Defense Comes Up Big On Fourth-Down Gamble To Key Virginia Win

By Jerry Ratcliffe

Virginia was in the middle of an unexpected shootout with upset-minded Liberty midway through the third quarter of Saturday night’s game at frosty Scott Stadium.

Liberty’s high-scoring machine had put up points on three consecutive possessions and trailed the Cavaliers by only 31-24. Wahoo fans must have been wondering what was it going to take to create some separation.

That’s exactly when UVa’s defense turned the game around with a hair-chested stretch of football that led to the important seventh win of the season.

After coming up a yard short on a third-and-eight pass at its own 14, Liberty decided to gamble and go for it on fourth-and-one. While the call required a lot of brass, it turned into a huge mistake and swung the momentum as if King Kong had just smashed through the wall and grabbed the victory.

Liberty quarterback Stephen Calvert attempted a short pass to wide receiver Antonio Gandy-Golden, a combo that has terrorized opponents all season long, but it was broken up by defensive back Brenton Nelson, giving the Cavaliers incredible field position at LU’s 14.

Turned out, it gave Virginia much more than that. Ball game. Yes, game, set, match.

Three plays later UVa quarterback Bryce Perkins was on his way to the end zone for his second rushing touchdown of the night (the third time he’s done that this season), and the game was never the same.

On Liberty’s next two possessions, Virginia defensive backs pulled off back-to-back interceptions to break the Flames’ will. De’Vante Cross, making his first collegiate start  at free safety, picked off Calvert, followed by Juan Thornhill’s 12th career interceptions (fifth this season) at the Liberty 35.

From there, Perkins methodically marched the Cavaliers down the field for a touchdown that gave them a 45-24 lead, a drive that capped all scoring for the night and lifted Virginia to a 7-3 record, the program’s first winning season since 2011.

After that fourth-and-one bungle, Liberty was never the same. The Flames had put up most of their 354 yards offense to that point and had matched the Cavaliers almost score for score.

From that point on, Virginia’s chest-beating defense surrendered only 23 yards rushing, 5 yards passing, holding Calvert (a career-7,000-yard passer) to 1-for-4 and two interceptions.

“I actually admired the decision,” UVa coach Bronco Mendenhall said of Liberty coach Turner Gill’s call to go for it so deep in his own territory. “They were having success running the ball, especially early.

“There was kind of a point in the game where I think they decided that they could run for a first down or that they could get a first down and that might in and of itself kind of shift the momentum and have a psychological effect on our team,” Mendenhall explained. “I have no issues with the decision. Under all the circumstances, with Liberty coming to UVa to play in our stadium, with the game being close, I admired it.”

It was a huge gamble with so much time left in the game. Gill, a former All-American at Nebraska in the Tom Osborne days, risked the entire possibility of an upset on one play from his own 14-yard line. Make it, and maybe steal some glory, put Liberty football on the map in its first year in transition to an FBS program. Come up short and Virginia almost automatically scores and the upset dream goes poof into the night.

“It’s a read by our quarterback, read by our offensive coordinator,” Gill said of the play call. “You know, you take chances. You have to take chances in this type of game. You have to score points.

“Unfortunately, we didn’t make it. It’s a double-read. What I mean by a double-read is, you have a run play and you have a pass play. Depending on how many guys they have in the box, you throw the football.”

That’s exactly what UVa sophomore DB Brenton Nelson had been studying all week long in the film room. He and his fellow secondary members had gone over Liberty’s double-read multiple times in film sessions, and he knew it was coming.

“Earlier in the game, they had the same play to Tim (Harris), so I felt like I knew the route was coming,” said Nelson, who was questionable all week after getting injured in the second half last week against Pitt. “We had watched it on film. I felt they were going to go back to it because it worked.”

After Nelson’s timely pass break up, Liberty was done. The back-to-back picks only poured salt to the wound.

“Was a big momentum swing,” Thornhill would say later. “I feel like we took their souls after those two interceptions. They started to think that the game was almost over.”

It was, big time.

All of a sudden, a team that appeared ready to match the Cavaliers yard-for-yard, point-for-point, couldn’t get out of its own way.

Liberty actually had only three yards less than UVa at the half (243-240), while trailing 24-17.

What was surprising is that the Flames were doing most of their damage on the ground (26 rushes, 139 yards) with pesky running backs Peytton Pickett (83 yards) and Frankie Hickson (56 yards, 2 TDs) chewing up Scott Stadium real estate in unexpected clumps.

It was Calvert, who had already thrown for 62 career scores as a junior, that was supposed to be the threat.

“We knew their offense was really good,” said Perkins, who became the first UVa quarterback in recorded history with 1,500+ passing yards and 600+rushing yards in the same season. “We knew we had to keep our foot on the gas because if you let up, your lead can go just like that if you make a mistake.”

It was Liberty that made the mistakes late, but it was some quality halftime adjustments by Virginia’s defensive staff that stopped the bleeding.

“We had to get our run-fits corrected and change some things up front,” Nelson said of the halftime discussion. “Once everybody got on the same page and doing their job, we started producing.”

Virginia used first-time starter Tommy Christ at defensive end in place of the injury Mandy Alonso, and rotated defensive linemen at will to keep fresh legs in against Liberty’s fast-paced offense.

“We were missing a lot of tackles in the first half,” said Thornhill, who said he was determined to come back and play after being injured against Pitt last week. “If we made those tackles, they wouldn’t be able to run the ball, they’d have to throw it and that’s playing right into our hands.”

The Cavaliers’ plan was to make the Flames one-dimensional offensively and that’s exactly what they managed to do because of the run-fit corrections, something that haunted them all game long against Pitt. Thornhill said that when a defense plays as a unit, it can shut down anyone, including Calvert, who had been red hot as a passer coming into the game.

Gill, whose LU team dropped to 4-5 as an Independent, was impressed with UVa’s defense.

“They did a lot of good things on their [defensive] schemes,” Gill said. “I knew that going into the game that we were going to do a lot of things post-read, so they caught [Calvert] in some things that maybe he didn’t ready very well.

“[Virginia] always disguise quite a few things (defensively), and they gave us a lot of different looks,” said Gill, who pointed out how UVa took away Liberty’s high-producing Gandy-Golden (2 catches 38 yards), who had 51 receptions for 844 yards and 9 touchdowns entering the game.”

When it was over, Mendenhall was most happy for his seniors, the same guys who suffered through three (or four) losing seasons (depending on if they were fourth- or fifth-year seniors), before finally experiencing at least a seven-win campaign.

“If you step back for just a second, we were in this room three seasons ago and we were 2-10,” Mendenhall said. “Now we’re bowl eligible and now we’re a winning program, and there’s been a lot that’s happened in a pretty short amount of time.

“For our seniors, I don’t really know how to describe it any better than taht they have caused it and I’m so proud of them,” Mendenhall said. “We ask a lot and I don’t give them anything they don’t earn, and they just keep coming back and working. They’re the ones who are responsible.”

Now the Wahoos hit the road to face back-to-back Tech’s, one surging, the other struggling. To get win number eight will require everything Virginia’s got.