After UVa failed to score a touchdown at Miami last Friday night, the Cavaliers certainly didn't have any of those issues against Duke on Saturday afternoon, as they rolled to a 48-14 win over their Coastal Division foes.

But as good as the offense was in spots, the PFF College grades following the victory in Scott Stadium show a team that was relentless on defense and one that continued to execute at a high level throughout.

Below is a grade card showing how the top 10 offensive and defensive players fared in win over the Blue Devils and also a cumulative grade through the eighth 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: Another week, another top 10 with Dubois at the top. For the third time in a row, the senior wideout led the way. Here he did it thanks to a solid 80.5 grade in the passing game, which was way ahead of Wicks in second place (67.4). Speaking of the freshman receiver, he was solid across his 11 snaps with a 90.3 run blocking grade on six plays in that facet. It’s good to see Glaser and Haskins among the top 10, with the latter putting up a team-high 81.3 in pass pro which is night and day better than his previous games. Olu Oluwatimi had a 71 in that facet. Unsurprisingly, Perkins led the way in running (73.9) but was followed closely by Taulapapa (72.0). And in run blocking, Taulapapa’s 79.3 was second behind Wicks’ big number followed by a 75.3 from Reed. After Glaser was Peacock, who had a 67.6 grade across his 16 run blocking snaps.

Takeaways: We have to start with Snowden’s overall grade, the highest by the Cavaliers this season. But we also must look at the whole. For the first time since we started this feature, UVa had a player outside the top 10 (inside linebacker Nick Jackson) put up a 70 or higher (70.1). That speaks to just how good the Wahoos were last weekend. Snowden’s big overall number was fueled by a 91.9 pressure grade. Zandier and Mack, meanwhile, would have been the story most other weeks as they both went over 80 overall. For Zandier, hits 80.7 tackling grade or 72.5 in run D were usual. But his 85.4 coverage grade across 17 snaps was very impressive. Mack, meanwhile, was great across the board putting up an 82.6, 79.8m and 74.7 in run D, tackling, and pressure, respectively. Elsewhere, newcomer Antonio Clary had a solid day in run defense, with a 78.8 across 12 snaps in that category. Chris Moore had a team-high 84.1 tackling grade followed by Clary’s 81.2. Lastly, Taylor had the highest coverage grade (90.2) followed by Zandier and then Blount (77.7) and Gahm (75.0).

The Virginia offense finished Week 8 with a cumulative grade of 68.2 (up from 67.7), which ranks 90th nationally (up from 93rd last week). The Wahoos are currently ninth in the ACC on offense (same as last week). Each facet of the unit is currently graded as such:

Receiving— 75.5 (same as last week)

Running—75.0 (up from 72.0)

Run blocking—61.0 (up from 60.5)

Passing—51.2 (down from 53.8)

Pass blocking—50.7 (up from 49.0)

The Cavalier defense, meanwhile, finished the Duke game with a cumulative grade of 88.3 (up from 79.3), which ranks 37th nationally (66th last week). UVa currently ranks fourth in the conference (previously eighth). Each facet of that unit is currently graded as such:

Run defense— 86.3 (up from 82.3)

Tackling—80.1 (up from 73.3)

Pressure—77.5 (up from 74.9)

Coverage— 77.2 (up from 65.5)

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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.