After a long and miserable drive back home to the Augusta area last night, I'm going to give my first attempt at breaking down my thoughts on the game. I have refused to look at stats, so I am going from my hazy recollection with any I put out there.
Good first: The D showed up and showed out. Other than one long drive aided by the refs (and I rarely like to blame the refs) our defense held the Cavs to 16 points, even with a couple of short fields for them. The D got off the field a lot on third down. I seem to remember that there were like 7 or 8 straight drives by UVA that were three and outs. Special teams overall were good. I'll not be too harsh on the missed XP. That seems like a fixable mistake. Kickoffs were through the endzone or fair caught deep, which is an even better result. We blocked a punt and a field goal which was great, but punting needs to be fixed. While we didn't have any blocked we had a couple bad snaps and some bad punts. Had it not been for some good rolls, our punting average would have been horrific.
Bad: Punting, as mentioned 8 sacks and no lanes to run against one of the weaker DLs we will face this year. QB play was terrible. Throws were consistently behind or beyond there targets. UVA had 10 in the box against Sims early in the game and we couldn't make them pay. They completely sold out against the run and dared us to throw deep. We didn't oblige them. A couple of OL penalties again and the WR who covered up the TE late in the game negating a good catch.
My impressions are that GT is in need of a QB. It's obvious to me that Sims wasn't himself starting the game, after watching the second half, it's obvious there's a big drop off at the position after Sims. UVA has one of the worst offense in the ACC and they outplayed ours. Their D isn't great but looked like world beaters against us.
Lastly, Key made it really hard to keep this job. He can afford to lose two more games, uga and probably FSU and still be considered as a candidate. He has to have us in a bowl to even be considered. I don't see it happening.