The Cavaliers came out and handled their business on Saturday afternoon against Georgia Tech, though the final score was a bit closer than most expected and fans certainly wanted. Still, at 7-3 overall with a 5-2 league record, things are going well as UVa heads into its final idle weekend of the season.

The offensive consistency was evident again on the scoreboard as well as in the PFF College grades following the win over the Yellow Jackets though the defense continues to have some Issues slowing down a vertical passing game given all of the injuries in the secondary.

Below is a grade card showing how the top 10 offensive and defensive players fared in win to the Ramblin’ Wreck and also a cumulative grade through the 11th week of the season for the offense and defense with comparisons to national ranking. (For more on how PFF grades, there’s an explanation at the bottom of this story).

Takeaways: That the top grade this week came from Kemp and Kelly is pretty interesting in the grand scheme of things. After all, they are the two players that most folks on the outside would say UVa has failed to get enough out of and they each had big moments against the Jackets. Though in somewhat limited snaps, for both to grade out above 80 is pretty impressive. Kemp had a team-high 87 grade in passing while Kelly was second with a 78.5. Kemp also put up an 81.8 in run blocking, which was second to Taulapapa’s team-high 82.6 Elsewhere, it’s been good to see Oluwatimi continuing to play at a high level consistently. He had an 84.2 in pass pro (second on the team behind the 85.2 by Nelson) and a 70.2 in run blocking, which was the highest among the linemen. But the continued emergence of Bissinger, who rotated with Nelson at LG, remains a big positive for the OL. He had an 83.6 grade in pass pro across 19 snaps, which was third highest on the team.

Takeaways: Burney leads the way this week thanks to 70s across the board in run defense (a team-high 72.3), tackling (73.5), and pressure (70.1), which underscores the consistency he played with in this game. UVa also got 80+ grades from Faumui, Hanback, and Taylor, which really shows how well the front seven played in this one. Grant had a team-high 82.3 tackling grade, one of three (along with De’Vante Cross and Chris Moore) to go over 80. But there were seven others that went above a 70, including Snowden (79.8), Taylor (75.1), Hanback (74.7), Burney, Gahm (72.2), Faumui (71.3), and Alonso (70.8). Jowon Briggs had a team-high 76.0 in pressure followed by Faumui (73.7), Taylor (73.3) and Burney while Blount had the lone 70+ grade in coverage at 73.4.

The Virginia offense finished Week 11 with a cumulative grade of 71.2 (up from 69.6), which ranks 79th nationally (up from 82nd last week). The Wahoos are currently sixth in the ACC on offense (seventh last week). Each facet of the unit is currently graded as such:

Receiving— 77.4 (up from 76.2)

Running—73.6 (down from 73.8)

Run blocking—64.4 (up from 61.2)

Pass blocking—59.2 (up from 56.1)

Passing—55.3 (down from 55.6)

The Cavalier defense, meanwhile, finished the GT game with a cumulative grade of 83.8 (down from 84.3), which ranks 50th nationally (48th last week). UVa currently ranks sixth in the conference (same as last week). Each facet of that unit is currently graded as such:

Run defense— 81.6 (up from 80.6)

Pressure—77.2 (up from 76.0)

Tackling—75.1 (up from 73.8)

Coverage— 72.3 (down from 77.3)

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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.