Zac Attack: WR’s Play Saturday Hints At Big Things To Come

Virginia’s passing game didn’t blow anyone away in Saturday night’s 42-13 win over Richmond, but it did offer some exciting moments that could have been a hint of things to come.

The highlight was a 38-yard scoring hookup between new Cavaliers quarterback Bryce Perkins and senior slot receiver Olamide Zaccheaus, who remains on a tear. That play put UVa ahead 21-10 as the Wahoos began to pull away toward the lopsided finale.

For the evening, Zaccheaus hauled in six passes for 101 yards and a score, and recorded some milestones in the process.

The one-time running back from Philadelphia now has a 30-game reception streak, and by going over the century mark, he passed legendary Heath Miller (1,703) and Patrick Jeffers (1,785) into seventh place on Virginia’s career receiving yards list.

With his fourth career 100-yard receiving game, Zaccheaus’s six catches leapfrogged Kris Burd (162) into third place on the Cavaliers’ all-time career receptions list.

As far as Coach Bronco Mendenhall is concerned, Zaccheaus’ play-making skills just gives him one more weapon, a player with speed to burn.

“When you start looking at [Zaccheaus] and then add Joe Reed, and then you have the physical presence of Bryce Perkins, you can count inside and outside, there starts to be more dynamic players on the field.”

Zaccheaus led a receiving corps that caught a collective 14 passes for 191 yards and two touchdowns. Perkins, who should improve his passing numbers as the season progresses, connected on just more than 50 percent of his attempts (13-24), while backup Brennan Armstrong, a true freshman, was 1-for-2 for six yards.

Almost half of Perkins’ completions were to Zaccheaus, while Hasise Dubois caught three passes for 36 yards and a touchdown. Reed had two catches for 34 yards, tight end Evan Butts had two for 10 yards, and Terrell Jana had one catch for 10 yards.

Zaccheaus’ catch and run for 38 yards was definitely be big pass play of the night.

“Earlier in the game I ran a similar route. Even though the ball was low, i still had time to catch it before the defender hit me, so I took note of that,” Zaccheaus said.

He recognized that Richmond’s secondary was playing off with soft coverage, so he knew even when the Spiders broke on the ball, he had time to make a move.

“Same route later, I caught the ball, was able to square up and [the defender] overplayed and I was able to take it to the sideline and able to beat him with speed,” Zaccheaus said.

This should be another stellar year for the senior, who broke UVa’s single-season reception record last year with 85 catches. Certainly he’s going to attract a lot of attention, but Mendenhall and offensive coordinator Robert Anae announced their intentions to get the ball into his hands as much as possible for the second year in a row.

Even though Virginia piled up 492 yards of total offense, no one involved in the passing game was satisfied, Zaccheaus, Perkins, or Mendenhall.

“We had a lot of mistakes and dropped balls,” Zaccheaus said. “We can’t be where we need to be the first game of the year … it’s just not possible. Of course there’s more that we can do. It’s just little things we have to do and make sure Bryce is comfortable and confident.”

Perkins was sacked three times and forced one pass under pressure, with Richmond intercepting and returning it 72 yards for a touchdown on UVa’s first series of the game. It was the Spiders’ only touchdown of the contest.

Some quarterbacks might have gone into a shell after making such an error so early in the game, but Perkins used it as motivation to get better, something his teammates expected.

“I know what Bryce can do,” Zaccheaus said. “He got the jitters out on that play. He bounced back really strong on the next possession.”

In fact, Perkins darted 36 yards for the first of two touchdown runs in the first quarter that put UVa out front for good.

There was a lot of speculation before hand that Richmond might give Virginia a tough test considering that the Spiders stunned the Cavaliers in the 2016 season opener, which happened to be Mendenhall’s debut. However, after Perkins’ two scoring jaunts and the TD pass to Zaccheaus, it was never close.

“This was the expectation, to come in here and win,” Zaccheaus said. “Not only win, but dominate. We hold ourselves to a new standard. We expected to come in here and dominated in all three phases. This is the result we’ve worked for. We’ve just got to move forward and prepare for Indiana.”

The Cavaliers play at Indiana on Saturday at 7:30 p.m., with the game televised by the Big Ten Network.

The Hoosiers, who defeated UVa in Charlottesville last season (34-17), won their opener on Saturday, taking a 38-28 win over Florida International.

Virginia Offensive Statistics

Rushing	No	Gain	Loss	Net	TD	Lg	Avg
Jordan Ellis	18	142	1	141	2	21	7.8
Bryce Perkins	12	119	15	104	2	36	8.7
PK Kier	6	27	0	27	0	9	4.5
Brennan Armstrong	3	13	2	11	0	8	3.7
Joe Reed	1	9	0	9	0	9	9
Lamont Atkins	1	5	0	5	0	5	5
Tavares Kelly	1	4	0	4	0	4	4
Jamari Peacock	1	2	0	2	0	2	2
Olamide Zaccheaus	2	0	11	-11	0	0	-5.5
Totals	47	370	37	333	4	49	7.1

Passing	Cmp-Att-Int	Yds	TD	Long	Sack
Bryce Perkins	12-23-1	181	2	38	3
Brennan Armstrong	1-2-0	6	0	6	0
Totals	13-26-1	187	2	38	3

Receiving	No.	Yds	TD	Long
Olamide Zaccheaus	5	97	1	38
Hasise Dubois	3	36	1	20
Joe Reed	2	34	0	19
Evan Butts	2	10	0	6
Terrell Jana	1	10	0	10
Totals	13	187	2	38