The Vegas sportsbooks have released their early betting lines for win totals and conference title races with the college football season just over 100 days away. And for UVa, the outlook is grim according to those folks in the desert.
It shouldn’t come as a major shock that the Wahoos aren’t expected to win the ACC but their over/under for wins is set at just 3.5, which is about as low as a team can go. The Cavaliers have a difficult schedule and stumbled through a 3-7 season last fall, so it makes sense that optimism is lacking. But every year teams wildly exceed and underperform preseason expectations and there is certainly a path for Virginia to surprise many around the country, at least by mildly overperforming the outlook.
Today, we’re taking a look at a path for the Hoos to over perform their expectations and make a run at bowl eligibility.
The schedule turns out to be more manageable than it looks now.
A part of the calculus on UVa’s low win total is the schedule it’s facing. For starters, the Cavaliers only get six home games rather than a typical seven-game home slate. On top of that, the non-conference schedule does them no favors. Playing a de-facto road game at Tennessee is a rough start, and Virginia will certainly be an underdog two weeks later at Maryland. And even the two home games aren’t exactly easy wins: JMU could easily be favored in UVa’s home opener on September 9 and while everyone is counting William & Mary as a win, the Tribe have turned around their program impressively under Mike London, and should be pretty good again in 2023.
And while the non-conference schedule looks tough, and the ACC schedule isn’t exactly a cakewalk, UVa could exceed expectations simply because the preconceived narrative around the schedule turns out to be wrong. Winning against Tennessee is a longshot that we don’t really have to entertain here. But UVa could certainly beat a JMU team that has a few new pieces, especially in Charlottesville. The trip to College Park will be tough but it’s not like Maryland is unbeatable. And the recent history in the ACC shows that the league can be quite volatile for better or worse.
To get to bowl eligibility, UVa probably needs to get to 2-2 in non-conference play and then try to find four or more wins against ACC foes. That starts by winning at home and there are some potential victories on the schedule. Virginia Tech is still working through its rebuild and Georgia Tech is just starting a new one. Duke wildly exceeded expectations last year but UVa should be able to compete from a talent perspective, especially at home. NC State will be tough but the Pack have a (familiar) new QB and offensive coordinator. It might be tough for UVa to pull out a bunch of road wins in ACC play, but a trip to Boston College at the end of September looks like a possible opportunity to steal one.
UVa gets—at a minimum—steady quarterback play.
A 4-8 season isn’t going to wow anyone,but it would get the Cavaliers over their current win total over/under. And if they can simply stay out of their own way when they have the football, they should be able to win some games.
That starts with clean play at the quarterback position, something the Hoos didn’t get from Brennan Armstrong last year. Virginia needs Tony Muskett, or whomever wins the starting job, to avoid back-breaking turnovers, keep the chains moving, and make a play here and there. If they can do that and simply avoid being a net negative that would be an improvement over what we saw last season.
And of course, there’s even more upside out there. Muskett looked solid in the spring game, and Jay Woolfolk is an athletic option that can probably make some plays freelancing if he’s called upon to play. Perhaps UVa struck gold in the transfer portal at QB but even if that’s not the case a steady hand would help the Hoos find at least some success this fall.
The offensive line finds a group that can play together.
Quarterback play will be critical but the signal-caller can only do as much as his offensive line allows. Enter new OL coach Terry Heffernan, who is tasked with turning around a group that is still young and will either be new to UVa or don’t have a lot of game experience. Heffernan’s job is to mold this group into a unit that fits and find not just his best five guys but the best place for all of them to line up.
The best path to an improved offensive line is if the transfers they’ve added can come in and make a difference right away. Ugonna Nnanna is already penciled in at a guard spot after participating in spring ball, and with Dayton’s Brian Stevens and Penn State’s Jimmy Christ on the way this summer, perhaps Heffernan can get the most out of the group that he has.
In addition to finding five starters, Heffernan needs to get a few backups ready for action as well. Offensive linemen rarely stay healthy through the season, and even if they do a rotation can be a big boost to a line. That was the case in 2021, when UVa played seven or eight linemen and had success.
Improvement in key metric areas.
They say the devil is in the details and so too are the keys to improvement for the Cavaliers.
It wasn’t just that the scheme didn’t sink in or that there were some players not totally bought in, but UVa also struggled in critical areas last season that can make or break games. Even when they were close to success, the Hoos had trouble getting over the hump.
UVa ranked 122nd nationally last year in red-zone scoring. They Cavaliers finished 117th in 3rd-down conversions. They were 123rd in turnover margin and 129th in offensive plays of 20+ yards. They also left points on the table on special teams, missing seven of their 18 field-goal attempts and three PATs.
All of those stats, which indicate performance in key areas of the game, were terrible. If even one or two of them had risen to mediocre, specifically red-zone efficiency, UVa might have gone 5-5 or so rather than 3-7. And if that were the case, expectations for this year would be higher.
So if the Hoos are in fact able to turn around some of those key areas, they can win more than most folks expect them to.
With a somewhat new group, defensive staff prove that they’re for real.
The defensive turnaround last season was remarkable. Given how much the offense struggled, UVa probably should have been out of more games than ur was if not for the defense keeping them in it. John Rudzinski turned a group from one of the worst in the ACC to one of the best in one offseason and got the most out of some younger players who hadn’t seen a ton of snaps.
Now, the defensive staff will get another chance to prove that they can produce another good defense. Leading tackler Nick Jackson is gone, as are UVa’s two starting cornerbacks, both of whom were excellent last season.
If the coaching staff can find suitable replacements for those three players, and the returnees can raise the bar, the defense once again should give the team a fighting chance. And if the secondary is as good this year as in 2023, Rudzinski and his staff will probably become hot commodities for other programs.
