UVa Will Take “If It’s Not Broke, Don’t Fix It” Approach To Blue Devils

When Virginia travels to face Duke Saturday searching for a fourth win in a row against the Blue Devils, the UVa defense will take somewhat of an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach.

As Co-Defensive Coordinator Kelly Poppinga explained in his weekly meeting with members of the media Tuesday, the Cavaliers will try to incorporate some of the elements used to notch victories over the past two seasons when the team travels to Durham this weekend.

Getting to quarterback Daniel Jones as frequently as possible will obviously be top priority.

“Yeah, in the last two years that we’ve been here playing those guys, that’s been a big impact in the game, is the pressure we’ve been able to get on him, and I’d say that’s been pretty consistent of any opponent we’ve had,” Poppinga said.

In Bronco Mendenhall’s first year at UVa in 2016, the Wahoo defense was in Jones’ face for much of the day, and it translated into takeaways. The ‘Hoos landed three hits on Jones, sacked him twice and picked him off five times. Four of those interceptions occurred within six Duke possessions in just the second quarter alone.

With a 27-20 lead in the fourth quarter, Micah Kiser sacked Jones on one fourth-down conversion, then the Cavaliers forced an incomplete pass on fourth down on Duke’s next series. Junior defensive lineman Eli Hanback recovered a fumble in the end zone off of a huge Jordan Mack sack of Jones to kill the next drive and put the ‘Hoos up by two scores with 4:24 to play. Juan Thornhill put the icing on the cake with his second interception of the day less than a minute later, and UVa ran out the clock.

Fast forward to last year when Chris Peace and Charles Snowden each registered a sack on Jones on Duke’s final drive in Charlottesville, while the secondary broke up six of Jones’ passes and intercepted two more. The end result was a 28-21 win by the Wahoos.

The Cavaliers have held Duke to 11 of 32 on its third-down conversions in the previous two matchups under Mendenhall.

“If they can protect [Jones], then he’s going to be able to sit in the pocket and be able to sling the ball around,” said Poppinga, “and when he has a clean pocket, he can really throw it.”

When asked how Jones compares to N.C. State standout Ryan Finley, who threw for 257 yards and three scores against Virginia, Poppinga said the two are a lot alike.

“Very similar,” he said. “Very similar body type. I think Finley’s a little more seasoned, but very similar. Finley I think has a little more presence under pressure, I think that just comes with experience, but I would say very similar in the type of players that they are.”

Poppinga, who’s also in charge of UVa’s outside linebackers and began his coaching career as a defensive intern on Mendenhall’s staff at BYU in 2009, said that showing different looks Saturday will help disguise coverages, much like the ‘Hoos did last week in the win against Miami.

The plan Saturday is to switch between the team’s traditional odd front to an even look to “give [the Blue Devils] multiple looks throughout the game and just kinda keep them guessing,” said Poppinga.

“And so they’re not always comfortable what front we’re in, which we did if you go back to [2016 against Duke],” he continued, “we played basically odd front the whole entire game and then last year we were multiple in our fronts and I thought we played them better last year in the run game than we did the year before.”

Last season, Virginia led by seven with less than two minutes to go and Jones had Duke threatening at the UVa 30-yard line on a 3rd-and-6 when Snowden’s 10-yard sack made things difficult for the Devils. Jones looked to star wideout T.J. Rahming for Duke’s last gasp, but Thornhill was there on the coverage and once again, the ‘Hoos were able to take knees to end the contest.

It’s a given that Jones will be looking for Rahming, the reigning ACC Wide Receiver of the Week, again on Saturday. Poppinga said that his defense must be able to shut him down, along with fellow senior receiver Johnathan Lloyd, much like they did against Miami’s Jeff Thomas and Lawrence Cager a week ago. Thomas and Cager came into last week’s game with impressive numbers, but Virginia held the duo to a combined four catches for just 63 yards.

“If we do that against [Duke’s] top receivers,” Poppinga said, “then that will give us a great chance similar to the Miami game.”

Rahming and the other Duke seniors are hungry for a win against the Wahoos. Last Saturday, Rahming became one of only four players in Duke history to catch 200-plus passes in his career.

“Personally, I have to get a win against [the ‘Hoos],” said Rahming, who posted 190 yards and a touchdown against Virginia as a freshman, but the team ultimately came up short. “My freshman year I had a great game, had some records, but at the end of the day it went out the window because we lost.”

Poppinga described that since the Devils have already faced a few teams (including Virginia Tech, the only team to defeat them thus far) with similar defensive schemes as Virginia, he and the staff have enjoyed the amount of film on how the Devils approach such a look, rushing three defenders and dropping the other eight in coverage.

“Yeah that’s something similar that we do,” Poppinga said. “They were playing a lot of odd front, Virginia Tech, and I had not seen that from them, and so that was great film for us. Army, very similar defense than us, Georgia Tech now has a very similar defense than us.

“So we’ve got some really good film of Duke against the odd-front stuff, seeing how they want to attack that, and Virginia Tech did have some success against that. I’d say [the Devils] rushed the ball pretty well against Georgia Tech and so they know how to attack the odd front — they’ve seen us multiple times. So I think we have multiplicity in our gameplan. If they watch the Miami game, they know that we’re not going to just line up in the odd front every single play, so I think that’s to our advantage.”

Poppinga also admitted that Duke will be preparing for Saturday’s game based on what Virginia was able to do effectively against Jones, and make adjustments accordingly.

“You’ve got to always look at, they are gameplanning against what they’ve seen,” he said. “We’ve had success [against Jones] so obviously I’m sure they’re looking at the coverages we’ve done in the past and what’s caused him problems, and ripping those things. Every defense has their things that they do, and we’re gonna do what we do. Obviously we’ll have different things in our coverages, different checks based upon the formations that they give us and the route constants that they have.”

Poppinga is impressed with how Jones operates quickly and makes decisions quickly, and says the Cavaliers must keep an eye out for deep passes.

“If you look back to last year’s game, they took a lot of shots, numerous shots — and I think they’re going to continue to do that — but they were overthrown,” said Poppinga. “And in other games, [Jones has] not overthrown those. In his last game, that was really the change in the game… When they take a shot, we’ve got to be able to defend the ball down the field.”