Shortly after the Virginia football team knocked off No. 16 Miami on Saturday night, sophomore kicker Brian Delaney glanced down at his cell phone.
“84 messages,” Delaney said. “That’s probably in a group chat though so I’m not sure how many are individual.”
Those were just texts too and did not account for any additional social media messages. It’s not surprising his phone was busy, though. Delaney became the man of the hour late Saturday night thanks to his crucial – and unexpected – role in UVA’s 16-13 upset victory.
After serving solely as the team’s kickoff specialist for the first year and a half of his career, Delaney emerged as the starting placekicker this week. Never mind that he had never attempted a field goal in a college game before. Never mind that the preseason Coastal Division favorite and nationally ranked Miami was the opponent. Never mind that it was a nationally televised game under the lights.
Cavalier coach Bronco Mendenhall said it was a “pretty cool” story that Delaney captured the starting job and made all his kicks under those circumstances.
“Brian kept kicking the ball in the end zone on kickoffs and all of a sudden his percentages started to say wait a second, he deserves consideration,” Mendenhall said. “It came down to Brian Delaney and Hunter matching off and Brian won the job in practice. And that’s a huge risk, right? Because it’s not in a game. But after talking with Coach [Ricky] Brumfield and Drew Meyer, who is our graduate assistant that works with our kicking, I asked them simply what do you think? They both said Brian. I went with that.”
That turned out to be a good decision. Delaney converted all three of his field goal attempts and sent a final pressure kick through the uprights in the final minute as well. That last one was taken off the board thanks to a roughing the kicker penalty against the Hurricanes that sealed the win for UVA with an automatic first down. Delaney said he was happy to trade the final make for the win.
Beaming in a circle of reporters after the game, Delaney indicated that something changed in practice the past two weeks to make his percentages climb as Mendenhall mentioned. In competition with former starter A.J. Mejia and his replacement Hunter Pearson, Mendenhall kept the stress on the kickers during the bye week with added volume and a tough kicking environment.
Delaney kept sending kicks through the uprights despite the heightened challenges.
“We had a competition this week and every time we did that period it was rowdy,” senior running back Jordan Ellis said. “He never got distracted. He was just making kicks. He was making 40- and 50-yard kicks in practice so we had confidence in him going into the game. You saw when he got out on the field, he wasn’t nervous. He just kicked it through. It looked just like practice. It was definitely inspiring to watch.”
“I think maybe it was just a confidence thing,” Delaney said. “I just started hitting a better ball and it just felt good. I started keeping the momentum.”
While Delaney came through as the starter for Saturday’s showdown, it’s not as if the coaches plucked someone out of the stands to take the kicks or flipped another position player into the role. Delaney has quite a bit of kicking experience even though he hadn’t taken any at UVA yet. He held both the punter and placekicker role at Westfield High School where he helped his team win the VHSL 6A State Championship in 2016. He came to Virginia as a five-star kicker and punter according to the Kohl’s Kicking service. ESPN.com had him rated as the No. 2 kicker nationally and 247Sports.com placed him fifth.
In other words, Delaney had played in some big games on the high school level and he had earned some kicking circuit ratings as well.
Against Miami, Delaney connected from 26, 46, and 32 yards. That middle kick sent the Hoos into halftime with a 13-6 lead and sparked a notably loud round of cheers from fans in the stands. That’s because many watching knew that 46-yarder became the first made field goal from 40 yards or more in the 31st game of the Mendenhall era. Ian Frye last hit a kick from that range with a pair of 42-yard field goals in the 2015 finale against Virginia Tech.
While the fans appeared to recognize the significance of that halftime sweetener, Delaney did not. He said he was not aware that the made 46-yarder was the first from that distance in the Mendenhall era at Virginia. He didn’t notice the extra juice in the fans’ cheers, but said the team was excited to make that one headed to halftime. If he holds on to the job and keeps making kicks like that, however, he should expect similarly supportive cheers in future games.
“I was not,” Delaney said. “I knew we hadn’t kicked as many long ones. I didn’t know that was the first one. I guess you could maybe tell just the way everyone reacted after it went in. Everyone was really happy for me. I was happy for the team.”
