What’s the shelf life on prognostications? Until they’re proven wrong, obviously. And it took less than a week before what I said in this space after UVa’s loss in Clemson turned out to be shown unequivocally wrong.

The biggest challenge in sports, I wrote last Monday, is consistency. That, of course, wasn’t remotely what UVa put on the field on Saturday. And woo boy in the 38-21 loss to NC State did the Wahoos answer the question I asked at the end of the column.

“What will the Cavaliers do with it?” Aside from look totally lost and lose in convincing fashion, all they did “with it” was open up a whole bunch of new questions and raise doubts on how 2020 will play out for them.

“Certainly not the outcome I was hoping for today,” Bronco Mendenhall said upon starting his presser a good bit later than usual. “We started very slow. I think that both teams were pretty evenly matched going into the game. However, we turned the ball over four times, one for a touchdown, and we had a blocked punt and then a failed attempt from the 1-yard line with two plays to push it in. And rather than making it more than that, there’s plenty of things still to follow up on. We started slow. Those six plays in and of themselves were the difference in the game, but lots and lots of things can be improved from where I thought we were. And today made it clear that we weren’t as far along as I anticipated.”

First and foremost, the health of Brennan Armstrong becomes the big question for UVa’s season. On a 3-yard run in the second quarter, the redshirt sophomore was knocked out of the game thanks to an illegal hit by Tanner Ingle, who was ejected for targeting. Not only did Armstrong not return to the game after dealing with what was almost surely a concussion, but the play didn’t even count.

That really underscored the kind of day it was it UVa: It lost its quarterback via targeting and didn’t even get to advance the ball because of a holding call offset the penalty.

Without Armstrong, obviously, everything changes for the Cavaliers. They were a very different team offensively with Lindell Stone at the helm, though he was productive in his first extended playing time of his career. He threw the ball 53 times, a product of the score obviously, and connected for a trio of TDs the first of which was the first of his UVa career. It’s fair to say that Virginia is very different

It was already 17-0 by then, though. And therein lies the added complexity of everything that happened on Saturday afternoon amid the rain and gloom.

“Yeah, I was just told that Brennan was out for the game,” Mendenhall said. “I don’t know any more information at this point. I thought Lindell did a really nice job of leading our team and giving us a chance to fight back and possibly change the outcome and come from behind. So, I think he did a really nice job showing a lot of courage, a lot of grit,and saw the field well. I think our team also responded well just seeing his effort.”

As mentioned, it’s not typical for Mendenhall to take as much time in the locker room postgame as he did on Saturday. His message, he explained, was lengthy.

“I talked more than I normally talk in that setting because after the game there’s so many emotions…But I didn’t think that we approached the game as we normally do in our own stadium and we’ve been so successful over the past couple of years,” he said. “I’m not going to say or going to jump to the conclusion they took it for granted, but we just didn’t prepare, compete, or execute at a level well enough to maintain the outcome that we wanted. And that really was the answer. I do think the second half, our team played more competitively with a better mindset and more urgency.

“But a half isn’t enough, or parts of a half isn’t enough,” he added. “We are certainly learning to sustain—start to end—clean football, competitive football and effective football to have the outcome that we want.”

If watching at home you thought the Cavaliers looked like a team waiting for somebody to make a play, you aren’t alone. And in the meantime, NC State simply took it to them.

“It was as if everyone was waiting and just knowing that it’s going to happen, but it didn’t,” Mendenhall said. “And so that was the reality. We needed it to happen and it didn’t happen. We needed a few key stops on defense and it didn’t happen. We needed a touchdown from the 1 and it didn’t happen. We just weren’t consistent enough and didn’t execute well enough and didn’t earn the victory. Bottom line, didn’t make the plays we needed to.”

After a solid-but-not-remarkable start and a quality loss in Death Valley, it certainly does feel like UVa’s season quickly took an about face. Now, the Wahoos have to find a way to get ready to go to Winston-Salem in hopes of righting the ship, even while questions about QB1 linger.

It’s still early, of course, but some of the issues on display this weekend have a tendency to make it get late pretty quickly.

One endearing lesson from this game, though? When it goes off the rails, it can go fast.