The Wahoos went down to Death Valley and looked much better in this ACC Championship Game rematch against the Tigers than they looked in Charlotte last year, falling 42-23 on Saturday night.

It’s too be expected that when you play against the No. 1 team in the country, you’re likely not going to grade out as well as you might against others in the league and that was certainly the case when looking at the PFF College data.

And yet, there are definitely areas where UVa made some nice gains.

Below is a grade card showing how the top 10 offensive and defensive players fared in loss to the Tigers and also a cumulative grade through the fifth 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: It’s always a good thing when your quarterback is at the top of this kind of list. Armstrong not only had by far the highest overall grade but he also put up a 75.4 in the run game. Not only was that a big number compared to UVa’s backs but it also is what fueled the group’s surge among the ACC and nationally, as you’ll see below. Elsewhere, Kemp had an a good night, with a team-high 72.9 in the passing game across 46 snaps. He was the only player north of 70 in that category, though Armstrong’s 69.3 just missed the cut. Up front, Ryan Nelson had a monster number in pass pro, 87.5 across 55 of his 83 snaps. That was nearly 10 points better that UVa’s next highest grade, which belonged to Taulapapa (78.1). He was just in front of Reinkensmeyer (77.9) and a little bit ahead of both Poljan (75.2) and Glaser (75.1). And on the run blocking side, Davis continues to put up huge numbers. His 86.4 across 22 snaps was pretty impressive, a full 10 points higher than Jana’s 74.9. He was ahead of Glaser (70.6) and Olu Oluwatimi (70.4). Lastly, though he didn’t have the requisite snaps to make our leader board, which is 15, junior tackle Bobby Haskins saw his first action of 2020 in five snaps against the Tigers.

Takeaways: This is probably as rough a go of it as UVa’s defense is going to have in 2020 for obvious reasons. As you can see above, the Cavaliers had just one overall grade above 70 and not that many in the 60s, either. That was also the story on run defense, where Taylor’s 73.1 was the clear top grade. Blount (69.6), Snowden (68.9), and Cross (66.4) were the only grades in the 60s there. In terms of tackling, it was a pretty miserable game for the Hoos as both the game film and the unit grades below will show. But Blount’s 85.6 in that category was a big highlight, as was Briggs’ 72.2 in terms of showing his consistency this season. Virginia didn’t have a great night in terms of creating havoc, as evidenced by the low pressure grades. Nelson had the highest at 67.3, the only score above 65. Briggs was second there with a 64.6. Lastly, the lower grades were also an issue in terms of coverage, where Blount again had the team high (67.9) followed by Nick Grant (67.7) as the only grades above 65.

The Virginia offense finished Week 5 with a cumulative grade of 74.1, which ranks 28th nationally (up from 70.7 when UVa was 36th last week). The Wahoos are currently fifth in the ACC on offense (up from eighth). Each facet of the unit is currently graded as such:

Running— 81.4 (up from 79.3)

Run blocking—71.4 (up from 68.4)

Passing—68.9 (up from 65.7)

Pass blocking—66.4 (up from 62.1)

Receiving—62.9 (up from 60.7)

The Cavalier defense, meanwhile, finished the Clemson game with a cumulative grade of 67.6, which ranks 38th nationally (down from 79.6 and ninth). UVa currently ranks eighth in the conference (down from third). Each facet of that unit is currently graded as such:

Run defense—70.6 (down from 83.1)

Pressure— 66.4 (down from 73.6)

Coverage— 66.1 (down from 72.7)

Tackling— 44.6 (down from 59.5)

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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.