Wahoos’ second straight rough outing takes me back to dark London days

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Wake Forest 37, Virginia 17

Multiple turnovers, 11 penalties for 83 yards (including more than one unsportsmanlike infraction), 500 offensive yards but fewer than 20 points — Friday night’s home loss to Wake Forest resembled a loss from the Mike London era. That is not something I was hoping or wanting to say in year 6 of the Bronco Mendenhall regime.

And the defense — my oh my the defense. It was only marginally better than last week at North Carolina. Mendenhall said he saw a few more successful plays on defense but acknowledged the scoreboard didn’t reflect it, and fans probably didn’t see it. The Demon Deacons (4-0, 2-0 ACC) piled up 473 yards and scored on their first seven possessions of the game. Despite UVa’s emphasis on stopping the pass this year, QB Sam Hartman made it look easy on Wake’s first TD, finding WR Taylor Morin with no Cavaliers in his ZIP code for a 39-yard pitch, catch, and run. The Deacs’ first scoring drive covered 75 yards and took nine plays and 2:41 off the clock.

Many of their other drives looked like that, too. Wake used its patented patient rushing attack to consistently pick up 4-5 yards or more per run play. Justice Ellison recorded 86 rushing yards, and Wake finished with 203 overall. And when Wake did pass, that went well, too. Hartman found receiver after receiver open in the intermediate-deep part of the field. He finished 17 of 29 for 270 yards and three scores.

Wake Forest QB Sam Hartman escapes the grasp of Virginia LB Noah Taylor.

The adjusted defensive scheme this year — moving from a base 3-4 to more of a 3-3-5 look — has been a topic of much debate. I really like the game of football and consider myself knowledgeable, but I am not an aficionado. I am not going down to break down a ton of X’s and O’s here and be able to tell you what we are or are not doing on defense. But one thing is for sure: It sure has sucked, so it doesn’t really matter what the detailed breakdown says. Anyone who has watched just a decent amount of football sees that it is bad. Something’s not working. The defense looks uninspired, and it doesn’t attack. It seems to be overly reactionary. The pass rush was completely miserable, especially early in the game. I thought the pressure on Hartman finally got a bit better, but still, UVa registered no sacks.

The situation makes me think back to 2016 — Mendenhall’s first season. After UVa (2-2, 0-2) got run out of Scott Stadium by Richmond in Week 1, Mendenhall admitted the defense was too complex. So he made it simpler, and the unit did respond. The team finished 2-10, but the defense steadily improved. Probably the most surprising result that year was the near upset of Lamar Jackson and No. 5 Louisville — a 32-25 loss.

This is a veteran-laden defense, so you’d kind of think the players would be able to handle a complex defense. But maybe the switch itself was too complex. These players were recruited for the 3-4. Maybe the new look can be scrapped, and the team can get back to basics and at least attack the quarterback more. A midseason shift can’t be easy, but the defense can’t get much worse. Though it did play a bit better against Wake Forest than versus North Carolina, I suppose, I would urge Mendenhall to think about doing that — or at least trying to incorporate more of the 3-4/attacking elements.

Perhaps this switch based on last year’s results was a bit too much of a knee-jerk reaction and not needed. Everyone knows the COVID 2020 season was kind of wacky. Plus, the secondary suffered a lot of injuries. Maybe keeping the defense the way it was would’ve been better going into 2021. I’m not sure. I’m just spitballing here.

Also, Mendenhall has said over the years he likes putting his coaches in charge of specific position groups and units. That is the model he eventually implemented at Virginia after a couple of seasons. But defensive coordinator Nick Howell could be part of the issue. Mendenhall may need to get more hands on with the defense.

Speaking of veterans, Mendenhall said that was something that factored into his surprise regarding the discipline issues. He said he hasn’t been emphasizing the need to avoid those types of penalties because he kind of thought that would take of itself since it is such an older group. But apparently that hasn’t been the case. He said the team has a competitive spirit, but the players haven’t been channeling it the correct way. So you have to expect that to be an emphasis going forward. With everything that has gone wrong the past two weeks, the team must decrease the number of penalties to increase its chance of winning.
Though the offense was just about excellent in weeks 1-3, it also can be fairly criticized after this week. The offensive performance reminded me of losses from years ago because the yardage was there, but the points were not. Virginia tallied 506 yards, but the execution and play calling in the red zone was sorely lacking. That was a hallmark of the London era when Bill Lazor was the offensive coordinator. Moving the ball between the 20s was often not an issue, but getting the ball into the end zone usually was.

On its first drive, Virginia moved the ball close to the goal line but a series of strange play calls by offensive coordinator Robert Anae and then confusion getting plays in seemed to frustrate and stall the offense. UVa even had a few more chances than normal to score because Wake picked up a defensive holding penalty that gave the ‘Hoos a first down on the 4-yard line. And they still couldn’t punch it in.

The run game was spotty, but like against North Carolina, it is kind of hard to evaluate since the team fell behind early and felt like it needed to pass to keep up. Wayne Taulapapa was banged up and did not start. Mike Hollins had six carries for 36 yards. He looked good with his limited carries. Devin Darrington also had 6.3 yards per carry on three attempts.

So again, I ask Anae to give Hollins more carries and tone down some of the fancy formations and calls that could cause confusion. Just make the play calling a bit more simple and run the ball a bit more. Then the more off-the-cuff plays become more surprising and difficult to defend for opposing defenses.

Even one usually strong part of the offense also was not good — pass protection. Brennan Armstrong was sacked six times. He also looked indecisive for the first time this season. There were quite a few plays when he seemed to have several seconds to throw the ball but did not. In the fourth quarter, he forced a pass that was intercepted. Armstrong finished completing 33 of 59 passes for 407 yards, two TDs, and the pick.

Dontayvion Wicks paced the receiving corps with eight catches for 114 yards and a touchdown. Jelani Woods had four catches for 73 yards and a score. Billy Kemp IV collected seven catches for 65 yards, but his extra effort led to a fumble in the fourth quarter when he tried to fight through too many Demon Deacon defenders. Mendenhall said he liked the fight he thought he saw from the team, but the execution did not match.

Ra’Shaun Henry tallied four receptions for 52 yards, but he was one of the players who picked up an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. Mendenhall singled out true freshman Malachi Fields after the game for his efforts in the second half. Fields posted three catches for 35 yards.

Keytaon Thompson was less involved in the offense than in the first three weeks of the season. Mendenhall said after the game he was dealing with an injury. So hopefully it is a minor setback, and Thompson can get back into being more involved soon.

Last season, the Cavaliers bottomed out at 1-4 before putting together a four-game winning streak. Let’s hope that this was the low point of this year, but the schedule the rest of the way does the ‘Hoos no favors: Miami and improved Louisville on the road, a Georgia Tech team that walloped the same North Carolina squad that blitzed UVa, Duke, which appears more competent this year than last, two top-25 teams in BYU and Notre Dame, and then solid Pittsburgh and Virginia Tech programs to finish up.

The good news is the ACC may be wackier than usual. Clemson is down, N.C. State is trending up after upsetting the Tigers, Georgia Tech has made strides, maybe Wake Forest is actually really good (which would make Virginia’s loss seem not as bad in the scheme of things) and could win the Atlantic Division, Boston College is 4-0, Florida State is dreadful, and Pitt beat Tennessee but lost to Western Michigan. I’m not putting anything past this conference. Coastal Chaos has now been joined by Atlantic Anarchy. Apologies to the first person to coin that phrase on social media. I’m sure you’re out there somewhere. But anyway, what I’m saying is Virginia can still beat almost anyone on its schedule — it must play to its potential, of course, which I don’t think we have witnessed these past two weeks.

The players and coaches are going to have to earn their way to a respectable season. Though anything can happen in the conference in any given week, there’s no doubt that many teams have looked good and made improvements over the past couple of games, while UVa has sputtered to an 0-2 ACC start and looked pretty poor while doing so. Earned not given. Mendenhall probably wouldn’t want it any other way. He said after the game he enjoys the challenge of having to develop and grow a team. Well, have at it, coach. You got eight games left to get this season back on track.

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