Virginia Football Report Card: Handing Out Grades for UVA's Win at Wake Forest

Matt Newton | Sep 9, 2024

Tyler Neville gets an A++ on this week's UVA football report card for his two-touchdown performance in Virginia's big road win at Wake Forest. / Virginia Athletics

Virginia improved to 2-0 on the season with an electrifying come-from-behind 31-30 victory on the road at Wake Forest on Saturday night in Winston-Salem. The Cavaliers trailed the Demon Deacons for 58 minutes, but ended the game on a 14-0 run to steal their ACC opener for the first time since the 2020 season.

As we break down what we saw from the Cavaliers in their first road game of the year and what it means for the rest of the season, let's hand out some report card grades for various players, position groups, and other categories to help evaluate Virginia's performance in week 2.

Offense

Anthony Colandrea: A-
Colandrea completed 33 of his 43 passing attempts for 357 yards and three touchdowns. Those 33 completions were a career-high and most by a Cavalier quarterback since Brennan Armstrong in 2021. While he did throw two interceptions, we're not heaping blame onto his shoulders for the first one, as his pass was deflected at the line of scrimmage and went backwards right into the hands of Wake defensive lineman Kevin Pointer, who just happened to be at the right place at the right time. We're actually giving Colandrea some credit for his chase-down effort to tackle Pointer and prevent the pick-six. The second interception was a bad forced throw and one that Colandrea needs to eliminate from his game. But, essentially every other ball he threw was a good decision and placed only where his receiver could get it. And Colandrea had ice in his veins in those two fourth-quarter touchdown drives. This was a good game for Colandrea.

Tyler Neville: A++
This was just a wonderful breakout performance for the Harvard transfer. Neville caught all four passes that came his way and two of those receptions went for touchdowns of 18 and 24 yards in the second quarter. That was the first two-touchdown game of his career and Neville is the first Cavalier tight end to have two touchdown receptions in a single game since Tom Santi did so against Duke in 2007. UVA was hoping to get its tight ends more involved in the passing offense this year and Neville gives the Cavaliers that capacity.

Malachi Fields: A++
Virginia's now undisputed WR1 is on trajectory for Malik Washington-esque type of breakout season. After never going over 100 yards in his career, Fields has now surpassed that mark in consecutive games. He was targeted 13 times and caught 11 of those passes for 148 yards, 46 of which came after the catch. Colandrea targeted Fields on pivotal fourth downs twice and he caught both passes during the drive that ultimately ended in the game-winning touchdown.

UVA Receivers: A
We've talked about Neville and Fields already, but it was an excellent all-around day for the Cavalier pass-catchers, who amassed 357 receiving yards as a group. Five different players recorded at least four receptions and eight Cavaliers had at least one catch. Trell Harris dropped a wide-open deep touchdown pass from Colandrea early on, but made up for that mistake by recording a career-high seven receptions for 91 yards and a clutch touchdown in the fourth quarter.

UVA Rushing Offense: D
On the flip side, if Virginia's passing offense was exceptional, then UVA's ground game was the opposite. Xavier Brown had decent production in a decent sample size, averaging 3.9 yards per carry on nine touches, but Kobe Pace was locked up, only getting five carries and only racking up 14 yards. There wasn't much room for Colandrea in the scrambling game either. The only bright spot was the "Grady Bunch" managing to push Grady Brosterhous into the end zone on a QB sneak to win the game late. That's a pretty good bright spot, but it's still a D grade for a rushing offense that averaged 2.6 yards per carry as a team and just 73 total rushing yards.

Red Zone Playcalling: C
On Virginia's third offensive possession of the game, the Cavaliers put a nice drive together and got first and goal from the Wake 3-yard line. Colandrea proceeded to get stuffed on back-to-back QB keepers, one of which he had Pace wide open on an option pitch in the flat, and then Pace got tackled for no gain on 3rd and goal from the 1 and Tony Elliott settled for the shortest field goal you can possibly take. Pace should've gotten the ball on first or second down and the Cavaliers also could have used a down throwing the ball to Malachi Fields, who had two catches for 66 yards on that drive alone.

On the second to last drive of the game, Virginia punched in a game-winning touchdown with Grady Brosterhous and it's not the specific playcalling we have an issue with, but rather the clock management. A completion to Fields set up 1st and goal from the Wake Forest 2-yard line with three minutes left in regulation. Rather than trying to drain the clock and give the Demon Deacons the least amount of time possible to score, the Cavaliers hurried to the line and snapped the ball with 31 seconds on the play clock. Colandrea was stopped on a QB keeper, giving Virginia another chance to kill some clock. Instead, UVA quickly brought in Brosterhous and executed the QB sneak for the touchdown when the clock could have been ran down to the two-minute warning. It didn't matter in the end because the UVA defense made a great play to force a game-winning turnover, but that clock mismanagement gave the Demon Deacons an extra 30-45 seconds as well as the two-minute timeout and all three of their own timeouts to work with when they got the ball back. Virginia needs to have better clock management habits, especially at the end of a close game.

Overall Offense: B+
The lack of a rushing attack is still very concerning, but we can't let that completely drag down the offensive grade when Colandrea and the passing offense clicked when they needed to and made so many clutch plays down the stretch to win the game.

Defense

UVA Pass Defense: C-
Virginia was gashed by the Wake passing offense for 403 yards, 263 of which came on 10 big plays (15+ yards). Wake completed passes for 42, 34, 31, 31, and 26 yards. That's too many breakdowns in coverage, tackling or both. The Cavaliers managed to deliver a bend, don't break defensive effort by the end of the game that was just barely enough to win, but the big offensive plays surrendered by what should be a better secondary are very concerning.

UVA Run Defense: B
The Cavaliers gave up four rushing plays of 10+ yards, but none of those went for more than 17, so no big-hitters or game-breakers. Wake Forest averaged 3.5 yards per carry and racked up 141 total rushing yards, which is much than what Virginia's offense managed, but not terrible. The Deacs punctuated two of their drives with rushing touchdowns, but they didn't run wild, which likely would have won them the game from a time of possession standpoint, so we'll give the UVA run defense a B for the game.

UVA Pass Rush: A+
Sacks, sacks, and more sacks. After registering just 11 total sacks in all of 2023 and only one sack last week against Richmond, the Virginia defense sacked Hank Bachmeier six times on Saturday night. The best part is that those sacks came from a variety of sources, as John Rudzinski varied his blitzing packages. Two of the sacks came from safeties, as Antonio Clary recorded his second-career sack and Jonas Sanker got his first-career sack. Three more came from the linebacker position as James Jackson, Trey McDonald, and Kam Robinson each got home for sacks. Chico Bennett had the other sack and it was a big one in the fourth quarter that helped give the ball back to the Virginia offense for the game-winning touchdown drive.

Malcolm Greene and Antonio Clary: A++
Antonio Clary had an exceptional game all-around, leading the Cavaliers in tackling for the second-straight game, but these two players made the biggest play of the night. Wake was driving and had its sights set on a game-winning field goal. Malcolm Greene came up with a huge forced fumble and Clary gave a remarkable diving effort to strip the ball away from Wake receiver Donavon Greene, who had appeared to scoop up the fumble. That halted the Wake drive, gave possession back to UVA, and essentially won the game.

Overall Defense: C+
People will look at the 544 yards of total offense surrendered and think the defense simply played terrible. It was far from a great or even good game for Rudzinski's unit, but a big chunk of those yards came at the end of the first half and at the end of the game when Wake was trying some desperate things to score and picked up a bunch of yards that were essentially empty calories with UVA in prevent defense successfully protecting the end zone. We're not trying to give Virginia's defense a pass by dressing up the stats so they're not as ugly, but the 544 yards don't tell the whole story. Virginia's defense got the necessary stops, including the big forced punt in between the two fourth quarter touchdown drives and then the caused turnover that won the game at the end. The victory is all that matters and the defense deserves at least a C+ for that.

Special Teams B-
Last week, the Virginia special teams unit got an A-, with the only mistake being a missed field goal. Will Bettridge made his only field goal, a 19-yard chip shot, which, if we're being honest, he shouldn't have been attempting in the first place. UVA contained the Wake returners decently well. Chris Tyree returned two kickoffs for 24 and 28 yards and a punt for 11 yards (so good, not great). Daniel Sparks delivered a clutch low line drive punt at the end of the game that went 59 yards to the Wake 5-yard line. That essentially sealed the win and it almost erases the blocked punt right before halftime, which, fortunately for the Cavaliers, did not result in points for Wake Forest. But it's very concerning that blocked punts are still an issue at this point and it's enough to lower the special teams grade to a B-.

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