Bronco Mendenhall left BYU and took over coaching at Virginia in 2016.  His first year, he went 2-10.   In 2017, he went 6-7.  In 2017 he went 9-4.  In 2018, 8-5.  In 2019, 9-5; the extra game was a 62-17 loss to Clemson in the ACC championship game.  In 2020, the team started 1-4 but finished 5-5.  That momentum seems to have carried into the season, where Virginia (aka UVA) currently sits at 6-3 with one of the most explosive offenses in the country.  As we shall see below, UVA is by far the toughest of ND’s remaining three contests.  As our own Brendan has calculated, Bill Connelly’s SP+ system gives ND a 58% chance of victory at Virginia as compared to Georgia Tech (84%) or Stanford (87%).  ESPN’s FPI system largely agrees, putting our odds of victory at UVA at 55% in contrast to 85% at Georgia Tech and 76% at Stanford.

Notre Dame (-5.5) at Virginia

Scott Stadium
Charlottesville, VA
Date: Saturday, November 13, 2021
Time: 7:30 PM ET
TV: ABC

Virginia opened the season by beating William and Mary and Illinois, the latter of which is now looking like a decent win.  They then dropped two games to UNC (59-39) and Wake forest (37-17).  Since then, they’ve beat Louisville (now 5-5), Miami (5-4) and Georgia Tech (3-6).  Things were going well for them until they made a trip out west to play BYU, where they lost 66-49.  Worse than the loss itself was the injury to UVA’s QB Brennan Armstrong, who left the game with a broken rib.  Actually, he broke the rib rushing for a first down, tried to stay in, then threw an interception, then left.  I’ll discuss him more below, but he’s probably the best QB ND will face all year – and I mean that while still believing Sam Howell will be picked in the first two rounds of the 2022 NFL draft.

Luckily for them, Virginia is coming off a bye – they are one of six of ND’s 2021 opponents to have an extra week before the game.  As Pete Sampson noted on the Blue and Gold podcast, the extra week is the only way Armstrong has a chance of playing.  According to Sampson, who spoke to several doctors about Ian Book playing after injuring his ribs against Northwestern, returning even two weeks later was a somewhat dicey proposition.  However, given the bye, and also the absolutely vital role Brennan Armstrong plays for Virginia, I expect we will see him on the field this Saturday.

Side by Side:

Virginia’s Offense:

The Cavaliers offense is truly amazing.  They’re averaging 38 points per game, and that’s with an inexplicable 17 point clunker against Wake Forest.

They do it first through the air.  Armstrong has passed for 3,557 yards *so far*.  UVA spreads the ball around.  Here is a chart of receptions and yards for their top receivers:

I must confess that early in the season, the only UVA game I watched was Wake.  I found myself saying, “Virginia’s QB is amazing, but his receivers are untalented and can’t get open.”  Knowing what we now know about Wake and Virginia, this seems a silly thought.  I was much more impressed watching this WR group get open against the BYU secondary.  The part of my thought about Armstrong, though, was correct.  This guy has amazing ball placement and can throw receivers open.

Virginia’s rushing offense is seemingly pale by comparison, but  the low total yardage conceals an approximately five yards per carry rushing attack.  Again, it’s balanced, but when you account for sacks and look at the number of carries, Brennan Armstrong once again shows up as a legitimate – perhaps even the primary – rushing threat.  He can take off and run and certainly jukes or outright sheds tackles.

What this means is that we can’t disable UVA’s offense like we did with USC or UNC where schemed out Drake London or Josh Downs.  Each of our cornerbacks and safeties is going to have to make plays.  And even if they do well overall, that means a fair amount of our guys getting burned.  Virginia’s balance amongst their targets makes them this season’s worst matchup for our very average (without Kyle Hamilton secondary) secondary.

Virginia’s Defense

How do you score 49 points on the road at BYU and lose?  You have a bad defense.  This isn’t an anomaly: UVA’s defense also gave up 59 points to UNC and 40 points to 3-6 Georgia Tech.   Their 33rd ranking in overall SP+ conceals significant variance: their offense is ranked 7th and their defense is ranked 82nd.  I find this very strange since Mendenhall was a defensive coordinator before he became a head coach, but it is a weird year in college football.

There’s not a lot of good things to say about this unit, so I’ll keep this section short.  They have only 11 sacks on the entire year, 5 interceptions, and 3 fumbles forced.  BYU’s leading rusher averaged 9 yards a carry for 276 yards total.  Georgia tech averaged 8 yards a carry against them.  Louisville, who collapsed in the fourth quarter (outscored 21-3 that quarter to lose the game by one point), averaged seven yards a carry.  It should be a good night for Kyren Williams and Logan Diggs.  I would advise, however, that ND work on running to the edges.  Against BYU, it really seemed like the UVA secondary had trouble getting off of blocks, leading to lots of successful sweeps or just outside cuts from the running backs.  The announcers praised BYU’s receivers and I’m sure they deserve a good deal of credit.  That said, watching the game against Georgia Tech, it really doesn’t like UVA’s secondary is great at coverage or open field tackling either.  I also noticed the tackling on the interior was not great for UVA; from the play’s I watched, BYU’s RB got the vast majority of his yards after contact.

A big question hanging over this game, though, is how ND manages to activate the passing game.  At this point, we have only 5 healthy scholarship WRs and freshman Jayden Thomas is red-shirting, so we’ve got four options.  Kelly has mentioned moving Mayer, Tyree, and Williams into the slot, which is likely the beginning of something we’ll see more of for the rest of the year.  We haven’t been able to be a run first team all year.  This might be (a) our best chance and (b) something we need to do to carry our depleted pass catchers.

Prediction

Get ready for a crazy one, friends.  With Kyle Hamilton in this game, I think we win by 17 points.  But he is very unlikely to play after multiple PRP treatments and still getting diagnostics done this week.  So an ‘unfinished’ (I’m into euphemisms) ND secondary will have to take on 2nd best offense (UNC was rated higher than UVA on offense) it’s faced all year.

That’s not the only thing that’s unclear.  Though I’m convinced we’ll face Armstong, I’m not sure how much he’ll factor into the running attack with his broken rib.  This will restrict the offense a little, but whether or not you have a broken rib, fleeing for your life is sometimes the best thing a QB can do for his health.  I think we can expect more Howell-esque escapes that leave us gnashing our teeth, but I’m not sure just how many.

I also don’t know how we’ll start.  BYU’s first four drives against UVA were all touchdowns.  But Coan (hat tip to my father) is just not good at scoring on opening drives.  It appears to take some time for him to get in sync.  Will those lost opening drives prove costly, given the high quality of UVA’s offense?

The game makes me nervous, but I am inclined to give the edge to ND here.  ND’s defense has not been the most consistent, but they have generated enough pressure to stop a significant percentage of drives.  They’re certainly better than most of the defenses Virginia has faced.  Virginia’s defense has been decidedly worse at stopping anything, in about every objective measure.  The mitigating factor is that offenses like BYU (SP+ ranking 20), Miami’s (13),  and UNC (4) are all a little better than ND’s (23).  So we’re we’re probably not going to score quite as many points against UVA as they did, either.

Expect a crazy game with a lot of big plays, but I think ND lands about two more haymakers than Virginia and that’s enough to escape.

Notre Dame 38

Virginia 35