The Virginia football team opened the Tony Elliott era with a 34-17 win against Richmond at Scott Stadium on Saturday. The Hoos fell behind initially, but quickly took charge and then held on through a lackluster second half to get the victory.
In that sense, the debut was not pristine, but it was productive. Time will tell if it was predictive.
Elliott, who became just the second UVA coach since 1965 to win in his debut, saw promise from the day after waiting to move into the head coach realm following a long assistant career at Clemson.
“Just confirmation, I think that in this profession, you can be fast and take the wrong job. But I believe I was patient and the Lord opened up the right door and I’m in the right place,” Elliott said. “All to confirmation I needed was to see the joy in the locker room of those guys experiencing victory and just pure joy, emotion and appreciation for all the hard work that they put in. Also, pregame I thought the atmosphere was really, really good. We’re gonna continue to improve upon that. So all the pieces are here that I was looking for to build something special, and for me it was just building something special that everybody that’s a part of it can be proud of – not about not about myself, but about everybody that’s involved.”
While UVA didn’t dominate or put together a complete effort, the outcome had more wiggle room than previous early-tenure games with Richmond.
Long-time Cavalier fans remember that’s the same first opponent that faced Mike London and Bronco Mendenhall for their turn at the helm. The Spiders were also Al Groh’s first home opponent after opening at Wisconsin. Each of those three games provided a quick test. UVA squeaked out a win in 2001, 17-16, thanks in part to a missed extra point by Richmond in the fourth quarter. The Hoos had a more comfortable 34-13 victory in 2010, but the lead was just 21-13 at the end of the third quarter. The worst result of three games came in Mendenhall’s debut. Virginia lost the 2016 opener 37-20 in a game that was never close as Richmond led 30-7 at one point.
The Hoos faced much less concern in the Elliott opener. After falling behind 7-0 midway through the first quarter, they answered rapidly with a touchdown 31 seconds later and then took the lead just before the frame expired. The hosts added two more touchdowns in the second quarter, while allowing just a field goal to take a comfortable 28-10 lead into the half.
The four scoring plays came from a quartet of Cavaliers:
- Brennan Armstrong hit Lavel Davis Jr. up a seam and the wideout turned it into a 56-yard touchdown with 5:56 to go in the first quarter.
- Perris Jones broke the middle on a 15-yard run and then dove into the end zone for the first lead of the Elliott era with 5 seconds left in the first quarter.
- Armstrong kept the ball around the right side and suddenly broke free before sprinting for a 64-yard score down the home sidelines at the 13:00 mark of the second quarter.
- Mike Hollins lost the ball as he neared the goal line but then dove on top of it to preserve a 3-yard touchdown with 4:10 to go before halftime.
Virginia did not duplicate that success after intermission.
The third quarter featured back-to-back turnovers and no points for the Hoos. They still held an 11-point lead entering the fourth quarter, larger than any of previous three coaches in the home debut against Richmond, but far from a locked result.
The trouble started quickly as a holding penalty negated a solid gain on the second play of the half and then Dontayvion Wicks fumbled on the next snap following a 12-yard catch. After Richmond took over at the 34-yard line, the Virginia defense couldn’t get the stop after forcing a 3rd-and-5 inside the 10-yard line and the visitors’ touchdown made it 28-17. Moments later, another mistake put the defense in a tough spot. Armstrong threw under pressure and Spider defensive back Aaron Banks reached out to spear the interception. This time, though, the Hoos slammed the door quickly with two tackles and an incompletion coming ahead of a missed 48-yard field goal attempt.
Cavalier defensive coordinator John Rudzinski evaluated the sudden change moments as learning moments, but a missed opportunity on the first touchdown.
“I would have loved to get a stop on 3rd-and-5 on the goal line. I thought that was manageable for us,” Rudzinski said. “But, we get a chance, they come out, we end up forcing a field goal. Great learning lessons. And that’s the nature of defensive football. You just gotta love to go on the field, whatever that situation is.”
UVA finally got back into the end zone early in the fourth quarter and effectively put the game away. On that scoring play, Armstrong beat a blitz by lofting a ball into the right corner where Jones ran under it and secured – after a momentary bobble – the touchdown. The Hoos missed the extra point to arrive at the final 34-17 margin.
That final connection featured the Wahoos’ stat leaders for the day.
Armstrong finished with 246 yards passing and 105 yards rushing, while accounting for 3 touchdowns. He completed 21 of 33 passes for 2 touchdowns with the 1 interception. He rushed the ball 10 times, including the big play touchdown. On that 64-yard sprint, Armstrong became the Virginia career leader for total offense as he moved past Shawn Moore (7,987) and Bryce Perkins (7,910) on the all-time list. That was the longest rush of his career and the 6th-longest ever by a UVA quarterback.
Jones added 104 rushing yards with a touchdown plus 2 catches for 14 yards and a touchdown as the starting running back. The one-two punch marked the first time since 2018 that the Hoos had a pair of 100-yard rushers. Jordan Ellis (146) and Perkins (108) accomplished the feat in 2018 against Boston College.
Other big stats came from Davis, who had 4 catches for 89 yards and his touchdown, and Keytaon Thompson, who had 4 catches for 55 yards. Wicks added 6 receptions for 47 yards, while Billy Kemp IV posted 3 catches for 25 yards. Overall, Virginia posted 505 yards of offense with 259 yards rushing and 246 yards passing to achieve the balance that the offseason talk targeted.
Virginia offensive coordinator Des Kitchings said there is much work to be done even with the solid statistical numbers.
“Truthfully, I didn’t feel like we really came off the ball,” Kitchings said. “But it got going and it helps when Brennan can get the momentum going. Perris did a good job with playing hard, [being] physical, breaking some runs, but it’s still got to be cleaned up.”
Beyond the two sudden change challenges, the defense recorded a decent day at Scott. The Spiders finished with 330 yards at a clip of 4.8 yards per play. Much of that production came on the first scoring drive where they went 80 yards for the 7-0 lead.
Richmond’s Reece Udinski tallied 160 passing yards with a touchdown on 23-of-34 passing. Much of that came from quick throws to the perimeter where it forced the Hoos to tackle in space, which had some mixed results but overall was handled well. Savon Smith had 88 yards and a touchdown rushing, while Aaron Dykes added 76 yards on the ground. The Cavaliers had some trouble with middle runs and inside zone plays, but adjusted as the game progressed.
Linebacker Nick Jackson led the Virginia defense with 14 tackles, his third straight double-digit effort dating back to last season. Defensive backs had a productive day as Antonio Clary and Fentrell Cypress II chipped in 8 tackles apiece, while Anthony Johnson and Jonas Sanker each had 7. Linebacker Josh Ahern checked in for the second half (he had to sit the first half due to a targeting penalty in last season’s finale) and added 5 tackles in the half. He also had an interception negated by a substitution penalty.
“I thought they responded well in the first half. They were giving up a little bit too much in the run game, but then they found a way to get some stops,” Elliott said. “And then, in fairness to the defense, they got put in some tough situations in the second half. We had back-to-back sudden changes, in [an] unfavorable field position, they got into a long field goal that they missed, they had a couple of fourth down stops, short yardage stops. So there’s gonna be a lot to clean up, but I think the guys having a chance to see themselves being successful in situations is just going to help us going forward. I missed a timeout I should have called, I heard the substitution on the headset; I thought we were in good shape when we had the interception. So that’s on me. But just proud of the guys for having them ready to play, being able to play a lot of people, and then being able to make adjustments in the game to give us some stops so that the offense can kind of flip the momentum.”
All in all, the Hoos got what they needed out of the season opener. Enough situational tests to provide solid feedback from film, but not so much of an overall test to torpedo confidence. The upcoming weeks should provide tougher challenges with trips to Illinois and Syracuse sandwiched around a home game against Old Dominion, who opened its campaign with an upset of Virginia Tech.
Getting Elliott’s first win out of the way in his debut proved satisfying, but Armstrong noted that wasn’t the sole motivator as the 2022 season begins its course.
“It’s important,” Armstrong said of the season-opening win. “Someone asked me this too, I mean yeah it’s Coach Elliott’s first win and that’s super important, but shoot there’s like 25 seniors on this team that this is their last first home game. There’s a lot of other things worth striving to get and it means a lot more to these older guys too on top of Coach Elliott’s career first season being here. There’s a lot of things that this whole season, these wins or losses or whatever it may be, are [about] for a lot of people.”
Why did the Wahoos elect to run out the clock at the end of the first half? They had the ball with good field position and enough time to gain enough yards to try a long field goal. Is our new coach determined to show what a gentleman he is, even if a game is still very much in doubt?
Yeah. Was hoping someone would ask that but haven’t seen in any articles.
I thought that was odd as well