After Two Bad Losses, It’s Not Quite Time to Hit the Panic Button on UVA Football
After back-to-back extremely disappointing and frustrating performances, it’s very easy to make apocalyptic claims about how terrible the rest of the Virginia football season will be.
The Cavaliers have given up 96 points and 1,172 total yards in their last two games. Even the offense looked out of sorts against Wake Forest, as UVA put together several long drives but consistently failed to end those drives with touchdowns. The rushing game is still nowhere to be found.
For the last two weeks, Virginia has looked like an entirely different team from the UVA that went and blew out William & Mary and Illinois. The Hoos have faced elevated competition and delivered below average performances, resulting in lopsided losses to the Tar Heels and Demon Deacons.
We are a third of the way through the season and some UVA fans are doing what they always do: writing off the rest of the season as a predetermined failure.
We’re going to do the more difficult thing and explain why it’s not nearly time to press the panic button.
A month ago, we had no idea what was in store for the Cavaliers this season. There were some question marks on the roster and most people did not know where to place the Hoos in the ACC pecking order.
When we looked at the schedule, the matchups with North Carolina and Wake Forest were winnable, but tough games against solid opponents. Virginia’s dominant play against lesser competition in William & Mary and Illinois elevated our expectations, but the reality is that the Hoos still needed to deliver strong performances to come out of these last two games with victories. The Cavaliers did not play their best, just as they did not play to their potential against North Carolina, and lost both games.
And while a lot is being made over the way in which UVA lost, at the end of the day, all that matters is the outcome of victory or defeat. A win is a win and a loss is a loss.
We’ve seen what Virginia can do when they play their best and we’ve seen what can happen when they fall well short of that mark. Virginia is 2-2 and while we expected the Hoos to compete better against UNC and Wake following their strong wins over William & Mary and Illinois, these were still two games against good opponents that even the most optimistic Wahoo fans knew UVA had a chance to lose.
UVA lost both games by a wide margin, but it is not nearly time to conclude that the team is falling apart. If Virginia put the ball in the end zone at the end of a couple of more drives and the UVA defense came up with just a couple of third down stops, the Hoos would have been right there with the Demon Deacons in the fourth quarter. The same can be said for the North Carolina game. The Cavaliers were just a few plays away from having a chance to win both games.
The Hoos are not 4-0 like some fans thought they might be at this point after seeing the team play so well in the first two games. But we knew so little about how this team would perform going into the season and being 2-2 at this point in the year is not the worst thing in the world.
There are defensive scheme adjustments to be made, sloppy penalties to be cleaned up, and generally a lot of work to be done in practice. But you can never question this team’s effort and you know the players and coaching staff will be working tirelessly to address the issues and do their best to get the season back on track.
Every week is a brand new game. The way the Cavaliers played this week has no bearing on how they will perform next week. Virginia has some tough games remaining on its schedule but every single one of those games is winnable if UVA plays to its potential, as was the case at the beginning of the season before the Hoos had taken the field for the first time. Everything Virginia wants to achieve this season is still in front of them.
If the Cavaliers can clean up their play surrounding the elite talent of Brennan Armstrong, the Hoos can still win a lot of games this season.
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