Before Virginia’s 40-36 win over the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, I wrote in the Grades and Trends that it was a good time for the defense to face the triple option.

“… the Georgia Tech game actually comes at a good time for the Virginia defense. Defending the triple-option is about playing sound football, being assignment sound and gap integrity – things the Virginia defense has struggled with recently. It’s true that gap integrity, setting the edge to retain perimeter leverage and getting burned off blitzes because off-side players can’t seem to locate the football has been killing the Cavalier defense the last three weeks.”

“When you play Georgia Tech, identifying the football is critical and that’s what the Cavalier defense will be doing all week. It will be a week where assignment football is drilled into the defense every waking minute. Practice will focus on staying upright, tackling well, and squeezing blocks and not allowing a blocker to gain outside leverage.”

Despite giving up 26 points, the defense was pretty solid. Virginia was gap sound, avoided the cut blocks, and stretched Tech runners to the edge and waited for help like it was coached. The middle linebackers were unblockable and completely took away cutback lanes for most of the game. Here are a couple of examples (one and two) from Saturday.

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