Olamide Zaccheaus Sets Career Receptions Record In Virginia Win

Olamide Zaccheaus and the Hoos are 6-2.
Olamide Zaccheaus hauls in a record-breaking 211th career catch. He’s up to 213 after UVA’s win. ~ Mike Ingalls

Virginia receiver Olamide Zaccheaus released off the line from his spot in the slot, sold an outside release, and then turned quickly up the seam. Bryce Perkins floated the ball over a linebacker to Zaccheaus running free in the middle of the field for the completion and a Cavalier first down.

As Zaccheaus catches go, this one was of the routine variety. After all, nearly half of his receptions this season go for a first down or a touchdown. It was a special catch, though. That reception made Zaccheaus the Virginia program’s all-time leader as he surpassed Billy McMullen’s 210 catches on that play. By the end of the 31-21 win, Zaccheaus had pushed his total to 213 career receptions for the Hoos.

“It’s not something I’m really worried about right now, but after college is over or something, I’ll reflect on it and obviously be proud, ” Zaccheaus said. “I’m just grateful for the people around me that have helped me get to where I am.”

At Virginia, the people around him include coaches like Bronco Mendenhall and Marques Hagans.

The rise traces back to the halfway point of Zaccheaus’ career at UVA. He made an immediate impact as a freshman with 478 yards rushing and receiving under the previous coaching staff and followed up with 51 catches for 584 yards and a team-leading seven touchdowns as a sophomore. Even after that start, however, Mendenhall thought Zaccheaus could do so much more and openly challenged him along the lines of maturity and attitude.

Zaccheaus listened and went to work. His junior season broke McMullen’s single-season record with 85 receptions. He posted 895 receiving yards, No. 5 on the program’s single-season list. Those numbers surpassed the previous two seasons combined. Mendenhall challenged him again, this time placing a sort of ‘as you go, we go’ tag on the receivers’ performance along with Perkins.

The senior accepted the new challenge too.

“The growth and development I’ve seen with [Olamide Zaccheaus], the capability has always been there, but his drive for excellence keeps accelerating to a higher level,” Mendenhall said. “He’s hungrier to be better. He also knows, and we’ve talked really bluntly, that if he doesn’t play well, we don’t have a great chance to win. He’s able to shoulder that, and I put him in a place where he can still focus on his game and production and help our team without it now being that he’s the reason. It’s now how can he contribute. He’s hungrier for the team’s success than I think he is his own and that comes with maturity and that’s what’s happened with him.”

Hagans, the position coach for receivers, had always been in Zaccheaus’ ear too the standout said, but this offseason it went up a notch. After the record-setting junior season, the duo analyzed all the catches and drops. The conclusion they shared? Simply put, he left some opportunities on the field, particularly with yards after the catch.

Zaccheaus has capitalized on the scrutiny. Through eight games, he’s recorded 56 catches for 690 yards with six touchdowns. He caught a two-point conversion pass too. With at least five more games ahead now that the Cavaliers are bowl eligible again, he’ll have a shot to break his own single-season record of 85 catches and he’s own pace to join a truly exclusive club at UVA. Only two players have made it to the 1,000-yard club in program history: Herman Moore (1,190 in 1990) and Billy McMullen (1,060 in 2001).

Even with those numbers swirling around his legacy, that didn’t capture the sole gist of the offseason motivation. That went beyond the statistics.

“Coach Hagans really put a lot of pressure on me to make this my best year,” Zaccheaus said. “Obviously, I have goals but it’s more so about what I do every day and that’s one thing he really stressed to me this offseason. It’s a group effort and I can’t thank Coach Hagans enough for how he’s pushed me.”

“I would say there was a step taken two years ago as far as my diet and the things I put in my body,” Zaccheaus also said. “This past offseason, the winter was another step. I was just like I really need to tighten up and really get rid of distractions in my life and just make sure I’m really intentional with the process and not worried about any type of outcome, just worry about the day in and day out things, the little things that you do every day.”

Olamide Zaccheaus is the program's all-time leader in receptions with 213.
Olamide Zaccheaus picks up yards for Virginia in the win. ~ Mike Ingalls

Zaccheaus’ surge in the record books accelerated the last two weeks. He pulled in 10 catches for 66 yards at Duke and followed it up with 10 catches for 108 yards against Carolina. He’s now caught a pass in 37 straight games. Against UNC, he also added two carries for 30 yards and that pushed him past 500 rushing yards for his career. He is the only active player in the country with 2,000+ receiving yards and 500+ rushing yards. Zaccheaus is one of just three ACC players to reach those combined numbers since 2000. Syracuse’s Ervin Phillips and Pittsburgh’s Tyler Boyd are the other two.

Perkins hasn’t contributed the bulk of those numbers on the passing side. Two-year starting quarterback Kurt Benkert jumpstarted that process with 136 connections with Zaccheaus. It didn’t take long for Perkins to see why all those targets were going that way, though. Before practice even started and players worked out together on the field, Perkins saw it immediately.

“You could tell the first day,” Perkins said. “He’s so easy to work with on any route. We were out there just throwing on air and he was probably the easiest to work with and just smooth in his route running. I knew from there, oh yeah that’s a player right there. He’s going to be a great player and I already knew he was and he’s coming out and proving it to everybody.”

UVA cornerback Bryce Hall noticed it quickly too. When he arrived one year behind Zaccheaus, the receiver already was emerging as a potential playmaker for the Hoos in Mendenhall’s first season. Hall said he was lucky to be on the outside instead of assigned to the slot receiver where Zaccheaus often plays because he didn’t completely “get destroyed” in his freshman practices.

After two years on the ACC block, however, Hall and Zaccheaus worked hard this offseason to continue to improve. That included plenty of reps against one another.

“It’s great going against him in practice because you’re going against one of the best in the ACC,” Hall said. “Our mindset is iron sharpens iron so we’re always competing in practice. Especially during the offseason, I felt like we got each other better. In the spring, seeing him get extra work in just motivated me and we kind of fed off each other. He’s my locker mate so we ultimately felt like we grew together and we sharpened each other throughout the offseason.”

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