Even "just a little off," a big night for UVa's Armstrong
It went down in the box score as a late seven-play, 91-yard scoring drive that capped a 43-0 Virginia shutout of William & Mary to open the season. But to both the team’s quarterback and head coach, it carried more significance than just cushioning the score.
About 10 minutes remained when the Wahoos got the ball back at their own 9-yard line. With a five-score lead and 11 games left on the schedule, it might have made sense to tell Brennan Armstrong his day was done.
But the offense had looked “just a little off” for much of the night, head coach Bronco Mendenhall thought. The goal entering the game was to get Armstrong as many reps as possible. So Mendenhall stuck with his starting quarterback for one final series.
It proved to be a worthwhile decision.
“And then the last drive that Brennan was in, that was a glimpse to me of what I’m hopeful to see more of,” Mendenhall told reporters afterward. “The game looked slower. We looked just tempo-driven and so decisive in where it was going.”
It only took the Hoos 6:52 to march down the field on that final scoring drive. Beginning with a 23-yard throw to Dontayvion Wicks on the first play and finishing with a 21-yarder to Keytaon Thompson that got UVa down to the 12, Armstrong completed all four of his attempts for 69 yards on the possession.
That last drive capped a night in which Armstrong completed 21 of 31 passes for 339 yards and a pair of touchdowns and added a pair of scores on the ground. He was the first quarterback nationally to throw for 300-plus and finish with multiple passing and rushing TDs in a season opener in three years. (Coincidentally, the last quarterback to do it was Thompson in 2018 when he was at Mississippi State.)
It was the second time in 10 career starts that Armstrong threw for 300 yards, and the first time he put up multiple touchdowns both passing and rushing in the same game. Only twice last year did the lefty complete better than 67.7 percent of his passes, and it was just his third career start without an interception.
Statistically, it was one of the best nights of his career. He was chosen to break the rock in the locker room following the win.
But until that final drive in the fourth quarter, it wasn’t a performance with which that Armstrong was thrilled.
“That’s what I felt we didn’t have was a rhythm,” he said. “A play here, a play there, a big play there. And those work. Those are gonna happen and that’s what we’re trying to do is create big plays. But I just didn’t feel like we had a good rhythm the whole night.”
Armstrong started the night by completing just five of his first 11 passes. He overthrew a wide open Wicks downfield for what should have been a 71-yard TD on the first play of UVa’s second possession, revealing afterward that he’d underthrown Wicks twice on the same play in camp and didn’t want to make the same mistake on Saturday.
The Hoos tried throwing a lot at William & Mary early in the game, with a variety of offensive formations that often included Armstrong lining up wide while backup quarterback Ira Armstead took the snap or vice versa. As expected, Thompson was all over the field, getting touches as both a runner and pass catcher. Maybe a bit more surprisingly, first-year quarterback Jacob Rodriguez was also involved in a similar fashion.
The creativity was largely ineffective, with UVa managing just 68 yards and three points on its first four possessions. A pair of drives ended with the Tribe stopping Virginia on fourth down inside the William & Mary 30.
“The only thing that bites me is having the ball in the 30 and not getting points there. Touchdowns,” Armstrong said. “We can fix everything else but that stuff bites me.”
Armstrong’s night started to turn on UVa’s fifth possession. He again failed to connect with Wicks on a throw downfield on 1st down. But two plays later, on 3rd and 5, he stayed patient in the pocket before finding a wide open Wicks, who turned upfield for 23 yards. On the next play, they connected again for 30 more yards to set up 1st and goal at the 2. Armstrong scored a play later for the first touchdown of the season.
Mendenhall pointed out that the supporting cast in the passing game is made up largely of players like Wicks, Ra’Shaun Henry, and tight end Jelani Woods—who missed much of the game with an injury that Mendenhall didn’t have an update on afterward—still growing into bigger roles in the offense. He also described the offensive line’s night as “adequate but not dominant.”
“It got cleaner and better as it went,” Mendenhall said of UVa’s offensive performance. “A little bit jittery, a little bit just forced and just not quite as confident and rhythmic. And the game just seemed a little fast as we started.”
Armstrong finished the first half with a well-placed jump ball to the corner of the end zone that Henry hauled in for a 5-yard score that gave the Hoos a 17-0 lead at the break. He completed 12 of his 13 pass attempts after halftime. After overthrowing Wicks on a deep ball early in the game, he found Demick Starling in stride behind the William & Mary secondary for a 65-yard score midway through the third.
He completed throws to nine different receivers on the night, including seven passes that went for at least 20 yards. Wicks, who entered the game with three career catches, averaged 23.5 yards on his four receptions. Thompson’s five catches were a career high. With 206 yards on the ground in addition to the passing game’s production, UVa finished with 545 total yards, surpassing the 500-yard mark for the third straight home game.
Almost two-thirds of those yards came in the second half, padding the Wahoos’ production on both the scoreboard and the stat sheet. Armstrong admitted that he was pushing the tempo too much early in the game, and did a better job of reading and reacting in the second half. He felt his pocket presence improve after taking a few hits, after spending all summer in an off-limits orange jersey on the practice field. He knows he’ll need to find that comfort zone more quickly next Saturday when the Wahoos host Illinois at Scott Stadium.
“I wasn’t pleased with what happened in the first half so I just tried to slow things down,” Armstrong said. “The last drive felt the best. I was looking over, reading through my reads, seeing everything I needed to see. First game. I figured we’d come out a little faster but we didn’t, so that’s something we’ve got to fix this coming week against Illinois.”
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