UVa finally arrives at its lone non-conference game week of the season. Though it was supposed to come in the opening week, the Hoos finally move out of ACC play beyond mid-November as they get set to face the Wildcats of Abilene Christian on Saturday afternoon (4 p.m., RSN).

The Cavaliers (3-4) will be playing ACU (1-4) for the first time. Though it’s a program that Bronco Mendenhall knows well, the Southland Conference team is the first out of state FCS squad to play Virginia since the Division I-A/I-AA split in 1978.

So, as we do each week during the season, we’ve looked at the depth chart and Mendenhall’s comments in order to break down some things we know, some questions on our mind, and one prediction we have for the week ahead.

Here’s our latest installment of the 3-2-1:

1. Keytaon Thompson is expected back this weekend.

This seems like a minor footnote but confirms a potentially important reality now that Mendenhall has said publicly that Thompson should return to the field this week.

Though he declined to go into specifics, Mendenhall’s phrasing sure seems to tell a pretty clear story.

“I expect him to be back and available,” Mendenhall said to my question about his status. “I won’t comment further on why he was not available. That’s a private matter between he and I. But we do expect him back and starting to practice with the team this evening. So I would count on him returning.”

Considering that UVa is both facing a team it’s currently favored to beat by more than five TDs and also has a backup QB shortage given the season-ending injury to Ira Armstead, it makes sense that the Cavaliers would really like Thompson back sooner than later.

If nothing else, it should take some of the pressure off of Brennan Armstrong in terms of running, which was not the case in the 31-17 win over Louisville. Despite not having many designed run called for him, Armstrong still ended up with 15 attempts for 60 yards, both team highs.

It’s not only good for Virginia’s short-term reality but also its long-term goals for Thompson to be back in uniform.

2. The “status” of several others seems particularly pessimistic.

Though the Wahoos seem set to have Thompson back on Saturday afternoon, they appear unlikely to get Joey Blount or Brenton Nelson back. In addition, it certainly seems like Dillon Reinkensmeyer won’t be back anytime soon if even this season.

As you can see on the depth chart below, all three are missing.

The Cavaliers have already gone without the two DBs for several weeks now. They’ve been out long enough that asking about their status seems futile.

Reinkensmeyer, though, is a different story. He played 27 snaps on Saturday against the Cards before going down with an apparent left knee injury. That he is no longer listed on the depth chart above seems like an ominous sign. Typically UVa leaves a player listed unless they’re expected to be out for a considerable amount of time. In Blount and Nelson’s cases, they have been listed every week until now despite not having played in the past three games.

While Joe Bissinger filled in well against UL and has played pretty consistently this season to spell Reinkensmeyer periodically, that rotation now becoming a one-option only situation is not good for the Cavaliers.

If this indeed was the last glimpses of Reinkensmeyer in a Virginia uniform, he will go down as one of the most consistent and versatile players in school history. To date, he’s got 43 starts under his belt and is the only player in FBS to start a game at all five O-line spots in a decade.

3. UVa is being mindful of player load.

Mendenhall has talked at times this season about managing players differently this year so as to make sure they are as fresh as possible on game day. For several year now, the players have worn GPS-enabled tracking monitors during practice that relay information about the distance they’ve run, how fast they go, their heart rate, and other measurables. A steady user of analytical data, Mendenhall said the team has been keying off of the info from the Catapult system even more often now given the circumstances at play and also because the team has been practicing much longer than it normally would have.

“We’re way higher monitoring our Catapult numbers at a closer level than we ever have,” he explained. “I’m getting updates regarding where exactly we are and what levels with clear metrics and markers per day to give us our best chance to get to manage individual players, but also sides of the ball in our team, for the next one. I’ve been doing that for the past three, four or five weeks.”

While that data has always been important, the program is clearly using it more than ever, even going so far as to compare data from times when the team played well against the weeks when it did not.

“Then when you add in terms of purpose, with COVID and not having our team here in the summer to train, we were very concerned about injury and building into the season,” Mendenhall said. “Then having the appropriate workloads to sustain, but also improve and without the data, intuition just simply wasn’t enough. Quite frankly, the pandemic added on to an existing study that we are already underway on how best to replicate our most successful preparation weeks. Those two things came together for what we just talked about.

“And now we’ve made it even tighter, in regards to the like Noah Taylor and Charles Snowden, specific-players as we’re getting a better idea of where exactly their sweet spot is to be fresh and fast with enough preparation to actually improve performance weekly,” he added. “We’re diving deeper and deeper, quite frankly out of necessity, but also out of the desire to keep our program, improving as we move forward.”

1. How does UVa handle reps this weekend?