Noah Taylor stopped to soak in the scene before heading back up the tunnel toward the visiting team’s locker room at Heinz Field.
The last time the ACC crowned a Coastal Division champion, it had been the Cavaliers. Entering Saturday’s game against Pitt, again Virginia was in control of the division with two games to go. Win them both and it would be the Wahoos again celebrating a division title and heading to Charlotte to play for the ACC championship.
Instead, it was Pitt hoisting the trophy and celebrating on its home field . Saturday’s 48-38 victory clinched the division for the Panthers and left that same goal unfulfilled for Virginia.
When asked afterward to describe that moment before he left the field, Taylor paused for to contemplate the right word.
“Heartbreaking,” the senior linebacker said. “You come so close in life and sometimes you just fall short. But it’s not about how you fall; it’s about how you get back up.”
Saturday’s loss dropped Virginia to 6-5 overall and 4-3 in the ACC. One game remains on the regular season schedule: Next Saturday’s 3:45 p.m. kickoff at Scott Stadium against Virginia Tech (ACC Network).
Bronco Mendenhall has framed that as a "state championship" between the two rivals. But with both teams reeling as Thanksgiving approaches—Tech lost 38-26 at Miami in its first game under interim coach JC Price to fall to 5-6 (3-4) on the season—those stakes feel like a manufactured consolation prize when compared to a potential spot in the ACC title game.
Mendenhall was hoarse and his answers brief before his team left the Steel City to prepare for the Hokies.
The 4th downs. The bad snap. The special teams breakdowns. The penalties. A two-touchdown underdog, Virginia was in the game until the final minutes. Ultimately, the Hoos couldn’t overcome their own mistakes at critical times.
“Just a few key plays and some cleaner play,” UVa’s gravelly-voiced head coach said afterward. “To win a division on the road, that’s what you have to do, and a couple plays short.”
In some ways, the loss followed a script similar to UVa’s earlier defeats at North Carolina and BYU. In all three games, Brennan Armstrong and the offense got into shootouts with the home team. In all three, the Wahoos couldn’t quite keep up.
Wearing a flak jacket around his torso for the first time in his career, Armstrong was unfazed by the rib injury that kept him out of last weekend’s loss to Notre Dame. He led the Wahoos to points on six of their 14 possessions—five touchdowns and a field goal. Armstrong finished with 487 yards on 36-of-49 passing and three touchdowns. His lone interception came on a Hail Mary attempt to end the first half.
Still in uniform as he took the podium in the visiting team’s interview room at Heinz Field, Armstrong said he felt physically fine—just disappointed by the Cavaliers’ third-straight loss. He shouldered the blame for the outcome.
The Wahoos could have extended their lead to two scores in the first quarter, but Pitt brought pressure on a 3rd and 2 and forced Armstrong to overthrow tight end Jelani Woods. UVa would punt and the Panthers would go 88 yards on the ensuing drive to tie the game. Four other Virginia possessions ended with Pitt sacks on 3rd down; three of those four sacks came with the Wahoos within five yards of the first-down marker.
But UVa still found itself down by just a field goal when the offense got the ball back with about six-and-a-half minutes to go in the game. The Cavaliers again got out near midfield—but this time, center Olu Oluwatimi’s snap bounced away from Armstrong. Devin Darrington compounded the mistake by trying to scoop up the ball and make a play and wound up losing more yards. The offense couldn’t overcome the 14-yard loss on 2nd down and would have to punt; Pitt iced the game with a touchdown on its next possession.
Had the offense avoided those breakdowns, Armstrong maintained, they’d have been able to move the ball downfield all night.
“That’s a frustrating thing to see,” the quarterback admitted. “We do something stupid and small that backed us up. That’s the only time it put us out. If we didn’t do that, we’d push the ball down the field and score every time.”
With a big sigh, Armstrong added, “And that’s what you’ve gotta live with. Just the small things.”
Those small things plagued the Cavaliers in all three phases of Saturday’s game.
The defense tackled better statistically—just eight missed tackles according to PFF College, compared to 19 in each of the losses to BYU and Notre Dame—but failed to bring down Pitt quarterback Kenny Pickett on blitzes in some big moments. On special teams, the Hoos gave up a kickoff return touchdown for the first time in five years and then, just minutes later, the longest punt return they’ve allowed this season. They also had to burn a timeout while lining up for a field goal early in the second half.
And then there were the penalties: Eight of them in total, the most for UVa since getting flagged 11 times against Wake Forest two months ago. The two most back-breaking came with the Wahoos down by a field goal early in the fourth quarter—a pass interference call on Coen King with UVa bringing heat on Pitt backup Nick Patti on a 4th and 1 from the Virginia 30, then several players jumping offsides to attempt to block a chip shot field on 4th and 4 at the 10.
Both flags gave the Panthers 1st downs. Three plays after the offsides call, Rodney Hammond scored from a yard out. Aided by those two penalties, the touchdown drive last 15 plays and took 5:34 off the clock.
“When you’re in tight games, penalties are a big factor,” summarize UVa cornerback Anthony Johnson, who had one of the team's two interceptions against Pickett. “They extend drives and they put points on the board.”
Those penalties aided a Pitt offense that, with 509 total yards, became the fifth team to surpass the 500-yard mark against UVa this season. But that total was actually below the ACC-best 531.1 total yards the Panthers were averaging entering the weekend. Virginia was at its most aggressive on Saturday, sending blitzes after Pickett (and briefly in the fourth quarter, Patti) all day. The Wahoos hurried Pitt’s quarterbacks 16 times—but only finished with three sacks.
The Wahoos also failed all day to contain Pitt receiver Jordan Addison, who dismantled the defense with 14 catches for 202 yards. When safety Joey Blount didn’t get home on a blitz on a 4th and 4 in the second quarter, it left Pickett with the time to find Addison all alone in the end zone for an 18-yard TD, his second of the game. On a 4th and 1 midway through the third, Addison was matched up 1-on-1 downfield with King. The safety couldn’t keep up; Addison scored again, from 34 yards out.
Addison’s final blow came on 3rd and 3 from the Pitt 38 with 2:23 to play. Down by three, the Hoos had just used their final timeout. Pickett faked a handoff and rolled out of the pocket, then put the ball up for grabs downfield. From the UVa sideline, Mendnehall thought Darrius Bratton had picked it off.
But the corner had neither made the interception nor broken up the pass. Addison came down with it, slipped Bratton’s tackle attempt, then flew 62 yards for his fourth touchdown. Pitt’s lead was back to 10.
That 10-point difference can also be traced back to UVa’s uncharacteristic breakdowns on special teams in the second quarter. The Hoos had just responded to Addison’s first TD catch by marching 75 yards to tie the game at 14. But on the ensuing kickoff, Israel Abanikanda took off down the sideline in front of Virginia’s bench for a 98-yard score. It was the first kickoff return touchdown given up by the Wahoos since 2016 against Pitt.
After a three-and-out by the offense (which ended with a Pitt sack), Jacob Finn boomed a 52-yard punt to Addison, who was able to turn the corner on Taylor in punt coverage and head up the Pitt sideline. Addison’s 39-yard punt return, the longest allowed by the Hoos this year, led to a Panthers field goal.
UVa spent the rest of the game trying to overcome that 10-point hole. The Hoos were able to tie it twice in the second quarter, but never again grabbed the lead.
“Knowing that it’s just the little things,” said Johnson. “This team, it’s just the little things from stopping us from where we want to be.”
The Wahoos wanted to be a win away from a second straight Coastal Division title heading into next weekend. Instead, next week will be about manufactured stakes and avoiding those same mistakes.
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