Bronco: ACC Championship loss to Clemson helped accelerate Virginia’s program

By Jerry Ratcliffe

When Bronco Mendenhall first saw Virginia’s schedule for this season, he immediately recognized it as the most challenging schedule of his coaching career.

Jumping off the page at him was an Oct. 3 rematch with Clemson, one of the nation’s elite programs for the past half-decade and presently the No. 1 ranked team in America. When the two last met for the ACC Championship last December in Charlotte, Clemson steamrolled Virginia, 62-17, in a clear mismatch.

While that was a bummer for the Cavaliers and their fans at the moment, what if we tried to convince you that it was actually a good thing for UVA football?

“It just accelerated our program,” Mendenhall said during his Monday presser. “It exposed deficiencies. We learned so many things about that setting, that stage, that opponent. Without that game, and the outcome of that game and how it was played, we wouldn’t have been as effective or played the way we did versus Florida. I thought we played a better football game against Florida because of what we learned in our game against Clemson.”

Clemson is a 28.5-point favorite in Saturday’s game, but UVA isn’t dreading the encounter at all.

“I’m thrilled to be able to get a chance to play Clemson again,” Mendenhall said. “The best teams on the biggest stages accelerate growth. Every time we have a chance to be in a setting against a quality opponent, growth happens faster than it would if we weren’t in that stage, especially now going into year five.”

The Cavaliers will be walking into Death Valley where the host Tigers have won 23 straight home games and are 42-1 at home since 2014, owning a 28.7-point winning margin during that span. Clemson has won 31 consecutive regular-season games, having last lost when the Tigers were boat-raced, 42-25, by LSU in the national championship game.

Mendenhall certainly remembers details from the last meeting with Clemson in Charlotte, and not much has changed with the Tigers.

“Dabo Swinney is still the coach,” Mendenhall said. “The coordinators are the same. So much of the personnel remains, and the system is so effective and has been for a long time. Clemson is at the point of reloading. There’s certainly an adjustment or a tweak here or there by their personnel, but Dabo’s record and Clemson’s record since he’s been there doesn’t warrant wholesale changes.

“It usually just means reloading. The next player has played usually significant amounts of time from the year before in games that have been one-sided. So there’s experience always being developed. One of the ways you build great programs is not having significant changes once you reach a certain level, and that’s one of the things they’ve done really well.”

Should Clemson dominate UVA this Saturday as it has most every team it has faced the past couple of seasons, what would that mean for the Wahoos? While practically no one is expecting a close game, if the Cavaliers wind up get hammered, should they just accept that and move on and not let one game define them?

“I don’t have [the game] weighted disproportionately in any regard other than this is game two of 2020,” Mendenhall said. “With this team, in these set of circumstances, it’s not bigger or smaller than that. It’s game two of this year with so much to work on and learn and grow from. I’m not framing it in any capacity bigger or maybe more symbolic or substantiated than that.”

With that being said, can Virginia afford to go in and throw caution to the wind, be aggressive and see what happens? Or should fans expect the Cavaliers to stick to their usual plan?

“The second part [of the question] is my philosophy,” Mendenhall said. “I certainly acknowledge Clemson and who we are playing and they’re very skilled, and they’ve been really good. They’re one of the best teams in college football.

“Now that I’ve said that, it just really goes back to putting our plans in place, doing the best we can to execute the things that we think will work, highlighting our personnel.”

Mendenhall said that after initial planning, he doesn’t acknowledge the opponent but rather attempts to give his team every chance to succeed regardless of who Virginia plays. That’s where all his focus goes.