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Jermaine Dias was recognized as the Student-Athlete of the Week on the call-in show. |
The Virginia football team got back to work on Monday with practice for Wyoming this Saturday. UVa coach Al Groh joined Mac McDonald for the Cavalier Call-in Show on Monday night and said practice “went well” as the Hoos tried to remedy the ills from the weekend.
McDonald asked if they had put the loss behind them and Groh said they hadn’t.
“I don’t think you ever put it behind you. If you do, then you miss the point,” Groh said. “You move forward with the next challenge coming up. That’s what competition is.”
The Hoos’ next challenge is Saturday at 3:30 p.m. when Wyoming comes to town. It is the Cavaliers’ season opener and the game is nearly sold out.
“They’re offense is very diverse, very wide open. The ball’s all over the place,” Groh said. “[They use] 8, 9, 10 screens a game. There’s elements or remnants of the run-and-shoot days, but it’s combined with quite a bit of two back stuff.”
Groh also recognized the BB&T Student-Athlete of the Week, which he says often comes out of the players the team honors each week as the offensive, defensive, special teams, or scout team players of the week. This week’s honoree on the air was redshirt junior linebacker Jermaine Dias .
Groh said it was “definitely the best game he’s played at Virginia. … He had eight tackles and was in all the right places … and it was the best game he’s played. Hopefully, it’s a signal that we’ll get two seasons like that out of Jermaine.”
A recap of the show’s questions follows.
Ginger from Roanoke had the first call of the night. She said there were no trick plays or anything like that on offense and that it seemed like Pittsburgh knew exactly what we would do. So she had “kind of a learning question. Our offensive line has huge, physical guys by looking at them. What do the coaches teach them to prepare for the game and to be in position to give protection for the quarterback to give him time to throw” and so on.
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Jordy Lipsey and the offensive linemen go through a lot of prep work, Al Groh said in resoponse to a question. |
Groh said the answer could be long-winded and could “take about a month to answer” because there are so many things that go into it. He also said the O-Line had about 29 days or four weeks to work on some of those things. In general, he said that preparation includes “meetings, drills, tape review, playbook sessions with the coach, and actual practice time. There’s a whole gamut of things they do.” He also added that “hopefully those things will result in them playing better than the other night.”
Bill from Richmond called in with a somewhat related question about the passing game. He said it seems like Virginia hasn’t had too many big-time receivers and that it seems like the team doesn’t go down the field with the ball very much. He asked if Groh thought “it hurts with recruiting those guys” and he wondered why on third-and-long that the Cavs throw to the tight end when it looks like he’s “doomed for five yards and even if he catches it, it’s not enough for a first down.” The caller clarified that it was a question, and that he wasn’t in practice every day.
Groh said that the team has done a lot of things the last two seasons to “emphasize the downfield passing game” and that was one of the best parts of the passing game last year because Marques Hagans threw the seam routes so well. He also said that they had three or four plays called against Pitt where the “coaches in the box were screaming look at him, but the ball went to shorter receivers.”
The head coach also talked about hot reads against pressure and how that changes where the ball gets thrown because of defensive pressure. He said both teams are playing against the other’s tendencies and that defenses mix things up between pressure and dropping into coverage. “You’re playing the odds on the other team’s tendencies and we got caught at times the other night” in the wrong situation.
Scott from Roanoke called in and said he has been a UVa fan his whole life. He wanted to know how the kids are doing this week and how they are handling the disappointing start.
Groh said that the team is off on Sunday but that the coaches were “with them quite a bit today” and that the energy level was good. The team watched some Pittsburgh tape and started the Wyoming scouting report. “The energy level was good and hopefully what we were seeing was the necessary resolve to make things go better in upcoming weeks than they went the other night.”
Groh also said that Scott mentioned the fact that Virginia was a young team and he agreed with that. He said that something like nine players started for the first time against Pittsburgh and that 17 players had played in less than five games. He also said that the staff told the players that it wasn’t really something to use as an excuse or that being young was an acceptable reason for not playing well.
“It’s one of things that happens in all walks of life,” Groh said. He added that “because a pilot hasn’t flown for 35 years” that people don’t say it’s O.K. to crash the plane and that “doctors don’t get a pass for losing people on the operating table” until they get enough operations under their belts. He said those people have confidence in what people had taught them and put it into practice and that’s what the players were challenged to do right now.
Scott from Waynesboro called in with two questions. The first was about the decision to replace Christian Olsen and the second was about Groh’s involvement in scheduling.
Groh said that “no matter how well Chris does this year, there’s no way he’s coming back next year. We all know that. … So we’re going to be in the same situation again next year” with a first-year starting quarterback. He went on to say that the coaches were “very in tune to opportunities to play the other quarterbacks both from an evaluation and development standpoint.”
As for scheduling, he said most of the work comes out of the football office. Gerry Capone, the associate athletic director for football administration, lines up a lot of the conversations and information. The football office then gets with athletic administration to move things along in terms of actual dates and locations.
“I think Pitt was worth doing,” Groh said. “The only way for us to grow up is to face some real competition. We could have played North Dakota State or someone like that and won the game and everybody would be chuckling and thinking how great things are, but there would be a false confidence and false expectations.” He said this formula worked out well when UVa faced Colorado State and Florida State in 2002 and starting with a good team like Pitt lets this year’s players know what they have to deal with in coming weeks.
Mark in Waynesboro called in. His question was whether Groh would ever switch to a 4-3 on defense and if he thinks the linebackers are too heavy to play in the 3-4. Mac laughed and said they get this question every other week and that a lot goes on with the 3-4 defense.
Groh said the 3-4 allows teams to have more multiple fronts than a 4-3. He also said that this team has two of the lighter linebackers than the Cavs have had in some time. “Those two in particular, Jermaine Dias and Jon Copper, were the top two producers on defense” at Pittsburgh, Groh said. He added some more thoughts about the 3-4.
“It’s not out of stubbornness [that we play the 3-4]. It’s what we know, it has proven effective in many different circumstances and it gives us things we need to be able to do,” Groh said. He also noted that the 3-4 had a good running defensive day against a BCS conference team in Pittsburgh and that the bigger problems Saturday came from the secondary in “cover 3 and cover 8, which are common to all defenses regardless of the formation.” He said the secondary players are the guardians of the goal line and that they got the name safeties because of their job – to be the safety valve or final line of defense before the end zone.
Nathan from Richmond asked about Deyon Williams and whether he could apply for a medical redshirt.
Groh said that a medical redshirt wouldn’t be needed because Williams still has a redshirt available. He said that they had talked briefly with Williams when the injury first occurred about keeping that option open if he doesn’t get healthy in time to play this year.
“It’s the outside bone of the foot, which is the farthest away from the blood supply” Groh said so that makes calculating a recovery time an “iffy proposition.” Groh said the doctors indicated it could be anywhere from five weeks to a year, just depending on the individual. It will “be a while yet” on Williams and that it was really up to “Deyon and Mother Nature to collaborate on this one.”
