receiver.  (I'm not being sarcastic.  They're inexperienced, and get confused easily when their assignment is deep help on a Stefon Diggs type but the route patterns make it look like they should be doing something else.  That's why Diggs was so damn wide open that one time Hills threw him a wobbly can of corn to escape big-time trouble.  Our safety was playing it safe and hanging back, which given the circumstances I prefer that to the alternative.  Anyway, the point is that "keep an eye on this side of the field and defend the deepest route" is a simple assignment; "keep an eye on this side of the field, help out your corner on this really dangerous receiver but also don't let anything go behind you" is trickier than it sounds.)

Without Campanaro, there is nobody at all that will strike fear in anyone.  Starting TE Spencer Bishop has caught two passes all year.  They don't use him.  Campanaro has almost as many rushing attempts as their running backs have pass catches.  They don't use them much.  Tanner Price's completion percentage is so low partly because his receivers have a bad case of the dropsies.  Demetrious Nicholson is still a work in progress, but you can damn sure bet he's good enough to cover Terence Davis.  He and Brandon Terry comprise the biggest threats; Terry could sometimes be a problem because he's 6'5" and we got short DBs, but ultimately there's no need to overanalyze this: no Campanaro, no problem.

-- Outlook

I did promise on Monday that I would predict a loss regardless of what I wrote in the game preview.  Call me stupid, or a homer, or a Lions fan (nobody is better than a Lions fan at rationalizing why our crappy football team will be good) but I can't do that.  If the game is close, it could be a problem given the shattered wasteland that is our special teams.  And Wake is coming off a bye week, probably with a whole bunch of tricks up their sleeve.  But I'm going to hang my hat on the hopes that our run defense is as good as I think it is; that the Wake passing offense is as bad as it looks without their one legitimate receiving star; and that we'll finally be able to run the ball on every yard line between the goal lines, and not just from 20 to 20.  If we lose this one I swear every game prediction from here on out will be for a loss of a billion to three.

Also, I'm always forgetting to mention this, but I'll be using the Tweeta during the game to spit out random stuff.  Follow @MaizeNBlueWahoo for 140-character reactions to the game.

-- Prediction summary:

-- Five yards a carry for Kevin Parks.
-- Parks both catches the most passes, and has the most carries, of any UVA back.  (Made easier, of course, if Perry Jones's concussion turns out to be a problem, but he wasn't on the injury report.)
-- Tim Smith, in his welcome-back party, does not catch many passes (three at most) but one is a big one.
-- Tanner Price completes fewer than 50% of his passes.
-- Brandon Terry, not Terence Davis, is Wake's leading receiver.

Final score: UVA 21, Wake 14

-- Rest of the ACC:

Virginia Tech @ Clemson, 12:00 - Somebody's division hopes are going to take a major hit.

Boston College @ Georgia Tech, 3:00 - The natives are restless in Atlanta; they'll go ballistic if they lose this one.

NC State @ Maryland, 3:30 - You'd've been slapped in the face if you suggested before the season that Maryland would lead their division and control their destiny in October.

North Carolina @ Duke, 7:00 - UNC has lost this game once since 1989, which is the last time it meant anything.  Now it's for Duke's bowl eligibility - yikes.

Florida State @ Miami, 8:00 - Wouldn't be surprised to see this one overrun with Noles fans.

weekend review

Rrrrrrghggggghhghhghh.  We've lost three times now this season.  The first two didn't really bother me a whole lot.  (Maybe the GT one would've if they'd gotten blown the F out by Middle Tennessee and then killed us, but regardless.)  This one makes me ANGAR.  I am DISAPPOINT.  And all sorts of other interweb words.

We just lost a very winnable game.  A thousand mistakes - 999 by us, one by the refs - and every one of them was taken full advantage of.  You can't give up 44 points and not expect to give some credit to the opposition, but make no mistake: we don't lose that game if we don't hand it over ourselves.  Goats include:

-- Everyone who took a personal foul penalty, but in particular, Sean Cascarano, who piled up two (one of which turned a 2nd and 3 into a 2nd and 18, which in turn caused a pass play instead of a run play, which itself turned into an interception), and Kevin Parks, whose PF turned a 3rd-and-6 from the LTech 7 into a 3rd-and-21.

-- Dominique Terrell, whose hands of rock caused the abovementioned INT, which became an LTech touchdown within a minute or two.

-- Mike Rocco, who got desperate and forced passes that no human quarterback could have completed and of course saw them go back the other way.

-- Whichever dumbassed referee called roughing the passer on Eli Harold, giving LTech a free and undeserved fourth-down conversion, which of course became a touchdown within a minute or two.

-- Khalek Shepherd, or whoever's job it was to align the team for fourth down at the end of the game.

Of course that would be how that game would end; such a mistake-filled affair with an endless supply of bullets for self-foot-shooting could not possibly have ended any other way.

I had a lot of individual observations, but most of them melted away, leaving only the lingering stink of what sh/c/would have been.  Let's see how many remain:

-- Demeitre Brim's burned redshirt is officially worth it.  It would've been even more so if we'd won, since his touchdown-saving tackle turned into a goal-line stand and no points for the Bulldogs.  Nice damn hustle.  Anthony Cooper, too.

-- I haven't visited their boards, but I understand Louisiana Tech fans are shocked and appalled about never having seen a dirtier team in their life.  Of course, there's always two sides to every scuffle and late hit, but keep this in mind also: I've only ever seen two quarterbacks kick an opposing player.  Marcus Vick and Colby Cameron.  Not good company to place yourself in.

-- CATCH THE GOD DAM BALL.  (This also goes for Brandon Pettigrew, by the way.)

This week's depth chart lists the dreaded OR at quarterback.  Mike London alluded to the possibility that his picks might be on the receivers, except for the one that bounced off Terrell's hands which was definitely on the receiver.  Rocco is often required to throw to a spot, rather than a person, and trust that the receiver will be there when the ball is.  That said, it's hard to imagine anything but a switch this week.  It's a good time for it: it's one thing when your screwups cause the team to lose the game, but when they also contribute to your teammate losing his job, it helps the message sink in just that little bit more.  Apparently the offensive guards are on notice too, because they also got the OR treatment, with Ross Burbank moving from center to push Sean Cascarano.

The (new) official blog position on the QB derby: I don't care any more.  Both Rocco and Sims can get us to a bowl, which is the season's goal.  But the larger point: expectations for both are starting to converge.  Rocco is pressing and it's not working.  Sims finally had the first ounce of pressure he's had all season put on his shoulders, and responded well.  Throw either one out there against Duke, I don't care.

Oh well.  Prediction summary:

-- UVA's running backs total more than 116 yards.  Yup.  As expected, there was room to run.  A little, anyway.  Perry Jones and Kevin Parks totaled 142, and Jones averaged 4.6 a carry with a longest of only 13 (thus, consistency.)

-- Mike Rocco gets back to completing more than two-thirds of his passes.  Sad to say, no: 14 of 23 isn't that bad, but it's not two-thirds.

-- Colby Cameron throws for over 300 yards.  No again.  Cameron had only 218.  That's not a bad showing at all by the defense; they generally forced him to stay short and underneath and didn't get burned deep.

-- Louisiana Tech is held under 3.5 yards a carry.  Le sigh.  Not even close, as the Bulldogs actually outperformed UVA on the ground.  The hell, man.

-- If UVA holds the turnovers to no more than one, they'll win by double digits.  Null prediction, but the way things were going in the first half, I've got no doubt it would've been true.

So: 8-for-25 on the season.  I was better at this last year, I think.  Also, since I predicted a win and we did not win, the overall prediction record goes to 4-1 and 0-3-2 ATS.  Do not bet actual money using these scores I've been telling you.

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Blogpoll ballot ahoy:

From Old Virginia Ballot - Week 5

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Alabama Crimson Tide	--
2	Notre Dame Fighting Irish	--
3	Georgia Bulldogs	2
4	South Carolina Gamecocks	2
5	Florida St. Seminoles	-2
6	Texas Longhorns	6
7	Ohio St. Buckeyes	7
8	Kansas St. Wildcats	1
9	Oregon Ducks	-1
10	UCLA Bruins	1
11	LSU Tigers	-7
12	Arizona St. Sun Devils	3
13	Oregon St. Beavers	--
14	West Virginia Mountaineers	--
15	Florida Gators	-8
16	Stanford Cardinal	4
17	Clemson Tigers	-1
18	Texas Tech Red Raiders	--
19	Miami Hurricanes	4
20	Texas A&M Aggies	--
21	Nebraska Cornhuskers	--
22	Ohio Bobcats	--
23	Mississippi St. Bulldogs	--
24	Iowa St. Cyclones	--
25	Cincinnati Bearcats	--
Dropouts: TCU Horned Frogs, Northwestern Wildcats, USC Trojans, Louisville Cardinals, Arizona Wildcats, Virginia Tech Hokies

SB Nation BlogPoll College Football Top 25 Rankings »

A lot of shuffling, which is natural.  You're reminded to remember that a team can win and drop, or lose and go up.  Everything is reevaluated fresh every week, so where you were before isn't going to be a factor.  That leads to some oddball drops, like TCU from top-15 to nowhere.  (27th, FWIW.)  That's partly because they added a lackluster game to their resume, partly because their opponents didn't fare too well, and partly because some new teams were added to the eligibility mix.

This week you had to be 3-1 or better, so 3-2 didn't cut it, and that dropped six teams out of contention, two of which had been ranked before.  (Actually five.  Minnesota is the sixth; they lost to go to 4-1 without any wins over a Big Five team, which is also a requirement.)  Seven teams moved in to replace them in the consideration pool.

If I had to point to the strangest thing I see here, it's probably Texas Tech at 18th.  But, like, it's not like these other teams are such hot stuff that a great injustice is being done.  So I left it.

If you're wondering who the next five are, in order it's USC, TCU, Louisville, Duke, and Utah State.  It doesn't say much for the resumes of the contenders this year so far.

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Senior Seasons ahoy.  And whether you want it or not, an update on the GP South Blue Devils, the alma mater of yours truly: this weekend they dropped 50-odd points on Port Huron Northern and moved to 5-1 on the season.  This Friday is huge: the annual rivalry game against the Norsemen of GP North.  South has won the last two, but this has only scratched the surface of payback for a seven-game losing streak and something like fifteen of the last eighteen or whatever.  The way Michigan high school rules work, a sixth win would clinch a playoff spot, so it's a big deal.

Anyway, back to the shit you care about.

Damascus 23, Sherwood 20: Zach Bradshaw "set up two scores" with a 44-yard diving reception and a 73-yard punt return.  Damascus is 5-0.

Gilman 37, Mt. St. Joseph 7: Micah Kiser had eight tackles, and Gilman is 3-2.

Ocean Lakes 21, Salem 15: One of the latest whines out of Hokieland is that Smoke Mizzell shouldn't have five stars because what you do on the field counts.  Scoreboard.  Whether Corwin Cutler or Bucky Hodges was the better quarterback on Friday is very debatable.  But Cutler is the one with three stars, Hodges with four, and Cutler is the one who emerged victorious, and at worst, matched Hodges throw for throw.  Cutler and Hodges each threw a touchdown, and Hodges had more yards but Cutler a better percentage.  Let's hope any future Cutler/Hodges matchups end the same way.  Ocean Lakes is 6-0.

Salisbury 34, Berkshire 0 (Sadiq Olanrewaju) - Salisbury is 2-0.
St. Peter's Prep (NJ) 56, BC High 0 (Jack McDonald) - BC High is 2-1.
South Iredell 33, Malden 10 (LaChaston Smith) - South Iredell is 6-1.
A.L. Brown 38, Cox Mill 34 (Keeon Johnson) - Brown is 6-1.
Houston Westside 58, Houston Chavez 7 (Hipolito Corporan) - Westside is 3-2.
Oscar Smith 38, Lakeland 9 (Zack Jones) - Oscar Smith is 3-2.
Osbourn 30, Potomac 14 (Donta Wilkins) - Potomac is 2-3.
Fork Union 33, Valley Forge (PA) 0 (Malcolm Cook) - FUMA is 5-1.
Benedictine 35, St. Christopher's 18 (Jack English) - St. Chris is 3-2.
Varina 27, Lee-Davis 0 (Tim Harris) - Varina is 3-1.

In the injured players department, neither LaChaston Smith nor Keeon Johnson played in their games, and Andre Levrone and Good Counsel were off this week.

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Last little bit of the weekend: Via MGoBlog, guess what the most-watched football game last weekend (or two weekends ago, whatever) was?  I'll save you the guessing: Michigan-Notre Dame.  Guess what series is being killed off in a couple years?  Michigan-Notre Dame.  Why is this important?  There is no possible way NBC is happy about Notre Dame killing off its best game.  Likely result: any NBC contract offer where NBC can count on seeing Michigan on the schedule will be higher than one sans Michigan.  Which in turn means a very good chance either ND decides it prefers the ACC's TV money, or adds Michigan back to the schedule.  Either is fine by me.