Beau Pribula finished 21-of-33 for 197 yards and two touchdowns in Charlotte and produced only four completions of 15 yards or more. West Virginia blitzed him on 21 of his 37 dropbacks, and Tony Elliott credited Zac Alley's pressure, more than any effort to take away Pribula's legs, for disrupting the offense. Noah Josey, Virginia's All-ACC left guard, left in the second quarter with an ankle injury, tried the ankle in halftime warmups and walked off after a few steps. Ben York played the last 55 snaps at left guard. Virginia lost 38-27 at the neutral site, its first defeat of the season, and the 39,377 in Bank of America Stadium were mostly wearing West Virginia colors.
The first quarter was the good version of this team, with 113 rushing yards and a 14-7 lead. Virginia ran for 44 the rest of the night. Alley adjusted, Virginia's early-down runs stopped moving, and the down-and-distance math turned ugly, 6-of-16 on third down overall, and 3-of-9 when the Cavaliers needed 5 yards or more. Elliott said the offense "became more one-dimensional while we were playing from behind." That is the sequence Des Kitchings has to fix. When the run doesn't gain 4 on first down, Virginia currently has no intermediate answer.
Delaware is the only week Virginia gets to put the line back together at low cost. Virginia hosts the Blue Hens on Saturday at 6 p.m. ET on ACC Network, the first meeting ever between the programs, and then ACC play opens Oct. 3 at Florida State. Virginia wins this one about 82% of the time. Beating the Blue Hens will not prove the guard play or the third-and-6 passing game is fixed. It will let Kitchings call the intermediate throws with whatever line he has, and it will show whether Josey is on the field at all. He was still listed as a starter on the depth chart released this week, which is not the same as confirmation.
The stakes behind the near-certainty are small but not nothing. Winning leaves Virginia around a 10% chance of reaching the ACC title game and 3.0% for the Playoff, while a loss to Delaware would drop those to roughly 7% and 1.9%. Nobody is watching this one for the arithmetic.
The other trench question
Jason Hammond is likely to need surgery and is out for the foreseeable future with no timetable, so the interior defensive line is Darrion Henry-Young's and Matthew Fobbs-White's to hold. Against West Virginia they played 33 and 53 snaps, graded 61.4 and 60.3 by PFF, which summed it up as "not a great game for the front seven", and Virginia's defense finished with one sack. Michael Hawkins Jr. accounted for all five West Virginia touchdowns, running 18 times for 123 yards and three scores on his way to 313 total yards. A defense that gets no interior push against a quarterback who runs like that is a defense that plays a lot of third-and-long from behind the sticks.
Delaware will not replicate Hawkins. But Henry-Young and Fobbs-White getting a full night of clean, decisive reps together, with Sichan John, Kervins Choute and the rest of the rotation taking real snaps rather than emergency ones, is the closest thing to preparation available before Tallahassee.
Saturday is also UVA Strong Day at Scott Stadium, honoring Lavel Davis Jr., Devin Chandler and D'Sean Perry. The first 30,000 fans get commemorative shirts. Whatever the football week looks like, that is the reason to be in the building early.
Wake Forest at Louisville: root for Wake Forest
Noon ET on ESPN, and this is the one outside result worth tracking. No. 16 Louisville was picked ahead of Virginia in the preseason ACC poll and is not on Virginia's schedule this season, so the only way the Cardinals' conference record gets worse is if somebody else does the damage. Wake Forest wins that game about 19% of the time. If Wake Forest wins, Virginia's title-game odds sit near 12.3%; if Louisville holds serve at home, they sit near 8.9%, a 3.3-point swing.
Full numbers and the rest of the week are in the interactive guide, and the simulation details are in the methodology.