Dear Old U.Va.

Final Thoughts–Richmond

Thursday, September 09 2010 by Tiki

Now that I’ve had a few days to think about the game, watch the highlights a few (dozen) times, and read other people’s thoughts and opinions, I thought I’d put together a few additional points about the game. If I had espn3, I would’ve rewatched the game, but alas Brighthouse has not caught up to the rest of the world. Depending on how this goes, I may try to do this for all of our future games, most of which I will be able to rewatch during the week following. This may end up being somewhat rambling, so please bear with me.

Some positives I saw

Obviously, the running of both Perry Jones and Keith Payne was a major factor in the outcome of the game, but let’s not disregard the work of the OL. Keith Payne is not a small guy, but he was running through some huge holes. He did much of the work dragging defenders and refusing to go down, but again the OL played a role by pushing him forward repeatedly. The TEs were involved in this as well. This was probably the best blocking performance I’ve seen out of a UVA offensive line that did not include Elton Brown. Kudos to all of them.

While we’re on the subject of Elton Brown; Austin Pasztor is, imo, the best pulling guard we’ve had since Brown. I can’t really explain why Brown didn’t succeed in the NFL, but I suspect Pasztor will have a better NFL career. Pasztor is scary looking when he pulls. He is huge, and very nimble for a guy his size.

Be honest, who else was yelling at Chase Minnifield for running the interception out of the endzone? I was screaming “Take a knee! Take a knee”, before he came out of the endzone. Of course, I didn’t have the same view he had, which obviously had tons of open space on the left side. So, in retrospect, good play Chase.  Chase obviously had a great game.  Tim goes into a bit more detail here. 

I felt like Joe Torchia could’ve had a bigger game than just 3 catches for 29 yards. There were times when I saw him open, but Verica didn’t go that route (not meant as a knock on Verica). Torchia creates mismatches all over the place. Verica could do worse than to look his way against USC, as their LBs will likely be focused on the running game.

Similarly, I think the screen pass could’ve been more successful. The one time we ran the screen to Raynard Horne, it looked like it was very well set up for a big gain, but Horne dropped the pass. That won’t happen again. USC’s front 7 probably thinks they can overwhelm our OL. That is the kind of thing we can exploit for a big play on a screen to Jones or Horne.

Some negatives

I thought Verica missed some reads. It is hard to judge, especially without seeing the game again, but there were a few times when I read blitz and Verica either didn’t notice, didn’t react, or didn’t make the right decision with the ball. He will get burned by this eventually. On the bright side, he did make the right read several times.

Laroy Reynolds has gotten lauded for his play against Richmond, and rightly so. He was aggressive, strong and resolute in his reads. The problem is, he crashed into the backfield time and time again, and he will get burned by this before long. A quick play action fake and toss to a RB in the flat could make for a big play. Watch for USC FB Stanley Havili to possibly take advantage of this.

Trey Womack is another guy who was lauded for stepping up, especially in light of Rodney McLeod’s injury. But I wasn’t all that impressed. While he was around the ball a lot, he was also out of position a few times, and got beat on some pass plays. Aaron Corp overthrew a few passes that could’ve gone for big plays, and more often than not Womack was 2-3 strides behind the intended target. USC will convert on these plays. Womack needs to step up his pass coverage. Or, even better, McLeod could be healthy enough to play.

I love the rotation at LB, but I’m afraid that Aaron Taliaferro and Steve Greer are both playing because neither one of them is ready to be an every down MLB. I’m not expecting Brian Urlacher here, but neither of them impressed me all that much. I liked what I saw out of Greer last year, but I suspect he might be a better fit in the 3-4 defense than in the 4-3. This year, he has more ground to cover and his lack of pure speed could hurt. I didn’t see enough out of Taliaferro to really make a judgment, but I’m secretly hoping that he wins the job.

The reason we’ve gotten for why Ross Metheny didn’t get to take any snaps is that “he wasn’t warmed up”. First of all, regardless of who was at QB we weren’t going to be throwing the ball, so why did he need to be warm? Second, what would’ve happened if (god forbid) Verica had gotten hurt? We don’t bring in Metheny because he’s “not warmed up”? You can debate the value of a couple of garbage time snaps for Metheny, but he should’ve been in there. If nothing else, it might get him over some jitters that he will likely face in his first ever collegiate action.

This has been mentioned by many people, but if Chris Hinkebein is your 50+ FG guy, he should’ve gotten the chance on the 2^nd attempt as well. Making a long FG will be big for his confidence, and we may need him later this season to kick a big FG for us. His attempt had a ton of leg on it, and it was basically straight. It just wasn’t angled towards the uprights. I would rather have seen him get a 2^nd try.

That’s really all I’ve got. It was a great game.  Exciting, fun to watch, and we got contributions from all sorts of players at all sorts of positions. Here’s hoping we continue to see this type of action all season long.