Virginia Defense Gets Back on Track in Atlanta

Breaking down UVA's stifling defensive performance in the win at Georgia Tech

By last year's standards, the Virginia defense played exceptionally well through the first four weeks of the season. Even without comparing it to the team's disastrous play in 2021, the Cavalier defensive unit had put four solid performances on the field to begin its first season under new defensive coordinator John Rudzinski. 

With the way the Hoos were playing on that side of the ball, all four of those games can and should have been wins had the UVA offense not regressed as much as it has this season. Virginia was 2-2 after four games, but it was not at all the fault of the defense, which was doing everything in its power to keep the Cavaliers in the games.

Then came the relapse. 

Virginia fielded a couple of substantially below-average performances in blowout losses to Duke and Louisville in weeks 5 and 6. After giving up only seven touchdowns through the first four games, the Cavaliers surrendered nine touchdowns over the last two games, including four to a Louisville offense led by a backup quarterback. 

The continued struggles of the Virginia offense were hardly surprising, but UVA's sudden and pervasive defensive issues gave plenty of cause for panic as the Cavaliers wavered in their most reliable phase of the game. 

Clearly, the Virginia defensive unit felt it had something to prove coming out of the bye week as the Hoos went down to Atlanta on Thursday night to face Georgia Tech. 

Stifling. Smothering. Swarming. Suffocating. 

These words don't even begin to tell the story of how dominant the UVA defense was on Thursday night. 

Georgia Tech managed just 201 yards of total offense and the Yellow Jacket offense put only three points on the board. Their only touchdown was a defensive touchdown scored on a pick-six. Georgia Tech punted the ball ten times, seven of which were three-and-outs, and UVA also forced two turnovers.

The UVA offense had another forgettable night, but the Virginia defense refused to let the Hoos lose this one. 

"You want to play complementary football, but at times you got to compensate and those guys over there didn't flinch," Virginia head coach Tony Elliott said of the UVA defense. "Man, they're playing inspired. They're having a lot of fun. They're playing fast... Really proud of of how inspired those guys played throughout the course of the game."

The Cavaliers had given up only two rushing touchdowns through the first four weeks of the season, but gave up seven combined rushing scores between the Duke and Louisville games. Against Georgia Tech on Thursday, the UVA run defense was stellar, keeping Hassan Hall and the rest of the Georgia Tech running backs stuck in the mud for just 55 total rushing yards and an average of 1.5 yards per carry in the game. 

Admittedly, the Yellow Jackets were forced to resort to backup quarterback Zach Gibson after starter Jeff Sims exited the game with an injury midway through the second quarter. However, Sims was not exactly having success against the Cavaliers before he got hurt. Sims led Georgia Tech on five drives, four of which resulted in punts. The one drive that didn't nearly ended in a touchdown, but Sims' pass was broken up in the end zone by Fentrell Cypress II and the tipped ball was then caught by Coen King for an interception. Sims went 6/11 for 47 yards and a pick. His backup, Zack Gibson, had a nightmare of an evening, going 11/26 for 99 yards and a 74.3 passer rating. 

The worst part of Gibson's experience was that he was constantly diving to the ground to avoid getting pummeled by the UVA pass rush. After week 4, Virginia led the ACC in sacks with 14, but then the Cavaliers recorded only one sack at Duke and then zero against Louisville. UVA's defensive front got back on track against Georgia Tech, sacking Sims once and Zach Gibson seven times for a remarkable eight-sack performance, the second-most sacks in a game in Virginia program history and the most by any ACC team this season. 

Six of those eight sacks came from just three players: Nick Jackson, Chico Bennett Jr., and Paul Akere, who each recorded two sacks. 

This was an important game for Nick Jackson, who refused to let a nagging knee injury limit his play. There was some concern over whether he would be able to play in the game at all, but that was never a possibility for Jackson, an Atlanta native who had never played a college football game in his home city before Thursday night. The way that Jackson played against Georgia Tech, you never would have guessed that he was injured at all. He led the team in tackles with eight, recorded two sacks for his first career multi-sack game, and had his first-ever fumble recovery. 

"Nick, he's the heart and soul right now of this football team," Elliott said of Jackson after the game. "It means so much to him. We would've had to take his helmet in order for him not to play."

The game was also meaningful for Chico Bennett Jr., who spent his first two college seasons at Georgia Tech before transferring to Virginia. Bennett showed off against his former team, notching seven tackles and two sacks for his second multi-sack game of the season. Bennett leads the Cavaliers with six sacks on the season. Columbia grad transfer Paul Akere was also impressive with two sacks and four tackles. 

While the pass rush gets all the credit - Jackson, Bennett, Akere, as well as Aaron Faumui, Kam Butler, and Michael Diatta - Tony Elliott made sure to acknowledge the part that the UVA secondary played in those sacks. 

"But I'd also say eight sacks, that's not just the pass rush, that's the coverage on the back end," Elliott said. The Cavalier defensive front got to Gibson repeatedly, but that was made possible because the Virginia secondary gave him nowhere to throw the ball. 

Sophomore safety Jonas Sanker is looking more and more like a potential NFL defensive back with each game. The Charlottesville native had five tackles and two pass breakups against Georgia Tech and just seems to be all over the field whenever a play needs to be made. Anthony Johnson and Fentrell Cypress II also had two pass breakups each, with one of the breakups by Cypress turning into Coen King's first-career interception. 

It was an all-around fantastic defensive performance for John Rudzinski's Cavaliers. They'll look to keep that momentum going next week when Tyler Van Dyke and the Miami Hurricanes come to town. 

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