PFF Grades: Breaking down Armstrong's season thus far

UVa dropped to 2-2 on Friday night, losing a 22-20 to 4-0 Syracuse. The Cavaliers put forth a solid effort to get back in the game but ultimately were undone by a slow start that led to a 16-0 halftime score and too many missed opportunities.

The offense has dropped off dramatically from last season’s productivity, while the defense is headed in the other direction. Virginia’s passing game in particular has looked disjointed and has been flat-out unproductive through the first third of the season. UVa has the weapons to turn it around at quarterback and receiver, but with every listless performance, that turnaround seems less and less likely.

Thus far, it’s looked as though Brennan Armstrong has been uncomfortable in the new offense and the veteran signal caller has basically admitted as much. Armstrong is holding himself to a high standard and at times it feels like he’s trying to swing games on each play. He has the tools to get things on track but his performance to this point in the season has been surprising and frankly unexpected. So what’s going on, exactly?

In today’s PFF College breakdown, we take a look at Armstrong’s passing performance, and pick up on what’s gone wrong through the first four games.

When comparing Armstrong’s 2022 performance to date against his play in 2021, there are some stark differences.

There are eight more games to turn things around, but so far the play of the quarterback hasn’t looked much like what we saw last year (or the year before, really) to this point.

Last season, Armstrong threw for 4,429 yards, or just over 400 yards per contest. Through the first four games of 2022, his passing yards are down by nearly half, at 212 per contest. Obviously UVa is going to throw the ball less this season with a more balanced attack, but even the per play metrics are down quite a bit” After averaging 8.8 yards per attempt in 2021, and 7.9 in 2020, Armstrong is down to just 6.1 this year. That means more passes are incomplete, and there aren’t enough big plays to make up the yards per throw difference.

Armstrong’s completion percentage is down as well. After completing 64.7 percent of his throws last season, he’s down to 51.4 percent this fall. Some of that drop off can be attributed to protection and drops but we’ll get to that.

And finally, Armstrong is turning the ball over at a higher rate. He threw 10 picks in 11 games last season and is on pace for 12 in 12 games this year, with four in four games. But when you factor in his three fumbles, the mistakes are beginning to mount a bit.

PFF tracks turnover-worthy throws as one of its passing metrics. Through four games, Armstrong has had 11 turnover-worthy throws, meaning plays that could have or should have been intercepted. For the season, 6.1 percent of Armstrong’s throws have been potential turnovers. In 2021, Armstrong had just 3.5 percent of his throws graded that way, and just 2.9 percent in 2020. In Friday’s loss to Syracuse, Armstrong had five turnover-worthy throws per PFF, and had just one interception. That was a career-high from a total and percentage standpoint, with his previous high coming in that game against Miami last year when 7.5 percent of his tosses could’ve been taken away.

When looking at the four games as a whole, the dropoff is relatively clear. But when you look at the game logs, Armstrong had decent outings from a metrics standpoint in the wins over Richmond and ODU and poor showings in the two losses. He posted a 70.5 PFF passing grade against Richmond, and a 68.9 effort against ODU. For comparison’s sake, those two grades would’ve been near the bottom of Armstrong’s game-by-game grades in 2021, but ahead of a couple of performances (BYU and Miami). In those two wins this season, Armstrong threw for 265 yards per game with a pair of touchdowns and one interception. Between the two wins, Armstrong completed 58 percent of his passes at 7.7 yards per attempt.

And in the losses, things have been much worse. His worst PFF passing grade in 2021 came in the narrow win over Miami, when he was graded at 44.6. That’s the only game in Armstrong’s career, before this season, when he had a grade below 50. But in the losses to Illinois and Syracuse, Armstrong posted grades of 29.4 and 29.6 respectively, and he received the lowest grade on the team in Friday’s loss to the Orange.

Armstrong completed less than half of his passes in both of those losses and against Syracuse averaged a stunning 3.5 yards per pass attempt. Only two teams nationally, San Diego State (led by former Hokie Braxton Burmeister), which doesn’t throw much, and a woeful UMass team, average less than 3.5 yards per pass attempt this season.

The good news is that Armstrong has played decent football in UVa’s two wins with room for improvement. The bad news is that UVa’s opponents going forward are a lot more like Syracuse and Illinois than ODU and Richmond.

Virginia’s passing offense didn’t create a lot of explosive plays in most of Robert Anae’s tenure, but that shifted big time in 2021. With Armstrong and a group of receivers that could stretch the field, UVa took a lot of shots and was successful on many of them. Last year, Armstrong’s average throw went to a receiver 11 yards downfield and he completed nearly 65 percent of his passes, so it’s not like they took a bunch of shots that didn’t hit.

His average depth per target has been about the same through the first four games of this season at 11.2 yards, but the success has dried up.

In games against Richmond and Syracuse, UVa had more modest throws, averaging around 9 yards per attempt. And in games against Illinois and ODU, Armstrong’s average target was 13.5 yards downfield, though he ended up with just a few big plays and no touchdowns in those two contests.

Just under 24 percent of Armstrong’s throws this season have gone 20+ yards downfield, up a bit from 17.3 percent last season. Those deep shots have come at the expense of the intermediate throws, between 10 and 20 yards, which have gone from nearly 30 percent of his throws last year to 21.7 percent in 2022. Armstrong has only completed 11 of those 30 tries in the intermediate zone, so it might not be a bad thing that those are happening less frequently, and his turnover rate is on intermediate throws is a brutal 19.4 percent.

Last season, Armstrong completed 37 of 87 throws of 20+ yards, racking up 1,094 yards of offense, 12.6 yards per attempt, with 12 touchdowns and four interceptions. The completion percentage isn’t great, but that’s expected on downfield throws. But he converted 7.3 percent of his deep shots into touchdowns, and 43 percent of them into completions.

This year, those plays just haven’t connected for one reason or another. It’s a smaller sample size, but

Armstrong has completed eight of 33 deep shots for 295 yards, one touchdown and a pair of picks. That means that just 3 percent of deep shots have ended with touchdowns, and just 24 of them were caught, and despite that efficiency dropoff the number of deep throws per game has gone up, at least a little bit: 16.7 percent of Armstrong’s throws have been 20+ yards and down one of the two sidelines, and those plays simply haven’t worked.

Armstrong is just 2-for-23 on those throws for 90 yards and an interception. And because only two of those have hit, Armstrong is averaging just 4 yards per attempt on throws that are already harder to complete.

So what’s the payoff here, outside of giving the defense something to worry about? And for what it’s worth, last year those throws accounted for 10.8 percent of Armstrong’s attempts but went for nearly 600 yards with seven touchdowns and a pair of picks. But until UVa starts hitting those plays, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to keep throwing them so often.

With everything we’ve said, Armstrong isn’t alone in the offense’s struggles. The offensive line has allowed pressure on 42 percent of Armstrong’s drop-backs, up from 26 percent last year. In 2021, Armstrong did pretty well on those plays, completing 45 percent of his passes with 604 yards and three touchdowns. He also had 23 scrambles on those 91 pressures, and had a 79.8 rushing grade on those runs.

This year, Armstrong hasn’t been able to dodge the bullets and make plays at the same rate. He has thrown for 260 yards and has a pair of TDs on those 71 drop backs but has a 40.4 percent completion rate with four interceptions. And Armstrong hasn’t been able to get out of dodge either, with a 60.7 run grade on his 13 scrambles. When pressured, Armstrong’s passing grade is 28.7, down dramatically from 68.4 in 2021. Still, the offensive line (and coaches) need to find a way to keep their quarterback in a clean pocket, where he has a chance to go through his progressions.

The drops have been a problem, too. Virginia had 32 drops last season, or a 9 percent drop rate. That’s not great, but it’s been worse this season. UVa has 12 drops through four games, on pace for 36, with a drop rate that’s even higher. And a lot of those drops, nine to be exact, came on throws at least 10 yards downfield, which means that they took away the plays with the highest upside.

There’s still time to get this right, but there are plenty of alarming stats in here. It’s clear that the regression has been in a few different areas and it also feels like what we’re seeing is showing up in the data. The offense has had a tough time with the transition and is caught between a world where UVa had a successful passing game behind a totally different line and with a different scheme, and a new-look offense that hasn’t clicked into place yet.

The offense has had plenty of rough moments, and in the Illinois game the coaching staff took the brunt of the criticism for the three-point effort. Then, the offense came out and moved the ball well against ODU, with execution issues holding them back. The Syracuse game seemed like a repeat of Illinois, but the offense got it together (at least to some degree) after halftime. That success was found mostly on the ground, and Armstrong and the passing game continued to struggle most of the way. And perhaps that’s where this offense should be headed; a team that compliments its suddenly competent defense with lower-risk, lower-reward balanced football that keeps the chains moving, stays out of 2nd and 3rd and long, and keeps the defense fresh.

But ultimately, this team is going to go as far as the quarterback can take it. The passing game has to be relevant to give the Cavaliers a chance, and no player in all of sports can impact a game like a starting quarterback can.

We’ve seen Armstrong do that in the past, but it remains to be seen whether that success was fleeting and the byproduct of a system tailored to fit his skills, or if he’s simply going through a rough patch that he’ll soon pull out.