After an exceptional bowl weekend in Charlotte to round out the calendar year, it's time to look back on all that was for UVa in its 13 games in 2018 as the Wahoos not only made it back to the postseason but finished with a W for the first time in more than a decade and improved on their win total for the second year in a row.

In breaking down the Pro Football Focus grades across the entire season, it's easy to see who the biggest contributors were and where production came from. That helps sets the tone on both sides of the ball going into the 2019 campaign as the Cavaliers look to show even more improvement.

Below is a grade card showing how the top 10 offensive and defensive players fared for UVa this season. For the purposes of this feature, we excluded players who did not play at least 250 snaps on either side of the ball. (For more on how PFF grades, there's an explanation at the bottom of this story).

Takeaways: When you think of UVa's season, there's no getting around how critical Perkins was to the team's eight wins and a big reason shows above: He played in all but 26 of his team's 885 offensive snaps. Though Applefield was in on a team-high 876, there's no arguing just how much better off the Wahoos were because Perkins played as much as he did and played as well as he did. His 73.5 grade in the passing game was second only to Zaccheaus' 82.6 and Perkins also had a team-high 81.3 grade in the running game (on 468 and 254 snaps, respectively). Zaccheaus finished his senior season with a monumental game in the Belk Bowl but he was fairly consistent throughout. He was also one of few offensive starters not to be whistled for a single penalty. Ellis, meanwhile, finished his final year on Grounds with a 77.6 grade in the run game across 214 of his 674 snaps. Comparing Reed's 399 snaps on offense to the 589 for Dubois and the 672 for Zaccheaus makes clear how much his production could increase next year given the forward momentum he showed later in the year. He finished behind Jana (85 on 132 snaps) and Dubois (82.8 on 232) to grade out at 79.4 on 155 run blocking opportunities. On the line, for those who reached the snap threshold Reinkensmeyer had a 73.3 grade (421 snaps) in pass pro followed by Applefield's 70.6 (470). Lastly, four players were among the overall top group ahead of Applefield but didn't have the snaps to make the cutoff: Brennan Armstrong at 67.9, Ryan Swoboda at 64.3, Gerrik Vollmer at 63.1, and Lamont Atkins at 62.0

Takeaways: Much was made in the summer and preseason about the potential for UVa's secondary to be the team's strength in 2018. As evidence by the grades above, Virginia's defensive backs certainly performed at a high level. Hall's 91.4 coverage number was incredible but that Harris finished at 87.1 and Thornhill at 87.0 says a lot about what the Wahoos were able to do this past season. While Blount had a team-high 87.4 in grade run defense just ahead of his 86.4, Thornhill posted a team-high 86.5 in tackling as well as the second-highest pressure grade at 82.1. The top spot there also belonged to Hall (87.0) as he played every one of the 837 snaps Virginia played on D in 2018. Elsewhere in the Top 10, Snowden's overall grade was clearly the best among non-DBs and he also posted solid numbers in coverage (78.6) on 160 snaps, pressure (72.4) on 250, and tackling (72.1) on 371. Snyder's inclusion here also bodes well for the future, as he posted an 84.6 in tackling (second best on the team) and a a 73.7 in run D (fourth best). That he played in nine of the team's 13 games hurt Jordan Mack in terms of volume (526 snaps) but it also likely had an impact on his performance as he was Top 15 in only tackling (10th, 66.0 grade) which was far below the sort of season most expected from the Peach State native. As with the offense, there were four players ahead of Nelson who graded out above him but didn't have enough snaps: Richard Burney with a 76.7, Malcolm Cook at 69.2, Noah Taylor at 68.9, and Dylan Thompson at 64.7.

Since we talked about the national rankings and comparisons for UVa's offense and defense last week following the Belk Bowl, we thought we'd wrap up the final PFF story of the year by breaking out some special teams numbers even though they don't work as well in a "Top 10" sort of format.

We'll start with kickoffs, where Brian Delaney graded out at 86.4 across his 68 on the year. He also finished with an 80.0 grade on field goals across his 37 kicking opportunities. On the punting side, Lester Coleman finished with a 68.9 grade on his 49 punt coverage snaps this year.

On the overall specialist grades, Butts had a team-high 81.0 across 103 snaps, which included 55 on kick return and 47 on punt coverage. Snowden had an 80.8 on his 112 STs snaps, including 47 on FG coverage, 33 on punt coverage, 21 on punt return, and 11 on kick return. Tavares Kelly had a 79.2 overall across his 33 snaps, including 25 in punt return. He also graded out with a 61.2 on his punt return reps specifically.

Tanner Cowley had a 72.8 grade across 126 STs snaps, 63 of which came on field goals and 53 of which came on kick return. The top two contributors in terms of volume were Reed, who graded out at 67.7 on his 149 snaps including 57 on kick coverage, 53 on kick return, and 39 on punt coverage, and Atkins, who had a team-high 176 snaps while grading out at 63.9 (54 snaps on kick coverage, 47 on punt coverage, 38 on punt return, and 37 on kick return). Lastly, Eli Hanback was the other most-used player on STs, as he racked up 133 snaps including 63 on field goals, 46 on FG block, 10 on kick coverage, and seven each on punt and kick returns while grading out at 62.5.

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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.