The 3-2-1: Syracuse

1. Virginia will have to be ready for a lot of different looks from the Syracuse defense.

In Tuesday’s press conference, Tony Elliott broke down the Syracuse defense a bit and said that the Wahoos will need to be ready to face a diverse scheme on Friday night.

Virginia’s offensive line will be put to the test against an Orange D that will line up in three-man, four-man, and five-man fronts and in passing downs will throw a lot of exoctic looks at the Cavalier offense. Elliott said that when reviewing the Syracuse defense, you can see 10 different alignments on 10 consecutive snaps.

Virginia is still obviously a work in progress, and while their offensive line did a much better job against ODU, the Illinois performance is still out there. Can the Cavaliers come up with a game plan to neutralize the Syracuse defense? And can the players execute that plan in what could be a loud environment in the Dome? That’s the million-dollar question.

But one thing we do know is that Syracuse has a capable defense that could certainly give Virginia’s offense fits if they can’t protect and correctly identify schemes and pressures.

2. The coaching staff is still working on earning trust with the offense.

Virginia’s offense put a much better effort on the field on Saturday than the scoreboard reflects. The Wahoos surpassed 500 yards of offense and averaged more than 6 yards per play, and reached the red zone seven times. Still, execution needs some work, as UVa came away with just 16 points after a slew of missed opportunities and turnovers.

It seems pretty clear at this point that the offense is capable of improvement but the players and coaches will need to simply put everything together. And perhaps when the scheme starts working and the execution is there, confidence and even better execution will come. Elliott talked on Tuesday about how the defensive players have bought in to John Rudzinski’s scheme, and have taken to it quite well. On the offensive side of the ball, the Hoos are still going through growing pains.

The way Elliott explained this makes a lot of sense. Virginia’s players had a whirlwind winter in 2021, going from potentially having a winning season and a bowl trip, to losing a close game to their rivals, having their coach resign, and their bowl game canceled. The defense had struggled for the past several seasons and it makes sense that they would be desperate to improve and play better on game days. Conversely, the offense is a group that has had a lot of success, despite .500 records in each of the last two seasons. It’s hard to say the new scheme is attempting to break “bad” habits since those things that UVa did in previous seasons led to a lot of points and yards. But it seems that this staff has attempted to rip the band-aid off with regards to scheme, instead of trying to keep doing what the previous staff did for a year with Brennan Armstrong before a more significant transition.

Will the changes pay off as the season goes along and beyond? We’ll see.

3. The Cavaliers have had a sense of urgency heading into the ACC opener.

Heading into the Illinois game, UVa had a couple of rough practices. The old adage goes that you play as you are prepared to, and it seems like some of those bad weekdays spilled into that weekend in Champaign. Last week, UVa’s coaches said that the players had responded well after the loss and had a good week of practice. And although the game was way too close to feel great about it, UVa did show some improvement against ODU.

On Tuesday, Elliott said that the team has demonstrated a sense of urgency heading into the ACC opener and he feels good about the preparation thus far. The players have to focus on execution and work on the little things, and block out the noise with so many potential distractions heading into Friday’s game and all of the storylines there. This game is the biggest of the season to date, and counts towards the conference record. We’ll see if the focus and preparation leads to a more clean performance against the Orange.