Setting The Standard: An Oral History (Part I)

Friday morning’s practice signals the official start of Bronco Mendenhall’s sixth preseason camp as the head football coach at Virginia. That that practice will take place on the new grass fields behind the McCue Center is just one indication of how much has changed at UVa since Mendenhall and his staff arrived from BYU in December 2015.

UVa fans have watched the program grow from the days of “Hoos Rising” to “The New Standard” to now # TheStandard. They’ve seen the Wahoos make three consecutive bowl appearances, end the program’s long losing streak against Virginia Tech, win a Coastal Division title, and compete in an ACC title game. But it all began with Mendenhall stripping his new players of their V-Sabres and jersey numbers and forcing them to earn their way into the weight room and onto the practice field.

Those exercises—and program mantras like “Earned, Not Given” and “Will Before Skill”—are standard procedure at Virginia now, but for the players on that 2016 team that first preseason under Mendenhall was anything but. From winter workouts in plain black T-shirts and a memorable brawl at one spring practice, to an emotional night picking numbers and an unannounced visit from a pro wrestler to do some yoga, that first preseason may not have led to the on-field success that fall that the Hoos were anticipating, but it laid the foundation of where Mendenhall’s program sits five years later.

Here's the first of our three-part series, Setting the Standard: An Oral History of Bronco's Arrival at UVa.

Virginia’s 23-20 loss at home to Virginia Tech on November 28, 2015 didn’t just mark the end of a 4-8 campaign for the Cavaliers. It was also the final game of Mike London’s six-year tenure as head coach of the Wahoos. The school parted ways with London, who went 27-46 at UVa, the morning after that loss to the Hokies

JACKSON MATTEO (senior offensive lineman): The day after we lost to Tech, I remember there were news vans outside of McCue, and then [London] told us the news. After he left, a lot of guys were thinking maybe you transfer. Maybe you play a fifth year somewhere else. Who’s it gonna be?

ZACH BRADSHAW (senior inside linebacker): It’s a real eerie feeling, seeing everyone pack their stuff up. There’s so much uncertainty about what’s gonna happen and who’s gonna take over. We’re all reading whatever we can get our hands on, trying to figure out what are the rumors, who’s gonna interview.

QUIN BLANDING (junior free safety): We were just confused. We just didn’t know what to expect, honestly, and we were just like, ‘I guess they haven’t hired a coach yet.’ They didn’t keep us in the loop or nothing.

CHRIS PEACE (sophomore outside linebacker): Guys were naming guys left and right. We didn’t have any clue who it was gonna be. It was tons of names we were naming out. Names that didn’t even make sense.

ZACH BRADSHAW: There was some speculation that Mack Brown might have been interested in the job, because when everyone got the feeling that if we didn’t start winning that Coach London was gonna get fired, Mack Brown was hanging out at our practices all the time. His name kind of popped up. I don’t know if there was any truth to that. I know the dude from Georgia [Mark Richt] was a potential option, who went to Miami and then retired. But we had no clue. We knew as much as everybody else.

JACKSON MATTEO: At the time I talked to—here’s a blast from the past—Jon Oliver. And he said, ‘Jackson, you’re gonna be stoked about this hire.’ And I was like, ‘Great. I can’t wait to meet this guy.’ I didn’t really care who it was. I was really just like, ‘We need a coach, and I hope they know what they’re doing. Because he had his work cut out for him.’

Less than a week after London’s departure, right at 5 p.m. on Friday, December 4th, UVa indicated on social media that the announcement of the football program’s next head coach was pending. About 20 minutes later, the news dropped that Mendenhall was coming from BYU, where he had won 99 games and led the Cougars to 11 postseason bowl game appearances in his 11 seasons as head coach. His new players learned the news at the same moment as everyone else following along on Twitter.

NICHOLAS CONTE (senior punter): Out of nowhere he got hired, and we didn’t see it coming.

CHRIS PEACE: As soon as I heard that news, I just got on Google real quick. I saw the winning record and thought he must be a hell of a coach.

ZACH BRADSHAW: We’re frantically researching as much as we can. We didn’t know anything about the guy so we’re watching interviews, press conferences, and stuff that he was doing at BYU, just to kind of get a feel for what it was gonna be like.

MATT JOHNS (senior quarterback): We didn’t know what to expect. It was a coach coming from across the country that we had played against. We had beaten him once; we had lost to him once. I’ll never forget playing that BYU game and it was still to this day the hardest I’d ever been hit. That was one of my first impressions, I knew they were tough. I kind of knew the mentality that he was gonna bring just from playing them.

DONTE WILKINS (senior defensive tackle): They were a hard-playing team. They didn’t give up. They had a nastiness to them. It was almost dirty playing against them, so that was definitely something that stood out to me.

MICAH KISER (junior inside linebacker): Honestly, kind of just shocked. This guy from out in Utah who has no idea about recruiting in the mid-Atlantic, no idea about the ACC. And then it was weird, it was funny because we played BYU the year I redshirted. We played BYU and we beat them. And then we played them a year or two years later and we almost won at their place. So it was almost like, is this really an upgrade? Which looking back on it is wild to say.

MATT JOHNS: There were a lot of unknowns. It was a very different feeling, when you’re with a head coach for four years—love Coach London to death; I’m with him now, obviously [Johns is currently the quarterbacks coach on London’s staff at William & Mary]—and these guys didn’t recruit you. How is that gonna go? Are they gonna treat you like their own or are they gonna try to weed you out? There were just a lot of questions that go through your head.

Mendenhall arrived in Charlottesville a few days later, proclaiming at his introductory news conference that “I love challenge” and pushing tenets that included accountability and effort. The Hoos sat in the audience as Mendenhall addressed the media. Beforehand, they had their own private meeting with their new head coach.

JACKSON MATTEO: When he steps into our team meeting, he’s looking at a group of 85 guys who’ve just been losing and unhappy, and kind of drained, honestly, with that whole process of finding a new coach. And here comes this guy, and what is he supposed to tell us in that moment? But from that very first meeting, he was completely clear, his intention was set, how he was going to kind of dig up the foundation and create our own new culture here.

MATT JOHNS: It was interesting because he could read a lot of body language in the room. Whether guys were excited, whether they were nervous. Whether some guys were probably scared to death with this massive change that was about to happen.

MICAH KISER: He was just looking at us. He kind of had that weird Coach Mendenhall smirk that he has, when he’s just looking and kind of inquisitive. But he saw a group of guys that didn’t have much confidence. This was right before winter break, and all he told us to do was make sure you run. That’s all he said.

QUIN BLANDING: The biggest thing I remember him coming out and saying was we were gonna train, and train some more, and train some more, and train some more.

ZACH BRADSHAW: I don’t know how many times he said it. It felt like he said ‘You guys should train’ like a thousand times. And really you could tell the culture shift was really gonna be ridiculous.

CHRIS PEACE: A lot of guys just had a blank stare on their face. Guys didn’t know what to expect. A lot of calls back and forth over that December and that break before we got back.

DONTE WILKINS: I immediately went back, we were going home for Christmas break, I went up to one of my best friends, his cousin at the time was the track coach at Lake Braddock. So I went and ran high school track over the Christmas break to make sure I was in shape before I came back on Grounds here.

NICHOLAS CONTE: It was one of those talks that, it was very serious. It wasn’t like, ‘Hey, I’m excited to be here.’ He was excited to meet us but it was like, ‘Hey, this is how we’re gonna go. We’re gonna hit the ground running and if you don’t want to be a part of the program, you don’t have to be. But if you do, it’s gonna be hard work. It’s gonna be tough. It’s gonna be the hardest thing you’ve ever done but it’s gonna be rewarding. And if you decide to step through these doors come January, be ready. Don’t come in here expecting to have everything handed to you because that’s no longer the case.’

JACKSON MATTEO: And that was refreshing to hear, because just like any organization or team, or family or relationship or friendship, if you’re on the fence, you’re out. If you’re not all the way in, you’re out. And for a long time there, there was a lot of guys who were just fringe, and they weren’t fully bought in, and that hurt us for a while. So right from that first meeting it was really refreshing to hear, like, ‘Okay, perfect. All in. Got it. My mind’s made up.’

After meeting his new team for the first time, Mendenhall returned to BYU to coach his old team one final time in the Las Vegas Bowl. Following a December 19th loss to Utah, Mendenhall and several staff members who also made the move from BYU got to work full-time at UVa. Players got back to town a few weeks later to start winter workouts and, as one player described it, “instantaneously” got a first taste of the culture shift they were about to endure.

JACKSON MATTEO: The very first workout we show up and everyone just got black. It was a black T-shirt, black shorts, one pair of compression shorts. Right then was when I knew. When we showed up back from break and no one had gear. And it didn’t matter. It was one pair of everything and we had to earn the weight room. And it was freezing. It’s February in Virginia and it’s 5 am. It’s freezing and they said, ‘Earn the weight room.’

CHRIS PEACE: I’m not gonna lie, it was a little nuts. We’re outside, like 10 degrees, icicles on the goalposts. We’ve only got like a T-shirt out there, no gloves. It was a little extreme.

ERIC SMITH (senior offensive lineman): They still have pictures. Sweat was literally frozen on my cheeks.

ZACH BRADSHAW: He definitely tried to shock people with that first workout. And he still says to this day that your workouts are your interviews. So he showed up for that first workout in a suit and tie and didn’t say a word. He just stood in the corner and just watched everybody.

MICAH KISER: Personally, I hated it because it was like we had to do all this stuff to be able to earn our way into the weight room. So for the first two, maybe three weeks, all we did was like stretch. Go through the way we needed to stretch and run. We didn’t do anything strength-based. It was all to be able to earn our way into the weight room. We needed to show that we’re gonna be ready for when spring practice starts and we go through the way we stretch and everything. That was kind of insane, looking back on it.

MATT JOHNS: It was a lot of running, and he wanted to see who was mentally tough enough that was gonna be able to last through a workout.

QUIN BLANDING: Flashbacks of hell. I don’t know if I can even say hell in this interview, but hell. It was rough. You can have all the skill in the world. They didn’t care. It didn’t matter to them. You’re still gonna work. And I’m not scared of work; I love the challenge. But some people folded under that pressure.

JACKSON MATTEO: They had these things called tempo runs. They were essentially laps around the field, and they were timed in relation to your position. Skill, big skill, and then bigs. They tested your soul. They made a lot of people quit. They made a lot of people think twice about whether football was really for them. And again, this was the test to earn spring practice. So you’re doing the very hardest thing that requires the most grit and mental strength to earn practice. We had guys diving, full diving at the finish line and not making the time. Testing 10 times to get it done.

ZACH BRADSHAW: I want to say we did it once a week until you passed, and it was so difficult that nobody passed the first time, or really nobody passed for the first few weeks.

MATT JOHNS: Some people hung on by a thread. Some went the other direction and said this isn’t for me. And I think that’s what happens in any type of change. I think that is normal. I remember one guy, he couldn’t get the conditioning test and then he finally finished it the day before camp, and then he ended up being a starter. He just needed to get over that hump in order to thrive in this type of culture.

DONTE WILKINS: You knew what you had to get done in order just to qualify for spring ball. So every day you’re seeing the look on guys’ faces. The guys who trained all winter and still couldn’t get it, and then the guys who didn’t train, and they were nowhere close. There was just a look on everybody’s face of either defeat, or I’m gonna make this work and get this done.

MICAH KISER: That’s the thing in college, a lot of times they are trying to weed you out. And that was the thing too with our team at the time. There were a lot of guys at the time that were trying to, we always say they just want to get the backpack and gear and walk around Grounds looking like ‘I play Virginia football.’ But a lot of people really weren’t willing to put the work in. It’s hard to play for Coach Mendenhall and go through his standards and expectations if you’re not all the way bought in.

ZACH BRADSHAW: It wasn’t just the on-field stuff that became more difficult; it was everything. You’re never late. You never miss class. You’re on time. You treat people with respect, professors, whoever. You’re on time for tutoring. And so people that had struggled doing that kind of stuff with the previous staff, who weren’t being held accountable, really struggled with the transition to the new regime. So we were losing dudes, it seemed like for the first few weeks we’d lose a couple dudes a week.

JACKSON MATTEO: Honestly it was like, ‘Jimmy didn’t show up today.’ And I’m not using a real name but, ‘Jimmy didn’t show up on Tuesday. He’s gone.’ And then the next guy didn’t show up on Thursday. He transferred. I’m like man, this is crazy. Really quickly it separated the people who were bought in from the people who weren’t.

DONTE WILKINS: That was the whole point of it. You’ve got to weed out the people that don’t want to be there, who football isn’t a priority. When something becomes hard enough, you have to ask yourself why are you doing it. The why has to be strong, and if it’s not strong—I literally just told our team this back in the spring, a couple of months ago—if your why is not strong enough, you will not be able to sustain in this program.

NICHOLAS CONTE: One of the biggest things I learned was you sit there and you know that at some point it’s gotta end. You just keep going and keep going and eventually it’s gonna end. But as long as you encourage the guy next to you, it made it easier. Because then you’re not focused on yourself— and I think that’s an issue we had with a lot of people who were more about ‘me’ and less about ‘we.’ And that changed quickly because you couldn’t be an individual and make it through practice; you couldn’t make it through the warmup if you were just focused on you. You had to make sure you were looking to the guy to your left and your right and in front of you and behind you, encouraging them and self-correcting. That was the biggest thing.

ERIC SMITH: You start falling in love with it, really, because we found new levels and versions of ourselves throughout each day. It was something to look forward to each day. If you’re a true athlete you start getting that feeling in your stomach before certain workouts, before certain games. We started looking forward to it even though we knew it was gonna be kind of strenuous.

Media members were granted access to a handful of practices that spring. It was during one of those open workouts that an inside run period escalated into a fight between players from the offense and defense and, with reporters watching from the sideline, Mendenhall put on a demonstration of the discipline he wanted to instill upon his new team.

DONTE WILKINS: It was kind of getting heated during that week. There were a couple of offensive guys complaining about cheap shots, late hits, things of that nature.

JACKSON MATTEO: Two days before, we’re scrimmaging in the indoor and whoever was the quarterback threw a pick. The DB is returning it, Keeon Johnson is the receiver, he’s chasing down the person who just intercepted the ball. Someone crack-back blocks on Keeon and gives him a concussion…I didn’t see that at the time, but when we watched film the next day, I watched it with the O-line and I was furious. I was like, ‘Was Keeon okay?’ And they’re like, ‘No, he’s concussed. He’s out.’ So I say, ‘The first person that swings, we are going after them. Block through the whistle. Block through everything and piss them off intentionally.’

DONTE WILKINS: The fight actually started with CJ Stalker. We’re trying to learn this new defense and I’m telling CJ, like, ‘Dude, I’ve got your back. You make the calls. You play off of me, we’re gonna get this defense down right.’ So literally I tell him this before the play, and then after the play, I guess he hits Keeon Johnson late, or questionable with the offense. It was clean to me but they were just looking for a reason to fight. I turn around and I see two offensive linemen holding CJ in the air. The whistle’s blowing and they slam him.

ERIC SMITH: Keeon, he’s a skill position guy, but Keeon was always close with the offensive line. He’s always one my best friends, if not my best friend for four years. It was personal. It was a crossing route between him and Stalker. CJ was just doing his job but he was a hard hitter. And Keeon’s not a little guy. So he got smacked, and we saw it at practice — I think Jackson definitely took the reins, he said, ‘If he does this again, we’re just gonna go.’ And he did it the next practice, so we’re either gonna put our money where our mouth is or we’re gonna shut up. We just went at it. We just all started brawling.

DONTE WILKINS: That wasn’t even the dirtiest hit that I’ve seen Stalker give, so when they rushed the field I was like, ‘This was definitely set up.’ Strap the helmet on because it’s time to fight. I’ll never forget Jack McDonald and Sean Karl on top of me at the bottom that pile. But I wouldn’t change it for anything.

MICAH KISER: That was insane. We were doing an inside run period and I remember the fight. It was like me, Jake Fieler and someone else. Everyone was fighting, and then we did up-downs, we had to do at least 200 of them because we had to do 100 in a row perfectly.

CHRIS PEACE: I was still hurt [Peace missed the start of spring camp that season because of a shoulder injury] but I still had to do the up-downs. I tried to use the shoulder as an excuse but they wouldn’t fall for that.

ZACH BRADSHAW: It was never-ending. It was brutal. They said, ‘We’re gonna do 100 up-downs. But every time someone can’t complete one, we’re gonna add 20 more.’ But when you get up to 50, and especially the bigger guys, they’re not built to do 100 up-downs consecutively, so they can’t get up as fast. So it was, ‘All right, 20 more… 20 more… 20 more… 20 more…’ I mean, they could have up-downed us for eternity at that point. That was the point where the skill guys, the smaller guys couldn’t get up either. So it was designed to be a punishment, and it was effective.

ERIC SMITH: That day I contemplated quitting the team. I thought about transferring, I thought about quitting football for the rest of my life. I thought about everything except pursuing my career at UVa, I was that overwhelmed.

DONTE WILKINS: That is my favorite practice in my career here at the University of Virginia. That is one of my all-time favorite practices.

MICAH KISER: He didn't want any fighting after the debacle they had at BYU [Mendenhall’s team got into a benches-clearing brawl that drew national attention after a loss to Memphis in the 2014 Miami Beach Bowl]. He's all about playing hard through the whistle, but anything after is kind of selfish. He set that standard quick.