Hoos are counting on more efficient, accurate Armstrong
Mention Brennan Armstrong at Virginia and it doesn’t take long to get a sense of the level of excitement the Wahoos have regarding their starting quarterback this summer.
“We’ve got to keep him healthy, but man, as a former quarterback I just love watching him play,” said wide receivers coach and former Cavalier great Marques Hagans. “He’s got a great arm. He’s got a great rapport with the offense. And he’s got a confidence that’s just out of this world.”
“I really think he’s gonna shock the world,” said senior offensive lineman Olu Oluwatimi. “I truly believe in him. I believe he’s one of the best players on this team as far as talent, not just IQ and all that but just straight talent. Brennan’s gonna have a great year.”
With Armstrong back for his redshirt junior year, UVa is one of five teams in the Coastal Division that returns its primary starter at quarterback from a season ago. Armstrong was often prolific in his first year as QB1, finishing with 2,117 yards and 18 touchdowns through the air while rushing for a team-high 552 yards and five more scores. His 296.6 yards of total offense per game ranked third in the ACC; among returning QBs, only North Carolina’s Sam Howell (311.0) accounted for more total yards per game last fall.
The lefty began last season by becoming just the second quarterback in program history to throw for at least 200 yards in his first two career starts. Late in the year, he became UVa’s first-ever quarterback to put up more than 400 yards of total offense in back-to-back games. Pro Football Focus graded Armstrong as the top QB in the country for the week of the win against Boston College, when he threw for 287 yards and ran for a career-high 130.
Extrapolate Armstrong’s 235.1 passing yards per game over a 12-game regular season and that’s 2,822 yards, which would rank fifth on the program’s single-season passing list. Since the arrival of offensive coordinator Robert Anae and quarterbacks coach Jason Beck before the 2016 season, only two quarterbacks have thrown for more yards per game: Bryce Perkins (252.7) in 2019 and Kurt Benkert (246.7) in 2017. Those were the only two 3,000-yard passing seasons in program history.
That performance from Armstrong came in his first nine career starts— he missed the mid-October loss at Wake Forest after suffering a concussion against NC State—and because of the COVID-19 pandemic, without the luxury of spring practices or summer workouts, or a normal preseason camp. He has gotten that extra work this offseason, though, and is excited by how much that chemistry with receivers has improved this summer.
“Going into spring I was just feeling it out, making sure we were on the same page and boom, we hit the ground running pretty fast and the offense was clicking right away,” said Armstrong. “That surprised me. We’re just trying to keep that momentum rolling through fall camp into the season.”
The staff has seen a more mature quarterback leading the offense this summer.
“He’s more comfortable, more experienced. Has been through a year and learned all those lessons,” Beck said. “So he’s playing faster, more decisive, and playing really good football.”
The next step in Armstrong’s development is running a more efficient offense. He completed 58.6 percent of his passes last year, which is on par with Benkert’s completion percentage (57.5) in his two seasons as UVa’s starter but a drop from the 64.5 percent Perkins completed in his two years leading the offense.
Part of improving that completion percentage is cutting down on turnovers. Armstrong was picked off 11 times in 268 pass attempts last year, or an interception every 24.4 pass attempts. That’s the worst attempts-per-interception ratio for a UVa starting quarterback since Greyson Lambert and Matt Johns were both picked off every 23.7 attempts in 2014 and 2015, and well below the career ratios of both Perkins (every 40.2 attempts) and Benkert (45.8) at UVa.
Those turnovers often came in bunches for last fall, especially early in the season. He threw two picks in each of UVa’s first three games, as the Wahoos got off to a 1-2 start. They still beat Duke despite the two interceptions—one was on a Hail Mary right before halftime—and were already down by multiple scores against both Clemson and NC State when Armstrong was picked off. Armstrong threw a pick on every 16.2 attempts in those first three games before the concussion against the Wolfpack.
“Some games he got off to a slow start and then he ended up turning it on,” said Oluwatimi. “That was evident earlier in the season.”
That ratio dipped to every 34.2 attempts for the six games after he returned to the lineup, though Armstrong ended the year with another two-pick performance (on a career-high 46 attempts) in the season-ending loss at Virginia Tech. Again both interceptions came when the Wahoos were trailing by double digits in the second half.
In an attempt to cut down on those turnovers, much of Armstrong’s homework this offseason focused on getting better pre-snap reads on how opposing defenses are trying to attack and making the proper route adjustments at the line. Comparing his knowledge of the offense to “like reading a book or the back of my hand,” Armstrong believes his biggest offseason improvement has come with his decision making.
“I just know where the ball should go,” he explained. “I don’t get flustered if maybe my one, two option isn’t there anymore. I think that’s a huge thing. If my one, two isn’t there I can get to my three, move out of the pocket, find something, not try to force something.”
Beck believes that poise is a product of Armstrong finding a more even keel emotionally. The QBs coach uses words like “competitor” and “fighter” and “intense” to describe his starter, and admits that UVa coaches have worked with Armstrong to rein in that fighting spirit.
“You love the passion and the energy and wanting to be great. It’s just a matter of moving on to the next play,” Beck said. “Learning whatever it is—address it, fix it, get better at it—but also at the same time, move on to the next play and go from there.”
Armstrong still has two years of eligibility remaining at UVa. With 2,375 career passing yards entering this season, he’d need to average 213.6 yards per game over these next two seasons (a number that’s based only on regular season games, and doesn’t include postseason appearances) to surpass Matt Schaub’s program record of 7,502. Along the way he’d pass Hagans, who ranks ninth all-time at UVa with 4,877 passing yards.
Hagans hopes to see it.
“I’m expecting big things from him,” he said. “I think he’s gonna be one of the best quarterbacks to go down in program history. If we do what we’re supposed to, he’ll have a chance to have a really special career and a special season.”
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