UVa's PFF grades after falling at Pitt in Week 12

The Virginia defense hasn’t made many opposing quarterbacks uncomfortable this season. With the Coastal Division at stake last weekend at Heinz Field, the Wahoos were determined to change that.

Defensive coordinator Nick Howell called his most aggressive game of the season, with UVa trying to get after Pitt quarterback Kenny Pickett all evening. The results were mixed, but led to some modest improvements in the unit’s PFF College report card.

“This was the Coastal championship,” a gravelly-voiced Bronco Mendenhall explained afterward when asked about the blitz-heavy gameplan. “We weren’t gonna save anything, and we weren’t gonna keep anything uncalled or undone. And so yeah, we did everything we could.”

UVa’s 18 QB hurries were a season high. The Cavaliers also picked off Pickett twice and generated a total of five hits on Pickett and his backup Nick Patti. Pickett's PFF game grade was a season-low 67.5.

The aggressive approach led to the UVa defense earning its third-best PFF game grade (64.0) of the season, behind only the Cavaliers’ shutouts of William & Mary and Duke. Virginia’s pass rush grade earned a 65.8, which narrowly trailed the 66.2 the Hoos scored against the Blue Devils for best this season.

Pickett still threw for 340 yards and four scores. He still completed 14 of those passes and all four touchdowns to Biletnikoff Award finalist Jordan Addison, who made the PFF Team of the Week for Week 12 following his 202-yard performance. The Panthers still won the game 48-38.

UVa entered the game with an ACC-low 12 sacks on the season, and hadn’t gotten to the quarterback since the win against Georgia Tech. Prior to Saturday, the defense had as many zero-sack games (four) as multi-sack games. The Wahoos got to Pickett three times at Heinz Field.

But starting with Pitt’s first possession, when Nick Grant flushed out Pickett with a blitz on a 3rd-and-5 and first-year linebacker Mike Green ran the quarterback down for his first career sack, the Hoos consistently kept Pickett from getting comfortable in big spots.

UVa sent Joey Blount on blitzes six times. One led to a sack; when Blount whiffed on another, Pickett recovered to find Addison for a touchdown. Entering the game, Blount had been used as a blitzer just five times all season, according to PFF data.

Inside linebacker Nick Jackson, who’d been used on blitzes on just 15 percent of his snaps this season, went after Pickett on 20 of the defense’s 83 plays (24.1 percent) on Saturday. Jackson had the Hoos’ third sack, and hurried backup Nick Patti on the 4th-down throw in the fourth quarter that resulted in pass interference on Coen King.

Elliott Brown matched his season high with 18 pass-rush snaps and finished with a pair of hurries. He also failed to bring down Patti on what looked like a sure sack on the 1st-and-goal play following UVa’s offsides penalty on a Pitt field goal attempt. Noah Taylor came into the game having rushed the passer on 23 percent of his snaps this season; that percentage was close to 50 percent (32 of 66 snaps) against the Panthers.

“We definitely blitzed a lot. That’s our defensive coordinator,” Taylor said following the loss. “I love blitzing. Everybody loves blitzing. And he loves calling blitzes.”

According to PFF, Green (80.6 on eight total defensive snaps) and fellow first-year linebacker West Weeks (77.3 on a season-high 46 snaps) graded out as the Wahoos’ top two pass rushers. Green had the early sack; Weeks batted down a pair of passes and hit Pickett once while being used as a blitzer.

“There was a lot of things that we liked in terms of pressures and hitting him and good coverage down the field,” Howell said after Tuesday morning’s practice at the McCue Center. “We did some good stuff, and then in critical moments we weren’t able to finish off a couple plays."

“I thought the kids prepared really, really well. I thought they tried really, really hard,” the defensive coordinator continued. “I thought we had a really, really good plan and there was some good things to take away from that.”

Below is a grade card showing how the top 10 offensive and defensive players fared against the Fighting Irish and also a cumulative grade through the third week of the season for the offense and defense with comparisons to national ranking. (For more on how Pro Football Focus grades, we post an explanation at the bottom of this story).

Takeaways: Week 12 was the second time Blount graded out as UVa’s top defensive player this season. The first was his noteworthy performance in last month’s win against Georgia Tech. … Blount was the first UVa player with both a sack and an interception in a game since De’Vante Cross last December against Boston College. Blount also had a pick and two sacks in UVa's season-opening win at Pitt in 2019. ... Blount graded as the Hoos’ best player in pass coverage (78.3) and second-best in run defense (71.4). … Weeks had UVa’s best grade both in run defense (72.2) and as a tackler (83.3). He finished the game with a career-high eight tackles. … Four players graded out better than 80 as tacklers: Weeks, corners Anthony Johnson (82.7) and Darrius Bratton (81.5) and Taylor (80.5). The defense finished with eight missed tackles, the unit’s fewest since the Duke shutout. … PFF did not charge Bratton for a missed tackle on Addison’s late 62-yard TD. … With an 89.4 cumulative grade, Taylor has been the Cavaliers’ best tackler this season. He has also graded as the Hoos’ best pass rusher (67.8). Taylor’s 3 1/2 sacks and seven QB hits both lead the defense.

Takeaways: Brennan Armstrong returned from his rib injury to grade out as the offense’s best player for the sixth time in his 10 games. His 88.0 was the QB’s fourth-best game grade this season. Among quarterbacks with at least 300 drop-backs, Armstrong’s 92.0 season grade ranks fourth nationally. … With Armstrong back, both Keytaon Thompson and Dontayvion Wicks graded out better than 70 for the fifth time in six games. The lone exception for both players was last week, when Armstrong was out with a rib injury. … Coming off a lower-body injury that knocked him out of the Notre Dame game, Billy Kemp played just nine offensive snaps, a season low. … Receiver Ra’Shaun Henry (80.9) earned UVa’s top run-blocking grade. Henry had a big block on Thompson’s 8-yard TD run off the right side that tied the game in the third quarter. … Among O-linemen, right guard Chris Glaser (68.3) and center Olu Oluwatimi (66.7) were UVa’s top run blockers. … Left guard Ryan Nelson earned a 90.0 in pass protection, matching Joe Bissinger’s grade against Illinois for best performance in pass pro at UVa this season. … Next to Nelson, left tackle Bobby Haskins had his worst pass-blocking performance (38.9) of the season.

The return of Armstrong and his latest strong performance led to a boost for most of UVa’a cumulative offensive grades. Virginia’s 88.0 overall season grade (up from 86.8 last week) ranks 18th nationally and third in the ACC. The Cavaliers’ passing grade (also 88.0) took the biggest jump, and now ranks 10th in the country and second in the league. Those cumulative offensive grades through 11 games:

Passing—88.0 (last week 85.1)

Running—88.5 (last week 88.5)

Pass blocking—72.8 (last week 73.8)

Receiving—80.3 (last week 78.7)

Run blocking—76.0 (last week 76.0)

For the first time since prior to going to BYU, UVa’s defense no longer grades out as the worst in the ACC for the season. UVa’s cumulative season grade improved from 56.8 to 58.2, which still sits at No. 114 nationally, but did leap over Duke in the ACC. The only facet to see its season grade drop coming off Pitt was the run defense, which sits 125th out of 130 FBS teams. The cumulative defensive grades through Week 12:

Coverage—73.2 (last week 72.2)

Tackling—71.1 (last week 67.9)

Pressure—64.1 (last week 62.7)

Run defense—42.7 (last week 43.1)

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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.