At 2-1 Again, Are These Hoos Different?

Here we are again. For the third year in a row, Virginia stands at 2-1 after the season’s first three games. In fact, UVa has started every season of the Mike London era at 2-1. The similarities are a potential indicator for the status of the program. In this case, we all had better hope that past performance is not indicative of future results.

In the first three games of 2013 and 2014, Virginia beat an overmatched FCS opponent, used a late turnover to score an upset home victory over a nationally prominent team, and suffered a home loss against a highly ranked Pac 12 opponent. Given these similarities, why is the mood of the team and its fans markedly better than it was a year ago? The answer lies, at least partly, in the quality of Virginia’s play in each season’s loss.

UVa was completely overmatched a year ago against Oregon, which came to Charlottesville as the nation’s second-ranked team. The game was never competitive and the 59-10 final score did nothing to ease the fears Hoo fans had about the direction of the program. This year Virginia hosted seventh-ranked UCLA and though it lost the game in excruciating fashion, Virginia was for most of the game the better team. The loss to Oregon was disheartening. The UCLA loss was emboldening. That’s the difference three games into the 2014 season.

The look and feel of the 2014 Virginia football team is vastly different from the 2013 edition. Fans last year conceded that the BYU win was made possible only because of an ill-advised late game pass that Anthony Harris intercepted. “We were lucky to win that game,” many fans said. Fans this year made no such concession after another late-game turnover allowed UVa to squeak past Louisville. “We were the better team and had the refs not made the bogus roughing-the-passer call, we wouldn’t have needed that muffed punt to win,” many fans said. Three games in, the fan base is convinced that this team bears little resemblance to last year’s squad despite an identical record.

Virginia now enters the crucible. In last year’s fourth game, UVa traveled to Pittsburgh for its first road game of the year. The team wasted its best defensive performance of the year, displaying total offensive ineptitude in dropping an untold number of passes while amassing only 188 yards of offense with just 11 first downs. While the Hoos currently are a 14-point underdog for Saturday, I’d bet that no one affiliated with the program believes that this year’s fourth game will in any way resemble last year’s outing at Pitt.

Fans have reason to expect another good defensive effort, but the real difference is that this year’s offense, while still looking shaky at times, is growing up as we watch. Greyson Lambert has made significant strides in slowing down the game. Virginia’s developing corps of receivers has supported Lambert and Matt Johns by making tough catches all season long. Best of all, when the offense needed one last first down to finish off Louisville last weekend, Kevin Parks lowered his shoulder and blasted his way over the first down marker. He was not to be denied, and neither were the Cavaliers.

In their chats with the media, players make frequent reference to the unity of this team and to the quality of the leadership. Henry Coley and the other seniors have invested in the program and seem determined to leave it in better shape. Mike London and his experienced staff have done an excellent job recruiting the type of student-athletes that can handle the demands of Virginia’s rigorous academics. There is no evidence that the character issues that have bogged down past teams are a factor in 2014. Mike London’s mantra of “faith, family, and football” and his demand for personal accountability have weeded out those players who don’t buy in.

So, in the fourth game of Coach London’s fifth year, is this the weekend that Virginia turns the corner? The media certainly has underestimated the Hoos, having failed to calculate Virginia’s intangibles when making their preseason predictions. With their backs to the wall, fighting to save the job of a coach many have called a mentor and father figure, and with the determination to put last year’s disaster behind them, these Cavaliers are playing ferocious defense, staying away from last year’s crippling mental mistakes, and learning how to win again. No, this team, despite losing only a handful of seniors from last year’s team, looks and acts nothing like last year. Beating BYU Saturday would offer more proof of that assertion.