Virginia Football Stumbles In Road Loss To Illinois

Road struggles have plagued the Virginia football team for a number of years. Saturday’s road debut for Tony Elliott fit the pattern.

The Hoos have just three seasons with a winning road record this century and have 12 seasons with one road win or fewer. At one point in the middle of the last decade, UVA owned a 17-game losing streak on the road. The Cavlaiers last won a non-conference road game in 2017 and the last non-conference Power 5 road win came in 2011, which was also the last season with a winning road mark.

Elliott’s first attempt at reversing those struggles not only missed, but missed extraordinarily badly. Virginia failed to score a touchdown, recorded only one third down conversion that came courtesy of a defensive penalty, allowed an explosive touchdown play on defense, bounced a kick off the upright, and committed a special teams turnover that led to a score too. It all added up to a frustrating and lopsided 24-3 loss at Illinois, which got payback for a 42-14 loss in Charlottesville last season.

“We earned it. We didn’t come close to playing well enough to win,” Elliott said on the Virginia Sports Radio Network. “I thought defensively, they set the tempo, got the ball for the offense, and we just found a way to keep going backwards and backwards. Just a comedy of errors. Some of our older guys just making bad decisions, seniors that you would expect to make better decisions. … We’re going to have to endure this. I told them in the locker room, hey boys we put this on tape, we’ve got to own it. Now the definition of our football team is going to be do we respond or do we start pointing fingers and we start splintering.”

The beginning moments of Saturday’s contest offered the Hoos a chance to seize early control and get their road footing. That chance slipped away.

Virginia squandered two take-aways from the defense in the early part of the first quarter. Defensive back Anthony Johnson picked off a Tommy DeVito pass on the second play of the game, but the Cavaliers produced basically nothing from the Illini 48-yard line. On the next possession, safety Antonio Clary forced a fumble but the offense came up with only a field goal after starting at the Illinois 32-yard line. That drive started with a 4-yard loss on a Perris Jones carry and false start penalty on Derek Devine before Brendan Farrell narrowly connected from 42 yards.

Once that chance at early momentum fell by the wayside, things snowballed in the opposite direction.

Receiver Billy Kemp IV fumbled inside the 10 on an unwise punt return attempt, which Illinois’ Matthew Bailey recovered for a touchdown. Linebacker Josh Ahern lost Illini tight end Michael Marchese on a wheel route that scored from 39 yards out. Corner Fentrell Cypress II barely got beat by a deep throw, which set up a wide open 2-yard touchdown catch for Illinois tight end Tip Reiman when the defense got pulled in by play action. That left UVA in a 21-3 hole early in the second quarter.

Those snapshots featured the defense and special teams but somehow the offense struggled even more.

The Hoos produced just 9 yards in the first quarter. That meager number took a hit with an errant snap over Brennan Armstrong’s head, some stuffed running plays, and a sack. Armstrong went 1-6 passing in the first quarter and finished the first half 5-15 for 94 yards. He targeted Dontayvion Wicks with 8 attempts before intermission with no completions. UVA was 0 for 10 on third down conversions in the first 30 minutes.

The defense allowed just one more field goal the rest of way (Illinois did miss twice from 31 and 45 yards to help keep the score down) and actually came up with two more take-aways in the first half for a total of four in the game. The Hoos did give up 394 yards, including 198 rushing yards. Chase Brown, who led the nation in rushing yards per game entering the matchup, paced the Illini with 146 yards. DeVito ended up 17-25 passing for 196 yards and 2 touchdowns after that 1 interception on the first drive.

Sophomore safety Langston Long led the tackling effort on that side of the ball with a career-high 13 stops, while Nick Jackson added 9 tackles as well. Clary had 7 tackles and the forced fumble, while Johnson added 6 tackles with the interception. Sophomore safety Jonas Sanker and senior edge end Kam Butler each added 4 tackles and a forced fumble, while Chico Bennett Jr. had 6 tackles with a sack.

“Any time you can create a turnover, you want to create possessions for the offense,” UVA defensive coordinator John Rudzinski said on the Virginia Sports Radio Network. “It was nice to see those guys make a few of those good plays.”

While the defense did find a way to hang in the game, however, the offense did not. In some ways, it got worse the longer the game lasted.

That 0-10 number on third downs in the first half eventually landed at 1-16. Virginia faced 3rd-and-9 or worse on seven occasions. The only conversion came on a defensive holding call in the fourth quarter as UVA faced a 3rd-and-14 snap, which resulted in an incompletion. The Hoos’ best chance to get into the end zone came in the final two minutes with the outcome already decided after backup quarterback Jay Woolfolk scrambled for 31 yards. Armstrong checked back in and misfired on two passes to end the threat, which included a final attempt in Dontayvion Wicks’ direction on fourth down.

That last drive captured part of the offensive story. Wicks was targeted 16 times and finished with 2 catches for 23 yards. Armstrong finished 13-23 passing for 180 yards with 0 touchdowns and 2 interceptions. That scramble from Woolfolk made him the team’s leading rusher for the day despite barely playing. Jones had 7 carries for 26 yards, while Mike Hollins added 5 carries for 12 yards. The offensive line allowed 5 sacks. The Cavaliers posted 222 yards on 65 plays for an average of 3.4 yards per play.

“First thoughts, it was a frustrating game,” Armstrong said on the Virginia Sports Radio Network. “Shoot, we haven’t been in that position as an offense in a long, long time. I can’t remember something like that happening. Like Coach E alluded to, we’ve got to be honest with ourselves and get better. That was unacceptable what happened. … It’s a hard pill to swallow. We’ve got to look at ourselves in the mirror.”

In a nutshell, Virginia had trouble running the ball and passing the ball. The Hoos couldn’t provide protection, couldn’t get separation against man coverage, and couldn’t catch Illinois out of place often. A trick play attempt actually worked to get the Illini out of position, but Armstrong severely underthrew tight end Grant Misch running free toward the end zone.

All in all, it was hard to find much encouragement in what was ultimately a rough outing offensively. The Wahoos will try to regroup before a home game with Old Dominion next Saturday at 2 p.m.

“We knew they were going to play man coverage, we knew our guys were going to have to win one on one, we knew we were going to have to throw and catch,” Elliott said. “We knew there were going to be a lot of single blocks up front, the backs were going to have to run through some trash, … and it seemed like any time we had a good play, we’d have a penalty or a turnover or something that we just couldn’t get out of our own way.”

Virginia Football Final Stats