Defensive line coach Ruffin McNeill gave a simple message to the Virginia football players recently. He got through.

”Coach Ruff a couple of weeks ago told them hey if we’re going to win games it’s going to be on the O-Line and D-Line and they’ve both responded very well,” Virginia captain Micah Kiser said. ”D-Line the last two weeks has had dominant games. If we can keep that going forward, it’ll be great.”

The UVA defensive front certainly put together another strong effort in the Cavaliers’ 49-35 win Saturday against Central Michigan. Virginia’s D-Line accounted for 16 tackles, 1.5 sacks, and 4 pass breakups in the win. That gives the unit 33 tackles, 3.5 sacks, and 4 pass breakups over the last two games after a good showing at Connecticut as well.

Junior defensive end Andrew Brown, who put together a pair of solid back-to-back performances, showed up at the center of that surge. That reminded people of how he earned such lofty recruiting rankings out of Oscar Smith High School in Chesapeake. At UConn, Brown posted 6 tackles, 3.5 tackles for loss (1 sack), 1 pass breakup, and 1 fumble recovery. This week the stats aren’t as eye-popping with only 2 tackles (1 sack), but he lived in the backfield against CMU.

...