weekend review

No review of the weekend's events would be complete without discussing the depth chart changes, so let's get right on that.  In ascending order of importance, these are at tight end, linebacker, wide receiver, O-line, and punt returner.

-- Zach Swanson's lack of presence probably means an injury from which it's going to take a while to come back.  Too bad, because his play early in the season was strong.  But his absence isn't why the offense sucked, either.

-- Demeitre Brim moves from strong-side to weak-side LB.  I think this is a subtle way of saying Max Valles will be on the field more, and that the SLB position is becoming more and more of an extra pass rush than a traditional Sam role.

-- Wide receiver.  "Or" shows up everywhere.  No starters this week except those that earn the job in practice by not screwing up, is how to read that.   My guess is that the de facto impact will be small - for one thing, Darius Jennings's participation in the construction of such an exquisite pile of shit was surprising and probably short-lived.  Here's betting he doesn't drop a thing all week.  The rest I'm not so sure about, so we'll just have to see come game time.

-- And the much-maligned-and-deservedly-so O-line.  The five-best-guys philosophy is on full display with Jay Whitmire moving to the problematic RG position and Eric Smith taking over at tackle.  Cody Wallace moves to LG behind Luke Bowanko, which is code for you'll never see him again because Bowanko is considered one of the rocks.  Wallace just got buried.

I'm less sure what it means that Michael Mooney moves to backup LT - I think that's probably a promotion of sorts.  Sadiq Olanrewaju definitely got promoted; even though he's behind Smith (obviously) that's better than being behind Morgan Moses.  It might seem like Whitmire got demoted (tackle to guard, after all) but it's really more a function of him having a couple years on Smith and therefore being more versatile.

The center battle is back on, too, probably not least because of Burbank's bad snap.

-- Finally we come to punt returner - where no change whatsoever was made.  This is bad in a couple different ways.  Mike London can't be on the accountability train if he's letting slide the single stupidest play of UVA's season so far.  It's fortunate that Dominique Terrell is from northern VA or this would really open the door to 757 favoritism charges.  You had a lot of that undercurrent with Phillip Sims; allowing Terrell's drunken balloon chase to go unaddressed would practically blow those doors open if he were from Chesapeake or something.

The final verdict is that these are generally positive changes taken one by one.  Wallace just has never been an ACC-level lineman.  Putting a week-long microscope on the receivers is a good idea - David Watford has enough trouble finding open receivers without them dropping the throw when he does.  But London's playing Russian roulette with his credibility over what should be a very simple call at PR.  Can't fully trust what he says about fixing problems when he won't fix the most visible one.

FWIW, London has said that will be a practice competition too, but actions are speaking louder than words here.  Until I see someone besides Terrell back there I won't believe it - and really, even then, it shouldn't be a competition, Terrell should simply sit and watch, because he's hurting the team as bad or worse than any other individual, the way he fields kicks.

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The ACC didn't produce too much in the way of surprises this week, except in Chapel Hill.  Quick takes on the week's action in the league:

-- UNC is definitely leaving me with egg on my face for picking them to win the Coastal.  ECU racked up 55 points on them, so maybe our offense can score a touchdown or two.

-- Maryland looks better and better each week, even when they don't play.  West Virginia's bounce-back win over Oklahoma State makes the Terps look awfully good.

-- VT's win in the battle of the Techs actually puts them in great shape, with UNC looking like a bunch of chumps and Miami being the only likely roadblock in the Coastal now.

At the one-third mark of the season, it's time to reassess the remaining schedule.  Beating BYU was a great step toward bowl-game respectability; losing to Pitt was almost as big a step back.  The remainder of the season breaks down like so.

Likely wins: Ball State, Duke.  Not "likely" in the traditional sense - just that you can't be a bowl team period if you can't beat those teams.

Likely losses: Miami, Clemson.  These would be the teams that our defense almost certainly can't stop enough for the offense to catch up.

Swing games: Maryland, GT, VT, UNC.  And let's be real, we're not exactly favored in most - or any - of these.  But if we can get past Ball State and Duke, we need only win two of these four.  And all these teams have serious flaws, although if that's true of Maryland, they've yet to be exposed.  Our defense, though, is good enough to at least give us a prayer of seeing a win in all four of these.

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Senior Seasons feature:

Peachtree Ridge 49, Habersham Central 0: Jordan Ellis only needed seven carries to have his biggest day of the season - he racked up three touchdowns, two of them on runs of 68 and 73 yards, and finished with 197 yards.  Peachtree Ridge is 5-0.

Episcopal 38, Chichester 20: Evan Butts had three catches for 111 yards.  Episcopal is 5-0.

Upland 42, Santiago 41 (Jeffery Farrar) - Upland is 3-2.
Central Catholic 38, Trinity Catholic 14 (Caanan Brown) - CCC is 4-1.
South Granville 56, Cummings 27 (Will Richardson) - Cummings is 1-5.
Ocean Lakes 49, Bayside 16 (Quin Blanding) - Bayside is 2-3.
Oscar Smith 56, Lakeland 6 (Andrew Brown) - Oscar Smith is 4-0.
Chancellor 37, Millbrook 3 (Steven Moss) - Chancellor is 1-4.
Briar Woods 45, Woodgrove 16 (J.J. Jackson) - Woodgrove is 2-2.

the recruit: Michael Mooney

Name: Michael Mooney
Position: OG
Hometown: Malvern(?), PA
School: Malvern Prep
Height: 6'5"
Weight: 265

24/7: no rating; PA #35
ESPN: 78; three stars; #67 OT
Rivals: 5.5; three stars; PA #26
Scout: three stars; #53 OG

Other offers: Syracuse, Purdue, Northwestern, East Carolina, Duke, Tulane, Buffalo

When you enter "michael mooney" into the Yahoo search engine, the first suggested search is "michael mooney motorcycle accident."  So that's unsettling.  Turns out people named Mike Mooney are apparently susceptible to either dying in motorcycle wrecks or being the responding police officer at one.  There's your funny googlewebbing tip of the day.

The Michael Mooney that concerns us is part of an offensive line class that has little star power but a great deal of playable depth.  Mooney fits right in as a guy whose lower-level-BCS offers match his more or less lower-level-BCS guru ratings.  Clearly an excellent student, as offers from Northwestern, Duke, and Tulane indicate; Syracuse and Purdue were probably his best football offers, and Mooney was slowly but surely working his way toward offers from Boston College and Georgia Tech.  (The dreaded "interest from" term applies here, and the latter two had in fact not offered by the time Mooney committed to UVA, but it's fair to say they legitimately might have in the future.)  And even though the Florida State game last year with the advertised whiteout wasn't well-received from all corners, it appears to have borne fruit anyway.  Mooney took a comparison visit to Northwestern before committing to UVA, and actually liked it quite a bit, but not enough for the Wildcats' sake.

Lacrosse fans might recognize Malvern Prep as one of the more important places in the recruiting mini-hotbed of suburban Philly; it's where freshman (now sophomore) midfielder Bobby Hill hails from.  So you might expect a biggish athletic guy like Mooney to play lacrosse, and you'd be right; he's a defender.  This is in good keeping with Mike London's desire for increased athleticism on the line - many of his O-line recruits are two-sport standouts - and defense is the place for a guy with Mooney's reputed aggressiveness.

Speaking of which, highlight tapes.  I usually watch them and habitually ignore them for these writeups because they're highlights, and if you get really excited about a highlight tape, that's why they're put together.  I say they're basically useless for evaluating quality unless it's a guy like Morgan Moses who operated on another plane of existence.  I think Mooney's offered one point: whenever he blocked anyone on the second level, he trucked the poor fellow into oblivion.  Probably not every time.  Again: highlights, not lowlights.  But there was a marked contrast between that and when he blocked a guy right in front, in which point he mostly was just getting in the way effectively.  And very few pass-blocking highlights; it seems his strength for now is run-blocking.

So he's a guy with a nasty streak, probably a better run-blocker, and 6'5".  24/7 says he "could be versatile enough to play anywhere on the offensive line if need be," and ESPN evaluates him as a tackle; if so, though, he'd be the shortest tackle on the team, all of whom are 6'6" or 6'7".  So I think Mooney ultimately slots as a guard; possibly center, likely guard.

That being the case, 265 pounds is kinda puny (and one article drops him down all the way to 255 though that's probably outdated.)  If Mooney can pack on 10 pounds and come in at 275, it's a start; guards need 285, minimum.  So it's redshirt city for Mooney, though that should come as no surprise whatsoever since ninety-five out of a hundred incoming O-linemen do.  It may be some years before Mooney starts to make a dent in the two-deep, and it depends on the competition since most of this O-line class projects to guard.  If Mooney turns out to be the best of the bunch, expect him to crack the two-deep as a redshirt sophomore in his third season; Luke Bowanko looks as if he'll hold down a starting spot for a while, and there's good depth being developed in Jay Whitmire and the newly-shifted Conner Davis.  Because of his light weight I don't expect Mooney to jump ahead of the conveyor belt, but that conveyor belt started to break down in Groh's final years so it's great for the program to be developing linemen that way again. 

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We need a quick recruiting board update, so here goes.  It's kind of minimal but that's to be expected as the coaches focus on practice and not recruiting, and the brakes are being applied anyway since we're now in a position to be choosy.

- Moved WR Canaan Severin from green to blue.  Kind of a post-visit bump, as should happen after a visit.

- Added OT Kyle Fuller to green.  Fuller professes a top four, which ordinarily would put him in the blue, but space is limited so it's as much about our end as his.  This is also why Mike Tyson is in green.

- Removed DT Eddie Goldman and WRs Romond Deloatch and Drakar Harvell from red.  This probably means that one of those two receivers will commit in November, but, hell, the numbers game, you know.  Goldman eliminated UVA.