I had a snappy recap all written out, but I fumbled it away to a William and Mary writer. I’ll be here all night.
There aren’t that many Virginia bloggers to start with, and tonight’s mind boggling loss to William and Mary probably caused one to go to prison for violent crime and another to put himself out of commission by putting a Matt Schaub for Heisman collectible bobblehead through the screen of his laptop. The UVa blogging business is a classic example of buy low, sell high right now.
This might be the lowest of the low. It was just embarrassing – not only because we lost to an FCS school, but how we did it. When we went into halftime up 14-13, I actually thought we’d been outplayed and were lucky to be ahead. This wasn’t any one-in-a-million Chaminade style upset, this was a genuine case of one team deciding they were better than the other and proving it. It was a thorough ass kicking. Moreover, there wasn’t a single real positive that could be gleaned from this. No “well, at least that guy did really well” or “we coached a good game but didn’t have it” – we were outcoached, outplayed, outschemed, and outhustled.
What I Liked:
1.) Steve Greer. Credited with ten tackles unofficially, he showed a knack for being in the right place at the right time that evaded a lot of his teammates.
2.) That completely wide open William and Mary players didn’t catch either ball thrown deep to them when they were streaking down the middle and that they missed three field goals. These missed opportunities kept this from being the only thing worse than an ugly loss to an FCS school: a blowout loss to an FCS school.
3.) The new video board. It’s very snazzy – a big improvement on the previous board. Unfortunately, a lot of donors are probably frantically trying to cancel checks right now, and it’ll probably be repossessed by the TCU game.
What I Didn’t Like (The Short Version):
1.) Everything.
What I Didn’t Like (The Long Version):
1.) The quarterback rotation
On one hand, it makes sense: if you’ve got three guys who are all about equally mediocre, why not trot them all out every week and see if one can catch fire? The thing is, deciding which quarterback best suits your system is something you do during fall practice. This is like frantically doing your work for an important presentation while the presentation is happening and your boss is staring at you. A quarterback rotation is almost never a good idea for morale, rhythm or successful teams, and we’re proving that right so far. The guy sitting next to me tonight, evidently not familiar with the program, clapped his hand on his knee and erupted with “now why in the hell would you do that?” when I told him we had a quarterback rotation planned. “No one will ever get in a decent rhythm!”
2.) Quarterback play
Vic, Jameel and Marc were all decidedly awful today. Vic had one great highlight reel run in the first quarter, and from that point onward showed why, at best, he’s a novelty change of pace guy for a contending team. He’s got years of rust coating his quarterback skills, and the few throws he attempted tonight were hardly things of beauty. The grass is always greener, and he did have some great highlights from Gretna, but he’s just not the guy to carry the load on a good team. Jameel played like he’d never left, appearing to still have the same problems with accuracy and tendency to stare down his receivers that plagued him in 2007. Marc Verica is just not that good, but for what it’s worth, he had the fewest turnovers out of this group. Seven turnovers out of your quarterbacks is like some bizarre video game stat. Like the loss, I’m not sure that my brain has fully comprehended that it’s a real number.
3.) Our reliance on the quarterback.
The new offense – supposedly a treasure trove of different looks, versatile playmakers, and exciting setups – looked one dimensional and boring. According to the postgame talking heads, Sewell, Hall and Verica ran the ball 27 times while Mikell Simpson and Torrey Mack ran the ball just 8 times combined. Granted, it was the first game for the new scheme, but in a lot of ways it resembled Dave Leitao’s motion scheme in Sean Singletary’s senior year: a lot of horizontal movement and not a lot of production. If Gregg Brandon’s big key to success is having his quarterbacks run the ball thirty times a game, we might start thinking longingly of Mike Groh by week three. Jameel and Vic may be talented improvisers out of the backfield, but any coach worth more than ours will realize pretty quickly where the offense is coming from and shut it down. If we can’t make this work against William and Mary, it might be a long year – there are eleven more games, and they’re all against teams better than W&M.
4.) Pass defense.
I didn’t expect to see our vaunted secondary abused by William and Mary’s rookie passer quite as much as they were. Expected to be the x-factor that would move us ahead, instead they were merely alright for most of the game and just got tooled on at others. Chris Cook was OK, Ras-I was not All-American material – or All-CAA material, and Corey Mosley seemed to be aiming more for the big hit than playing smart positional defense. The rushers don’t get off easy, either: Chairman Al noted in the postgame interview room that “they just decided they weren’t going to let us rush the passer.” Seriously? An FCS school forced their will on an ACC school? That’s just piss poor play, and bad coaching.
5.) That Al Groh will probably still be our coach tomorrow, and was still our coach to start with.
This is just the latest blemish on a sour body of work. When your fanbase from your biggest rival is actively hoping that your coach will remain in power forever, you’re doing something wrong. Our football program is broken. Just not renewing the rollover clause in his deal is not good enough – we need some fresh blood. It doesn’t even matter that we won’t get whatever big name du jour is floating around the Hook that week. We just need someone with a clean slate to take over this program. The fanbase has Groh on a ridiculously short leash already: there were boos in my section tonight when we didn’t convert a third down in the first quarter. This is just another sign that it’s time to move on.
You can say “hey, if we didn’t turn it over seven times, we’d have been right there with them,” but I’m not sure that particular piece of logic is very comforting – who the hell wants to be “right there” with an FCS team not even picked to win their conference anyway? The season is far from over – and remember, 2007 started with a similar affront to the game of football out in Wyoming and turned out alright – but as first impressions go, this one was like going home with your blind date only to find it’s Lorena Bobbitt. We definitely were on the knife end tonight.
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