The Wahoos came out of their “extra bye week” following the FSU cancelation and looked pretty solid in a 43-32 win over Boston College. That victory sets up an especially important week for Virginia following its fourth win in a row.

What’s particularly interesting this week is how the game itself doesn’t “feel” like it matches the PFF College data. The Cavaliers scored 43 points and outside of giving up a late score that made the game seem tighter than it was, they seemed to play pretty well. But outside of a few players, the grades didn’t really seem to show that this week. At the same time, the grades that did show it certainly underscored the guys who are executing at a high level.

Below is a grade card showing how the top 10 offensive and defensive players fared in win over the Eagles and also a cumulative grade through the 14th 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: For the fourth time this season, Armstrong had the team’s top grade on offense. And for the second week in a row, he was well over a 90 grade. That was fueled by a 91.5 in passing (a team high by more than 13 points) and an 84.5 in the run game (a team high by nearly 18). How well he executed against BC put him well ahead of his teammates as the overall grades showed. Henry’s 78.3 was second in the passing game followed by Davis’ 70.8. Taulapapa had the second-highest running game grade at 67.6. Elsewhere, Bissinger was especially solid in pass pro, which covered 36 of his snaps as he graded out at 81.9. He was followed closely by Haskins at 81.2 while Taulapapa (78.5) and Grant Misch (76.3) rounded out the top four. Oluwatimi’s 80.1 was a team-high in run blocking followed by Haskins’ 77.8, and Keytaon Thompson’s 76.9.

Takeaways: Without Charles Snowden and Noah Taylor at OLB, UVa’s tandem of Gahm and Brown clearly showed well. For the second week in a row, Gahm paced the field in terms of the overall defensive grade with Brown close behind. Interestingly enough, Gahm’s 79.1 coverage grade across 18 snaps was the team-high followed by Amos’ 74.0. Alonso’s 74.7 was the highest grade in run D following by Nick Jackson at 74.4. Blount returned to the field and really showed well in tackling with a team-high 82.0. Both Cross (81.3) and King (81.1) also had very good days in that facet. The Hoos had several others, including Gahm, Alonso, Amos, Atariwa, and Christ, grade out north of 70. The fact that Christ, who has been playing offense all season, graded out as well as he did goes to show the depth UVa has had on the D-line. Lastly, the Hoos seemed to struggle not only in coverage (with only two grades above 65.5) but also in pressure, where Cross had the team-high at 67.1 with Brown being the only other player grading out north of 65.

The Virginia offense finished Week 14 with a cumulative grade of 76.9, which ranks 51st nationally (up from 73.5 when UVa was 54th after Week 12). The Cavaliers are currently eighth in the ACC on offense (same as Week 12). Each facet of the unit is currently graded as such:

Running— 85.0 (up from 82.9)

Pass blocking—79.1 (down from 79.9)

Passing—75.4 (up from 70.5)

Run blocking—67.1 (up from 65.6)

Receiving—63.3 (up from 63.1)

The Wahoo defense, meanwhile, finished the Boston College game with a cumulative grade of 72.1, which ranks 59th nationally (down from 73.9 when UVa was 46th after Week 12). UVa currently ranks fifth in the conference (fourth after Week 12). Each facet of that unit is currently graded as such:

Run defense—78.2 (up from 77.7)

Pressure— 77.4 (down from 78.4)

Tackling— 63.5 (up from 60.2)

Coverage— 50.3 (down from 51.8)

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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.