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David Watford had a rough day against Oregon with 4 turnovers. |
It turns out that Oregon’s bite is every bit as bad as its quack.
The No. 2 Ducks flocked to Charlottesville on Saturday and thrashed the Cavaliers to the tune of 59-10. The visitors sprinted – literally – to a touchdown in the first two minutes and eventually handed the Hoos their first loss of the season. Oregon’s 59 points are the most allowed by Virginia since Illinois posted 63 in the 1999 Micronpc.com Bowl and the sixth-most allowed in school history.
“Obviously very disappointing. We played an excellent football team. They got on us early and in every phase. We could not stop them defensively and we struggled with interceptions,” Cavalier coach Mike London said. “The players in their system execute and do what they are asked to do. Going into our bye week, we have a lot of things to address. I’m looking forward to moving in a positive direction.”
It didn’t take long for the Oregon stampede to begin. On the first drive of the game, quarterback Marcus Mariota took a 3rd-and-5 run 71 yards to the end zone. The called quarterback draw caught Virginia in man-to-man coverage across the board and the multiple receiver set left a giant void down the middle of the field. Once Mariota broke through the line, the first glimpse at the Ducks’ end-to-end speed was apparent. The two-point conversion made it 8-0.
The Cavaliers survived a poor 21-yard punt on Oregon’s next drive, but when the visitors blocked the next punt it was end zone time again. The Ducks needed just 3 plays to cover 14 yards as De’Anthony Thomas scored from the 1-yard line. On the ensuing UVa drive, Oregon’s Terrance Mitchell intercepted a pass off of Dominique Terrell ‘s hands to set up good field position again. On the first play, Thomas took off from 40 yards out for the touchdown and a 21-0 lead.
“We knew they weren’t going to play us like they played BYU, and they didn’t. They played us completely different, and we anticipated some of that, and made some changes on the fly and our guys did a great job feeling that out,” Oregon coach Mark Helfrich said. “That is a great football team, maybe one of the tallest football teams I’ve seen. But we had to be on point in terms of communication, identifying what they were doing to try to stop us, and our guys did a good job with that.”
Virginia actually hung tough for the remainder of the half, holding Oregon to just one more score. That included a goal line stand where Brent Urban , who also blocked the second extra point attempt of the day, stuffed a 4th-and-Goal run from the 1-yard line.
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Khalek Shepherd scored UVa’s only TD of the game. |
The UVa offense, meanwhile, produced its 10 points for the day at the same time. David Watford connected with Jake McGee twice to help the first scoring drive, which ended when Khalek Shepherd took a toss sweep 45 yards up the visiting sidelines for a touchdown. Watford led a 7-play, 25-yard drive late in the second quarter as well that led to a 37-yard field goal from Ian Frye .
“It was set to have an option, either a left or right toss and we looked and the primary play set up right where we wanted with less people on the left and more on the right, so I got the toss and Morgan Moses kicked them out and Billy Skrobacz kicked them in so it was just me and the corner,” Shepherd said. “Once I made him miss I saw Darius Jennings coming across and I read his block and just ran into the end zone.”
Otherwise, it was a forgettable day for the offense. For the second straight week, the Cavaliers produced less than 300 yards and less than 4 yards per play. Despite running 17 more plays than Oregon, UVa was outgained 557 yards to 298. The Cavs finished with 124 yards rushing and 174 yards passing; they punted 7 times.
Starting quarterback David Watford had some glimmers of good pocket presence and scrambling ability, but ultimately did not produce much in the passing game. Watford completed 29 of 41 passes for just 161 yards, an average of 5.55 yards per completion. He was sacked twice as well.
And far worse than those stats was the fact that Watford was charged with 4 turnovers. He threw 3 interceptions – one off the hands of Dominique Terrell , one trying to squeeze it in to Jake McGee on a fourth down play, and one on some sort of route miscommunication with Terrell – and lost a fumble while being sacked. The Ducks, who led the nation in interceptions and turnover margin last season, capitalized all four times with a touchdown on the ensuing drive.
“It wasn’t really the offense, it was me. I executed not to the caliber that I wanted to,” Watford said. “I made three costly mistakes, three costly turnovers. It wasn’t the offense’s fault as a whole. It was my fault. I take the blame solely. The offensive line held up really strong today and I’m proud of them. The receivers made plays. The running backs ran hard. … I just have to execute better and that’s on me.”
“Obviously, we can’t turn the ball over. Quarterbacks can’t throw interceptions or put the ball down. We need to do better as far as turnovers are concerned,” London said. “This week will be a great week for us to help him be a better football player. He is a try-hard type [player] and the timing is great to find out what we can do to help him improve. We will address turnovers going into this bye week.”
With the bitter taste of a 49-point drubbing still fresh in their minds, many Hoo fans have lamented even scheduling the game against the high-powered Ducks. Virginia’s players, meanwhile, showed an attitude similar to their thoughts after beating BYU in the opener. Learn from it and focus on the games ahead.
“It’s something where I don’t think anybody should get down. I don’t think anybody should start shutting it down,” UVa’s Zach Swanson said. “This was the second game of the season and that was a great team. We can go and move forward from it. Later in the season when we’re in tight spots, we can look and say we’ve been through this and we’ve played tough teams already. We can draw from those experiences.”
“I don’t feel a difference [from last week] right now. We let a lot of fans down, but as a team we have to bounce back,” Cav linebacker Daquan Romero said. “We can’t dwell on this moment. We still have a whole lot of games to play. We can’t get mad at ourselves and shoot ourselves in the knee for it.”
“It won’t be hard [to move on from the loss]. Oregon is a great defense and a great team. They’re number two in the nation for a reason,” Watford sad. “That’s why we have to just learn from the film and learn from the mistakes and get ready for VMI.”
