PFF Grades: Looking at how UVa fared in the Richmond win

This season, CavsCorner is once again using the grades from PFF College to look at how the Wahoos fared, starting with this Week 1 win over Richmond.

Overall: 81.5

Offense: 69.0

Defense: 81.7

Special Teams: 60.0

1. Overall, UVa graded pretty well in its opener

Virginia received an 81.5 overall PFF grade for the 34-17 win over Richmond. There were some ups and downs along the way, and some groups fared better than others, but most of UVa’s position groups were awarded solid grades in the winning effort.

We can’t really compare this UVa performance to anything from this year so we have no choice but to look back at 2021. The 81.5 grade would’ve been UVa’s third-highest grade of last season— behind the shutout win over William & Mary (89.3) and victory over Georgia Tech (87.6)—and comes out higher than the 42-14 win over Illinois (81.3) and 48-0 drubbing of Duke (79.9). These grades could be a bit of an aberration given how those other far more dominant performances graded out, but it seems that the Cavaliers were sound enough on Saturday to get the job done comfortably against an FCS opponent.

2. Pass protection is still a question mark heading to Illinois

The Wahoos didn’t give up a bunch of sacks on Saturday, nor should they have. The offensive line was going up against an FCS opponent and one that’s biggest weakness was up front on the defensive line. Richmond didn’t dial up a lot of pressures early, but after halftime the Spiders got more aggressive. And ultimately, Richmond was able to get after Brennan Armstrong a bit, though he didn’t truly get sacked on a drop-back pass attempt. Still, Richmond was able to get 12 pressures on Armstrong, hurry him eight times, and hit him four times. McKale Boley and Logan Taylor allowed four pressures and three hurries each, and Mike Hollins allowed a pair of pressures in pass protection.

While the pressure on Armstrong didn’t lead to him getting pummeled and sacked a bunch of times, he did get hit a few times in the second half of a game that should have been decided, which isn’t ideal. And pressure up the middle on a Richmond blitz led to Armstrong’s lone INT. Virginia’s offensive line is going to be tested in a much more significant way on Saturday at Illinois, and after seeing Richmond bring pressure and cause problems last weekend, Garett Tujague’s group can expect to see a lot of pressure on Saturday.

3. UVa’s pass defense did a nice job against a solid quarterback

Virginia’s coverage grade (84.6) was five percentage points higher than any performance from last year. Virginia allowed Richmond quarterback Reece Udinski to throw for 160 yards on 31 attempts on Saturday, which was a solid performance against a team that will likely throw the ball and do it effectively throughout their season. The Hoos allowed 96 yards after the catch, and missed just four tackles on pass plays, making 22 stops. The long pass play of the day went for 17 yards, with James Jackson assigned in coverage, and the lack of big pass plays speaks to UVa’s strategy to keep the Spiders in front of them throughout the game, a strategy that worked pretty well.

Virginia also had zero coverage penalties, which is always great to see. The Cavaliers didn’t force a turnover but did have several pass break-ups, and kept Richmond’s offense from ever really threatening in the passing game. Job well done in the first effort for the new-look UVa secondary.

It wasn’t one of the greatest performances of his career, but Armstrong did more than enough on Saturday to help his team win. The senior QB accounted for 351 yards of offense and three scores, with one turnover in the victory. As far as his PFF grades, Armstrong received a solid 70.5 passing mark and a 69.8 run grade. His passing day probably should have been a bit better, as he had three drops on the day from his receivers.

UVa ran a relatively conservative passing attack, something that will likely change this weekend against a better opponent. Armstrong threw 20+ yards down the field just three times, connecting on two of them for 81 yards and the long touchdown to Lavel Davis. Most of Armstrong’s throws were within 10 yards of the line of scrimmage, going 15-for-21 for 115 yards on the short stuff. It’s a bit alarming that Armstrong was under pressure on 36 percent of his drop-backs but that’s certainly not his fault.

On those plays, Armstrong went 6-for-11 with 68 yards, a touchdown and the aforementioned interception. Richmond’s blitzes seemed to work too, with Armstrong going 7-for-15 for 73 yards against blitzes, while he went 14-for-18 for 173 when not blitzed. Certainly something to keep an eye on against Illinois.

Overall another very solid performance from Armstrong to kick off his third season as UVa’s starting QB.

Fentrell Cypress (80.9): Cypress had a really nice game at one of the starting corner spots, and graded out as the team’s second-best defender among players to go over 50 snaps. He played 70 snaps on Saturday and had a team-high 81.7 coverage grade. He was also responsible for both of the team’s PBU’s, allowed four receptions on a game-high eight targets, and finished with five tackles on six attempts.

Josh Ahern (73.8): After sitting out the first half for a targeting penalty at the end of the 2021 season, Ahern made up for lost time in the second half. He finished with the best linebacker grade of 73.8, with an impressive 81.3 tackle grade and a 75.4 pass rush grade, third-best on the defense. Ahern had the only solo sack on the day, and finished with five tackles in the win.

Paul Akere (83.7): It’s a smaller sample size, but Akere actually had the highest defensive grade on the day at 83.7. He had the team’s best pass rush grade by far at 88.5, creating four hurries on just 20 snaps, 12 in pass rush. It will be interesting to see if the coaches are impressed by Akere when they review the film and if he could potentially see more opportunities in the weeks to come.

Noah Josey (85.2): Again, small sample size here, but Josey had the best offense grade. He played 16 snaps and finished with an 87.6 run blocking grade, best on the team, and a 57.6 pass block grade. Whether Josey’s performance on those limited snaps is enough to get him in the mix to play more later or not remains to be seen.

Perris Jones (83.0): UVa’s top player in Saturday’s win was Jones, who finished second to Josey in offense grades. Jones accounted for a pair of touchdowns, and finished with an 83.2 run grade, becoming the first Cavalier back to go over 100 yards rushing in a game since Jordan Ellis did it in the 2018 Belk Bowl.

An explanation from PFF on how the grading scale works:

On every play, a PFF analyst will grade each player on a scale of -2 to +2 according to what he did on the play.

At one end of the scale you have a catastrophic game-ending interception or pick-six from a quarterback, and at the other a perfect deep bomb into a tight window in a critical game situation, with the middle of that scale being 0-graded, or ‘expected’ plays that are neither positive nor negative.

Each game is also graded by a second PFF analyst independent of the first, and those grades are compared by a third, Senior Analyst, who rules on any differences between the two. These grades are verified by the Pro Coach Network, a group of former and current NFL coaches with over 700 combined years of NFL coaching experience, to get them as accurate as they can be.

From there, the grades are normalized to better account for game situation; this ranges from where a player lined up to the dropback depth of the quarterback or the length of time he had the ball in his hand and everything in between. They are finally converted to a 0-100 scale and appear in our Player Grades Tool.

Season-level grades aren’t simply an average of every game-grade a player compiles over a season, but rather factor in the duration at which a player performed at that level. Achieving a grade of 90.0 in a game once is impressive, doing it (12) times in a row is more impressive.

It is entirely possible that a player will have a season grade higher than any individual single-game grade he achieved, because playing well for an extended period of time is harder to do than for a short period, Similarly, playing badly for a long time is a greater problem than playing badly once, so the grade can also be compounded negatively.

Each week, grades are subject to change while we run through our extensive review process including All-22 tape runs and coaching audit, so you may notice discrepancies among grades published in earlier articles compared with those in the Player Grades tool until grade lock each week.