Every coach has things they always say. Doesn’t matter the sport or the level or even how much experience they have, every coach has things they can’t help but say all the time. And for Bronco Mendenhall, a coach who doesn’t say too much all that often, those things matter even more.
One of the things that you’ll hear Mendenhall say every preseason is that you never really know what your team will do or be like until it plays an actual game. Practices, scrimmages, workouts, they are all great. But the real rubber meets the road when the team plays somebody.
So when he walked into the small visiting media room at Heinz Field around 11 p.m. on Saturday night, he finally had an idea of what his team will be in his fourth season at Virginia.
It’s safe to say he was pretty pleased.
“Just more seasoned,” Mendenhall replied when I asked what he learned and thought of his group. “The program just looks more seasoned. There weren’t the wild ups and the wild downs and the crazy miscues, things you’d say ‘Why’d he do that?’ or ‘Holy cow, did he just do that?!’ There wasn’t much of that. So, it just looks like we’re a maturing and a more seasoned program. That’s what I learned.”
After trailing 14-13 at the half, UVa pitched a shutout in the second and dominated much of the final 30 minutes on the way to a convincing 30-14 win that not only starts the fall off on the right foot but it also puts the Coastal Division favorites atop the division standings.
“Really, really proud of my team to overcome a deficit at halftime and to really earn a victory in a very difficult place to play against an opponent we hadn’t beaten yet in conference play,” Mendenhall said. “There are a lot of things that made this game important and it was an earned victory. There wasn’t anything easy about it.
“We made enough plays and at critical times, I think, and comprehensively enough throughout our team to win the game,” he added. “I was really pleased that there were no turnovers on our part. We were relatively penalty free for a first game and I think the game management was clean as well for a first one. Our offensive line clearly played better in the second half. That had a lot to do with just our ability to have control of the game at the end. I was impressed with Wayne Taulapapa and his running and his production. And then Joey Blount, not only with sacks but the interception. He played very strongly in the second half as we made some adjustments in the second that were necessary as Pitt had us on our heels in the second quarter, were doing some things that were difficult for us to stop.”
In a game where both teams were about the same on 3rd and 4th downs, getting the ball a couple of extra times was critical. And while UVa didn’t always cash in with TDs, getting to the red zone five times and scoring on all five chances is pretty good when your opponent only gets there twice.
“Oh man,” Mendenhall said when asked if he was impressed by the way his team fought back. “Yeah! To trail on the road is not an easy thing to overcome. I saw resolve but I also saw a little uncertainty as we came into halftime. To start the second half the way we did…we moved the ball effectively and that was monumental just to reestablish what we are capable of and we were executing more cleanly. The resolve and the maturity I think were maybe the two things I saw today that are lasting with me the most.”
The Cavaliers have a blueprint for how to win that Mendenhall—in another one of those things that he can’t help say all the time—describes as complimentary football. That’s what UVa played for the most part on Saturday, especially in the second half. The offense scored, the defense gave them the ball back, the offense scored again, and then the defense pinned its ears back and went after Pitt QB Kenny Pickett with a vengeance.
By the end, the same program that got outrushed 254 to 44 in 2018 had outrushed the Panthers 129 to 78 and dominated time of possession 34:16 to 25:44.
It wasn’t a blowout but it was precisely the kind of game one might expect a division champ to have on the road against a team that has some question marks to answer. That it happened in August rather than October is all the more impressive.
“I still wasn’t sure going in the game,” Mendenhall admitted, “how we would play but overall, the relative clean nature of how we played the game and then coming back from a deficit and finishing with running the football in the end zone when we had to to run out the clock, that was refreshing.
“The best teams can do that,” he said. “That was a good sign.”
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