Reminders of 2020 motivate players on UVa defense
Noah Taylor still has trouble sleeping at night when thoughts of last December’s loss at Virginia Tech start creeping into his head. An image from that night in Blacksburg has been the screen saver on Nick Jackson’s phone for months.
“Honestly, I want to see it every time I open up my phone,” admitted Jackson, Virginia’s junior inside linebacker, after Tuesday morning’s practice at the McCue Center.
That 33-15 loss at Lane Stadium snapped a four-game late-season winning streak for the Wahoos, dropping UVa to 5-5 on the COVID-shortened season. When the team opted out of playing in a postseason bowl game, that finish left a bad taste in players’ mouths heading into the off-season and winter workouts. That disappointment has not faded over the last eight months.
“It still just gives me bad memories. But it gives me motivation too,” said Taylor, a senior outside linebacker. “I’m in the film room, if I want to leave a little a little early I’m like, ‘No, because I’m not losing to Tech this year. No, because I’m not losing to this team this year. I see Notre Dame on the schedule I’m like, we’re gonna beat this team.’”
Taylor and Jackson are among nine players back this preseason who started on defense that night in Blacksburg. The Hokies ran all over the Cavaliers, with 252 of their 464 total yards coming on the ground. Tech was one of six UVa opponents to post at least 450 yards of total offense last fall.
It marked the end of an underachieving season for Virginia on the defensive side. The Hoos gave up 442.9 total offensive yards per game, the most since UVa surrendered 446.6 per game in 2016, the first season under the current coaching staff. Despite big days on the ground by both Tech and Louisville—the Cardinals’ 317 rushing yards in a November loss at Scott Stadium were both a season high and the most allowed by the Wahoos since 2017 Military Bowl against Navy—the run defense still finished the year ranked fourth in the ACC for a third consecutive season.
The Cavaliers’ bigger problem was the pass defense, which struggled to a historic degree. UVa gave up 304.4 yards per game through the air last year, an average that ranked last in the conference and 123rd out of 127 FBS teams in the country. Half of the team's opponents threw for at least 300 yards. In a wild 43-32 UVa win at Scott Stadium in December, Boston College backup quarterback Dennis Grosel threw for 520 yards, the most ever for a quarterback facing the Hoos.
According to team statistics found on Sports Reference, which for Virginia date back to 1956, prior to last season the worst a UVa defense performed against the pass was in 1995, when the Wahoos gave up an average of 257 yards per game. At ACC Kickoff in Charlotte last month, head coach Bronco Mendenhall said those problems against the pass could be traced back to injuries that depleted the Cavalier defense and the coaching staff’s inability to innovate defensively because of those injuries.
In the secondary, veteran safeties Joey Blount and Brenton Nelson each missed half the season, though Blount returned for the final two games. Defensive lineman Aaron Faumui opted out last year, while sixth-year senior lineman Richard Burney was forced to medically retire in early November. A late-season ankle injury cost senior outside linebacker Charles Snowden the final two games. Taylor missed one late-season game after dealing with a series of nagging injuries throughout.
Like Taylor, Faumui and Blount are both back at UVa this season. Blount is among the half-dozen ‘super seniors’ on the Cavaliers’ defense along with linemen Mandy Alonso and Adeeb Atari, linebacker Elliott Brown, and defensive backs Nick Grant and De’Vante Cross who are all capitalizing on the extra season of eligibility granted by the NCAA because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of those players had played roles on UVa defenses that finished top five in the ACC in yards allowed in both 2018 and 2019.
According to UVa co-defensive coordinator and linebackers coach Kelly Poppinga on Tuesday, those experienced veterans have brought a new vibe to the first four days of preseason camp this summer.
“It just feels so different as a defense,” Poppinga said. “It feels back to normal for us. I think there’s an energy and an edge and a hunger that our guys have, that what we showed on the field was not us. That is not who we want to be as a defense.”
Jackson, the Cavaliers’ lone preseason all-ACC pick this summer, led the defense with 105 total tackles last year. He started all 10 games in 2020, as did Cross and Grant at cornerback. Taylor started all nine games for which he was available. On Tuesday, Poppinga singled out both Jackson and Taylor as guys who have emerged as more vocal leaders on the defense this preseason.
Two years ago, Taylor had six tackles and his first two career interceptions to help the Wahoos end their 15-game losing streak against the Tech. Jackson played a few snaps as a true freshman that afternoon at Scott Stadium and prior to last December was among a rare group of players that the UVa program hadn’t seen in generations: A non-freshman who had never lost to the Hokies.
“Honestly that’s just been real motivation for us to start the season on fire and end the season on fire,” Jackson said. “That’s a game you circle, and that’s a feeling you never want to feel.”
Taylor, who enters the season leading all current Cavaliers with 22 career tackles for loss and 10 career sacks, echoed those sentiments.
“Everything happens for a reason,” he said. “That last Tech game, it definitely motivated me to a whole different level. I’ve really just been in my bag, just doing as much as I can for my teammates and as much as I can for me, to put ourselves in a good position to have an undefeated season.”
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