UVA Predictions

Margin of Victory

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jeffgt14

jeffgt14

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Well since I didn't really make a prediction last week I'm not going to this week. I'm not as confident as some. I'd like to see us play defense 2 weeks in a row.
 
ilovetheoption

ilovetheoption

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Sideways said:
I forgot that "Option" is our resident UVA expert. Tell us about them. I am sure we would all appreciate your insight.
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This is what I wrote elsewhere:
Let me start this off with the following: I'm a UVa homer. I don't pretend otherwise. I wear blue and orange glasses, and I'm likely to give UVa more credit than we deserve.

We're in our first year under Bronco Mendenhall who is (note, I probably wrote and deleted 7 things right here before I settled on the following) an interesting fellow. As near as I can tell, he fancies himself as some crossbreed of Norman Dale and Tony Robbins. Big on sloganeering. Big on effort and doing things "the right way". Big into motivational tactics (I almost said ploys). As you can probably already tell, I'm not 100% sold on the guy.

The team is fanatically into conditioning. I'll venture we'll be the fitter team saturday. The team has trained conditioning at the expense of all else from the instant Mendenhall has gotten here. Before players were allowed to take part in practice, they had to pass a conditioning test. Before they werre allowed to wear UVA gear around campus, they had to pass a conditioning test. Before they were allowed to have numbers, they had to pass a conditioning test. If the locker room wasn't kept clean the way Mendenhall wanted...I'll let you guys guess what happened. In the offseason the team would spend as long as it took for them to walk onto the practice field exactly the way Mendenhall wanted. Over and over and over, they practiced walking onto the practice field. They would practice doing their warmup calisthenics exactly the way Mendenhall wanted. Until they got that a certain way, they did not do anything else. Everything was "earned, not given". You get the idea. The guy is very particular about certain things, and is firmly in the belief that his way is the right way.

Some would say that you have to learn to crawl before you walk, and that details matter, and that if you take care of the little stuff, the big stuff will take care of itself. Others would say that perhaps that time might have been better spent on, you know, actually getting better at football. It is up for debate among the UVa faithful at the moment. He won a LOT of games at BYU that way (99 in 11 years, which is successful no matter how you look at it). That said, UVa doesn't have a religion full of kids whose ultimate football goal is to wear the V-Sabres, nor do they have a ton of married 25 and 26 year olds on the roster who all they care about is reading the bible and playing football.

It''s been interesting. I think most of us were willing to give Mendenhall this year as a mulligan to get his mindset/people/system in place, but mulligans are easier to deal with beforehand and afterwards than they are at the moment. The moment is pretty uncomfortable, and we have a bad football team (and we're not blowing the doors off the recruiting trail, either, which is perhaps more worrisome. Normally new coaches get a bump).

We run a multiple 3-4, which is sometimes more of a 353. We're pretty big up front, going 290/300/270.

Historically, the teams that have slowed GT down have had one of 3 things
1) A defensive lineman or two who just kicked your butts at the point of attack.
2) A sideline to sideline guy who is both fast and physical to get to the spot, defeat blocks, and make the tackle (think Cash from Duke, or the LB from Miami a few years back)
3) An elite DC.

So, 1) Probably not? The guys we have don't suck, but they're more big power guys than the kind of aaron donald/nate collins/woody baron ultra quick DT's that generally give you guys fits. Maybe we win at the point of attack, and you're not going to be able to just cram it down our throats, but you ought to be able to option us, as they're not super quick.
3) .......I mean....unproven? I know Mendenhall did a good job against Johnson a couple years ago, but the defense isn't exactly Alabama right now.
2) This is where I hang my hope. We've got a guy who just might have a 15 tackle kind of game. Heck, we may have 2. Micah Kiser and Quin Blanding are numbers 1 and 2 in the ACC in tackles, and they (especially Blanding) might give you guys fits.

Blanding isn't particularly fast for a FS, but he's 6'2 and 215, and is plenty physical. I can see UVA having him aggressively running the alley, with Kiser being the pitch key. Kiser's great in trash, and I can see GT's linemen getting him occupied.

Frankly, while I think you guys offense is better than our defense, I can see us giving you guys fits because styles make fights and all.

Now, is it possible that you guys just shred us, because we don't have a ton of speed, and if the Abacks get in space, they might go bananas. I don't know though, what I'm HOPING for is that our big DL clogs up the middle, and kiser proves unblockable and we make the QB doubt his reads because he's constantly getting hit by Kiser (who is a 240 lb ball of muscle) and we bog you guys down.

It might happen??

As for the rest of the matchups, we're just "meh" at corner, but you guys are just "meh" at WR. If JT is playing, maybe you hurt us deep. We play a field/boundary system, and both of our corners have pretty good size.

Anyhoo (see what I did there?), our offense against your defense. NB: I'm going to do this based on the entire season of work, assuming that you somehow caught lightning in a bottle against VT, and are not going to be trotting out the Sting Curtain for the second week in a row.

Again, we're not good, but I think we're better than most think, and have to potential to give you guys problems.

It sort of begins and ends with Smoke Mizzell. He's just an all around really good back, who if he played for a better program might be getting national attention. For you guys, he'd be about the platonic ideal of an A back, with speed, hands, hips, and accelleration. He's an above average ball carrier, an above average receiver, an above average blocker, and much of our offense circles around getting him the ball in space. I love the kid (and he's a solid kid, too).

We run pretty much a modern spread offense. We have a "speed back" (Smoke) and a "big back" , so in some ways it's not conceptually that different from you guys, but ours looks like what you're used to seeing on Saturdays, with our QB in the shotgun, 3 to 5 WR's (often the 5th WR is smoke, who we'll flex out into the slot, where he's super comfortable).

As ususal with these offenses, a lot of it comes down to the OL and the triggerman.

We've got problems on OL. I'm not going to candy-coat it. Again, if your D plays like it has much of the year, this might not be a huge issue, but you guys might get frisky again against this unit.

As a result of this, our QB is a gigantic question mark. The kid is a transfer from ECU, so he's familiar with the system, and he's actually got quite a bit of talent. He's mobile, he's got a pretty good arm, he's a big dude (6'3, 220), he can make all the throws. Earlier in the year he threw for 420 against CMU, 330 against Duke and 280 against Pitt.

The kids got talent.

The problem is that he's taken an absolute pounding behind the Big Orange Colander offensive line we have, and now he's super skittish, and bails when there's no pressure, and makes panic throws, and got pulled late last week. Again, I like the kid, so it's tough to see him get puppykicked every week.

If he's on, he's ABSOLUTELY the guy to carve up your defense. We've got guys, too. Doni Dowling is a fine WR, Oz Zaccheaus is a fine WR, Mizzell's hell on wheels in the flat, Johnson can play. We're good enough at the skill positions to put up points, and I like the system, but LORD we've got to protect.

So, long and short, that's really what it comes down to: can we get you guys blocked up front? Because you have not (again, disregarding last week) been a hellacious pass rush bunch, I actually sort of like our chances to move the ball on you. If Benkert can get in a rhythm early, there's just no way that PJ or Brant Mitchell can cover Smoke, and he could go berserk.

So, final prediction: we COULD slow you down offensively, and we COULD carve you up offensively. It wouldn't blow my mind at ALL to see this be a 27-23 UVa win, and see this board go up in Smoke (again, see what I did there?).

Just as plausibly, your D feasts on a second consecutive weak offensive line, Benkert starts acting like a first time star of a bukkake scene, flinching playing with his eyes closed, and you guys get momentum and roll 38-17.

I think it's somewhere in the middle. Styles make fights, and we're a better matchup for you than our relative ability indicates against neutral squads.

GT wins a close one, UVa covers the spread, and everybody walks away decently satisfied (....this bukkake analogy has legs). 27-24, GT wins.

Wellllllll.....nevermind. Mendenhall just announced a new starting qb, and an entirely different ball of wax. Matt Johns will be starting, and timidity is NOT an issue with him. Just the opposite. Hes a born gunslinger, for better or worse. He threw 17 picks last year. The range of possibilities just widened a whole tin. We could score 40. We could get shut out and give up 3 defensive tds. Holy moly.

Uf nothing else, it just got more interesting.
 

Sideways

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Thanks Option. Well done and very informative. Offensive line is a problem? Seems there is a lot of that going around: Florida, South Carolina, among others. Smoke is the man I would be most concerned about if I am a Tech fan. Getting pressure on the quarterback is going to be a major factor from what I seem to hear you saying. That and getting the two studs on defense blocked. Looking forward to it.
 
RamblinCharger

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I think a lot of you are overlooking UVA because of their record. Bronco has them playing well and this will be a tougher game than I'd like to see. I won't make a prediction because I didn't last week so let's keep that train rolling.
 

Jean-Baptiste Rochambeau

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jeffgt14 said:
Well since I didn't really make a prediction last week I'm not going to this week. I'm not as confident as some. I'd like to see us play defense 2 weeks in a row.
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I am just glad the game is at Grant Field. We do okay there when Virginia is the visitor. I don't think we can count of UVA playing as poorly as Va. Tech did. But I think we win, and head to Athens with some reason to be optimistic.
 
ilovetheoption

ilovetheoption

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Sideways said:
Thanks Option. Well done and very informative. Offensive line is a problem? Seems there is a lot of that going around: Florida, South Carolina, among others. Smoke is the man I would be most concerned about if I am a Tech fan. Getting pressure on the quarterback is going to be a major factor from what I seem to hear you saying. That and getting the two studs on defense blocked. Looking forward to it.
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Yeah, that's about the long and short of it.
 

bke1984

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These guys are 2-8 with losses to Richmond, Connecticut, and Wake Forest...and before anyone says Wake has 6 wins and is pretty good, go look at those wins

We are not losing to them at home on Senior Day. JT is going to have a big day and we roll 38-17
 

bke1984

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bke1984 said:
These guys are 2-8 with losses to Richmond, Connecticut, and Wake Forest...and before anyone says Wake has 6 wins and is pretty good, go look at those wins

We are not losing to them at home on Senior Day. JT is going to have a big day and we roll 38-17
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...and if for some reason I'm wrong and we drop this one I might black out from drinking Saturday night, lol
 

sidewalkGTfan

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bke1984 said:
These guys are 2-8 with losses to Richmond, Connecticut, and Wake Forest...and before anyone says Wake has 6 wins and is pretty good, go look at those wins

We are not losing to them at home on Senior Day. JT is going to have a big day and we roll 38-17
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+1...Like I said earlier, we will have to play like crap to lose Saturday, which isn't out of the realm of possibility. At this point in the season, you are what your record is...and UVA sucks.
 
Boomergump

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This is, by far, the hardest game for me to predict of the entire year, not that my record is any good to start with. On paper, you would think we are winners by a good margin. However, TECH almost NEVER does things the easy way. This is my gut talking:

TECH is down late in Q4 and JT leads a late drive to win. The entire fanbase believes we should have won easily, but......

TECH 31-UVA 28.
 
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