Virginia’s hire of Bronco Mendenhall from BYU to run the football program brought with it a number of changes. Conditioning. Practice design. Uniforms. A fast-paced offense. With Mendenhall in charge of the defense, the hire also will bring a 3-4 defense back to Charlottesville.

Well, at least, the base defense that is. In this final installment of The Sabre’s preseason “BYU Film Study” series, it’s clear that Mendenhall’s 3-4 morphs and shifts into many different looks depending on the situation and the game plan. It’s not like that’s a secret, though. That’s one advantage of the 3-4 in general and something that Mendenhall openly stated back at the start of preseason practice.

“I wouldn’t lock us into anything knowing a year ago [at BYU], we actually played more non 3-4 snaps than 3-4 snaps,” Mendenhall said. “So you start somewhere but once I know who the best 11 players are then they’ll be aligned in some way to keep the points down.”

The Cavaliers released a depth chart for their base 3-4 alignment ahead of the season opener with Richmond. It gives some hints to personnel. It also makes it clear that Virginia will not be a slow and plodding group. Only one player is at 300 pounds at that is nose tackle Donte Wilkins, a role this film study series looked at in August. Other players listed in the front seven include defensive end Steven Wright (255), outside linebackers Cory Jones (220) and Chris Peace (230), and inside linebackers Micah Kiser (240) and Zach Bradshaw (230).

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