With hobbled O-Line, Virginia’s offense laid giant egg

By Jerry Ratcliffe

Mack Brown came to Charlottesville looking for answers, looking for a new start to what had evolved to a near-disastrous season for his North Carolina football team. Tony Elliott thought he knew his Virginia squad, but left Scott Stadium on Saturday afternoon completely baffled by his team’s performance.

The visiting Tar Heels, underdogs riding a four-game losing streak, didn’t resemble the team that couldn’t get out of its own way en route to a dominating 41-14 win between the two crusty old rivals, meeting for the 129th time.

Elliott’s Cavaliers, once 4-1 on the season, dropped to 4-4 in an uninspired, sloppy contest that many skeptics believe was their last chance at a win this season. UVA’s remaining schedule includes three nationally ranked opponents, plus a road trip to Blacksburg, where the Wahoos haven’t won since 1998.

Virtually nothing went right for Virginia, playing in front of its largest crowd of the season (44,550).

Problems began right out of the gate as the Cavaliers drove to a first down at the Carolina 1-yard line on their first possession and ended up being forced to settle for a 30-yard field goal, as backup center Noah Josey’s snap sailed over quarterback Anthony Colandrea’s head for an 11-yard loss.

Virginia, which entered the game as the No. 130 team nationally in red-zone touchdowns, went Oh-for-3 in that category on the day.

That opening drive was a hint of things to come as Colandrea was under duress the entire afternoon. He was sacked 10 times, the most by a Tar Heels defense in 20 years. UNC had only 15 total sacks in its previous seven games this season.

Virginia was missing two key starters on its offensive line, All-America candidate Brian Stevens at center and right guard Ty Furnish, forcing the Cavaliers to shuffle other linemen around.

The sacks were one result, along with 5 QB hurries as Colandrea was running for his life. That was about the only running UVA managed to accomplish, because the patchwork O-Line couldn’t budge a Carolina defense that had surrendered 371 yards rushing to Georgia Tech in its last outing. The Cavaliers ran the ball 29 times for a net 7 yards. No, that is not a typo.

Virginia gained 88 on the ground, but Colandrea’s sacks ate up 58 of those yards, plus 11 more with the snap that sailed over his head.

Because Carolina brought the heat, Colandrea’s passing stats weren’t impressive either, 16 of 28 for 156 yards. After not having thrown an interception in the previous four outings, the sophomore was picked off twice by the Heels, including a pick-six by 290-pound defensive tackle Jahvaree Ritzie, who ran the slowest 84 yards on record, but still scored.

Meanwhile, UVA’s defense, which was on the field way too long, couldn’t stop UNC’s offense, which picked up 428 yards.

Brown, a Hall of Fame coach who hoped to rekindle the fire in his program on Saturday, got his wish as UNC improved to 4-4, 1-3 ACC.

It didn’t take him long during Carolina’s bye week to figure out how to beat Virginia: stop Colandrea, one of those head-of-the-snake things.

“You’ve got to stop No. 10,” Brown said afterward. “He’s their spirit. If you stop 10, you stop them.”

Brown didn’t get into the Hall of Fame for nothing.

“So pressure the quarterback,” the coach said. “He got out of the pass rush twice on third-and-10, and showed you what he could do. But most of the day we kept him in and collapsed the pocket, which is what we needed to do against Pitt and Georgia Tech, instead of rushing by the quarterback.”

What’s so weird about this Virginia loss — it’s third straight defeat, which could turn into seven — was that several of the Cavaliers said they had a great week of practice.

“Hell no, I didn’t see it coming,” said tight end Tyler Neville. “Great week of practice. Sometimes the ball doesn’t roll your way and it rolled as far as possible away from us.”

Without question, the offensive line’s injury bug had a great impact on the game, but something else seemed to be missing and Elliott blamed himself, falling on the sword, for the loss.

Elliott was so hot at halftime he said he couldn’t repeat what he told his team. In a calmer, postgame atmosphere, it went like this:

“I was just trying to challenge the guys,” Elliott said. “I was trying to flip the mindset, trying to get the guys to snap out of wherever they were mentally. Obviously, I didn’t say the right things, so I’ve got to evaluate myself to make sure that I have them prepared better mentally and then I can figure out which buttons to push.”

Virginia now heads into its second bye week of the season before a trip to Pitt, where the Cavaliers have only tasted victory once against their old Coastal Division rival.

Elliott said there’s lots for him and his staff to discuss and evaluate over the next couple of weeks. No doubt one of those topics will be whether or not to keep Colandrea as the starting QB or hand the keys over to postgrad Tony Muskett, last year’s starter — who happened to lead UVA’s upset over No. 10 and unbeaten Carolina in Chapel Hill last year.

Muskett played mop-up duty for the second straight week and tossed a 68-yard TD pass to JR Wilson. He threw for two scores at Clemson last week.

Elliott said in fairness to Colandrea, there wasn’t much discussion about a change earlier in the game because he was under so much pressure by UNC’s pass rush.

“The discussion didn’t really take place until later in the game because we felt his ability to elude and escape gave us the best opportunity amidst the struggles we had up front today,” Elliott said. “There wasn’t much time. He was getting his back foot in the ground and [Carolina’s] guys were on him.”