Perkins’ College Football Dream Makes Virginia A Contender Again

Posted on Tuesday, Jul. 23, 2019, 9:04 pm

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By Jerry Ratcliffe

For a couple of days in Charlotte last week at the ACC Football Kickoff event, Virginia’s Bryce Perkins was living the life of a gridiron king.

Everyone wanted an interview with the star quarterback. Tape recorders, radio microphones, TV cameras were in his face constantly. The night before, after he and teammate Bryce Hall flew down for the celebration, the duo teamed to reign supreme over the cornhole competition at the tailgate dinner, the performance drawing acclaim from the ESPN commentators the following day.

This must have been what Perkins dreamed about when he headed to Arizona State right out of high school before those dreams were temporarily crushed by what was diagnosed as a career-ending broken neck. Those same dreams must have resurfaced after a fresh start when Perkins beat the odds and returned to football at Arizona Western Community College.

Dreams, yes, but there were fears, too. Fears none of those dreams would come true, particularly deep into his juco season when his phone didn’t ring.

“As the season gets going and you still don’t have a lot of teams calling or schools having interest, it gets kind of scary,” Perkins said during a serious moment at the ACC Kickoff. “You don’t doubt your skills, but you doubt your future. That’s something that started to creep into my mind a little bit, not knowing if I was going to get back to a Power 5 school.”

It was late in October, near Halloween, when Perkins’ doubts began to erase. His performances had picked up, particularly during a showdown against Snow College in a battle of juco heavyweights. Snow, which happens to be UVA coach Bronco Mendenhall’s alma mater (before he transferred to Oregon State), was contacted by Mendenhall’s quarterbacks coach, Jason Beck.

Beck was scouring the nation, looking for a QB that would fit Virginia’s offense, something that Mendenhall had termed a “Thorterback,” a combination passer/runner who was as indestructible as Thor from mythology. Beck was actually calling to inquire about Snow’s quarterback until the Snow coach began raving about Perkins.

“Halloween might now seem late to some, but at Western, guys were getting offers like this and that because we were such a high-profile team,” Perkins said. “I started to think that football wasn’t going to be an option for me at the highest level.”

Beck extinguished that thought with one phone call and the process quickly scooped up Perkins as UVA’s next quarterback, a guy that seemingly no one wanted.

Big mistake by those that overlooked the Arizona-bred, NFL-linked QB. 

All Perkins did in his first season at Virginia was break the school’s all-time, single-season total offense record with 3,603 yards, racing past the numbers of Shawn Moore, Aaron Brooks, Matt Schaub, and other Wahoo household names.

That’s not all.

Perkins was one of two players in the nation with 2,600+ passing yards (2,680) and 900+ rushing yards (923). The other? Heisman Trophy winner Kyler Murray of Oklahoma.

Oh, and Perkins was No. 1 in the ACC — and 13th nationally — in points responsible for (206), breaking the UVA record for touchdown responsibility in a season with 34.

We could beat you to death with more numbers, but by now you get the picture. Mendenhall must have felt Perkins was heaven sent and exceeded everyone’s expectations.

Perkins, Year 2, should be even grander with his experience and knowledge under his belt, although there could be more pressure upon his ample shoulder pads. Virginia lost two of its greatest weapons from an 8-5 campaign and a dominating bowl victory over South Carolina from the SEC. Gone are UVA record-holding receiver Olamide Zaccheaus and 1,000-yard rusher Jordan Ellis, both to be replaced by talented players that haven’t quite proven themselves on the big stage.

While Perkins had a fantastic debut to major college football, he hasn’t stopped dreaming of greatness.

“I want for this team and for myself to go down as one of the best ever,” Perkins stated bluntly when asked about his legacy at Virginia. “Every time I step on the field I want to ingrain myself in people’s minds at UVA, to be one of the greatest, to be mentioned with Matt Schaub and Shawn Moore, the guys that built this program, the guys on the walls everywhere around this place. I want to be mentioned with the greats.”

Moore, one of Perkins’ biggest fans, has said several times — even before Perkins ever stepped on the field at Scott Stadium — that he believed the product of Arizona’s deserts would become one of the greatest QBs in UVA history.

None of this, however, will come to fruition in Perkins’ own mind, unless he continues to develop, something he has worked hard on accomplishing in the offseason. He throws daily with at least four receivers to build chemistry and to sharpen his accuracy, which was third-best in Wahoo history last season at 64.5 percent.

“I look at last season and see the things I can get better at doing,” Perkins said. “Definitely a big part of winning a championship is late games and situational football. Last year we lost three of the last four (regular season games), two in overtime, and the other in the fourth quarter. 

“I look at my play late in the season and in games where we were in position to win. Finishing out games and becoming a clutch quarterback will help allow this team to win a championship.”

Virginia was predicted by media attending the Kickoff to win the Coastal Division for the first time since the ACC split into divisional football play in 2005. The Cavaliers are the only team in the seven-member Coastal to have never won the division.

Looking back at the final regular season game — an overtime loss at Virginia Tech, when the Cavaliers seemingly had the game locked up,  which could have ended a then-14 game losing streak to their instate rivals — has been hard for Perkins to erase. It was a nightmarish ending to what could have been a glorious night.

“It still stings a little,” he said. “Even last year, it took me a while to get over it. I’m not completely over it when we talk about it.

“As a player and competitor, when that [loss] happened, I looked at myself like I lost the game for the team. That last [UVA] play lost the game. It was like, ‘Man, it didn’t matter what you did leading up to that point, the last play was on you.’ Just replaying all the things that could have happened was making me sick thinking about it.”

During perhaps his most serious moment of the day’s interviews, Perkins brightened the situation, drawing chuckles from media surrounding him.

“It turned into the five stages of grief,” Perkins smiled and laughed off the horror. “Denial, anger, sad. It was the anger that made me want to get back out there, leave everything else behind and focus on [the bowl] game, which we all did that.”

Transitioning to this season, the QB is convinced that Virginia has to open training camp and keep that same anger, keep it for every game and not “wait for a loss to reenact it again.”

He remembers that last referenced play in the cold darkness of Blacksburg as if it had just happened.

“I remember everything perfectly,” Perkins said. “It was an RPO (run-pass option play). Tight end was in the flat. We were in the Pistol and I was reading the defender.

“I didn’t jump back far enough to pull [the football from Jordan Ellis’ grip], so I kind of stayed on the running back’s track. When I jumped back and tried to pull it, I was too close to [Ellis], so I hit him and when I was trying to pull it out, the ball came out. I tried to reach for it and I got hit, and [Tech] got it.”

Tech drove down the field and booted a 42-yard field goal to keep its domination of the Cavaliers intact with its 15th consecutive win in the series.

At 6-foot-3, 215 pounds, and the speed of a running back (also the moves of a running back), Perkins is the top dual-threat in a Virginia uniform since Marques Hagans, nearly 15 years ago. Perkins, who hails from a long line of NFL running backs (his father was a running back in the NFL, his brother Paul plays for the New York Giants, and his uncle, Don Perkins, played eight seasons as a running back with the Dallas Cowboys), doesn’t exactly want to be known as much for his running ability as being a complete QB.

“My high school coach always said you don’t want to be an athlete that can pass, you want to be a quarterback that can make plays with his feet,” Perkins said. “I want to be a better passer than a runner and to have the ability to put guys in a good position to catch the ball and make plays for them. I try to take off and use my legs when I have to.”

He had to plenty of times last season with many of his 212 rushing attempts coming out of necessity. He’s ready to do whatever it takes to help Virginia win.

That’s what’s scary to opponents, and something that Pittsburgh coach Pat Narduzzi knows his Panther defense must prepare for in a huge season-opening game at Pitt’s Heinz Field on Aug. 31.

“I saw [Perkins] at breakfast this morning (at the Kickoff) … he’s eating a lot … he’s a big boy,” Narduzzi laughed. “He’s a super football player. He’s a challenge. He is Virginia’s offense. He’s the guy you have to stop. He can throw and he can obviously run it. When he can’t throw it, he’ll take off and hurt you with his feet.”

With that said, it’s not just those skills that has made Miami head coach Manny Diaz’s eyes pop when he watches Perkins on film.

“The game, any game, is about affecting the man who holds the ball every play,” said Diaz, who formerly was the Hurricanes’ defensive coordinator until replacing Mark Richt after last season. “In baseball, you want to affect the pitcher. In basketball, you want to affect whoever is bringing the ball down the court. In football, you want to affect the quarterback.

“Perkins has a lot of skills that are worthy of consideration, but his best skill to me is that he’s just so calm between plays, during a play. Nothing fazes him,” Diaz continued. “Everybody on a football team on every play is watching the quarterback, and when they see your quarterback never rattled and see your quarterback calm under pressure when a play breaks down — and he has this way where he doesn’t look like he’s running fast but somehow no one’s catching him — that gives your entire team confidence that we have a chance to win today. I think that’s been his greatest attribute and I could see their football team gain confidence in him as the season went on last year.”

Impressive comments from two of the ACC’s most-respected defensive minds, and something Perkins doesn’t take lightly.

“[The calm] comes from my high school coach, Coach Garrison. Regardless of what happened, he was always calm on the field and always told me to ‘play medium, play medium, play medium,’” Perkins remembered. “It was instilled in my mind that, ‘Okay, regardless of what happens, things can go up or down, but if you stay level-headed, you’ll be able to handle any situation.’

“The coaches always called me the ‘Cool Jamaican,’ because I always had dreads. I stayed calm, not too high, not too low. I still try to keep that same quality.”

His Virginia teammates feed off that because he knows if they see him down and depressed that it can have a negative impact, a loss of confidence in him and even in themselves, so he remains “medium.” That’s not easy to do when Pitt’s and Miami’s giant-sized pass rushers are coming after him full-tilt, aiming to take his head off.

That calm paid huge dividends for him and the Cavaliers last season. Not bad for a guy who knew very little about Virginia until he got here.

He knew that Tiki and Ronde Barber played at UVA because he read a book about them when he was a kid.

“It was a picture book,” Perkins laughed.

He knew a little about Virginia because his brother Paul’s team (UCLA) played a home-and-home with the Cavaliers, and Bryce remembered thinking that UVA’s helmets were really cool. He also worked out some with another Arizona-bred QB, Connor Brewer, who had transferred to Virginia but fizzled out over the long run.

All he knew was that the scenery and weather would be different than what he was accustomed to.

“From Arizona to Virginia, we don’t see a lot of green where I came from,” Perkins said. “Weather was among the questions.”

We found out last season at Indiana that Perkins had never played in rain before, and that night in Bloomington, he was playing in near-monsoon conditions.

Yet, it has all worked out in Perkins’ and Virginia’s favor. Not bad for a guy that everybody else passed on.

His dream is still alive.