2009 Football Schedule, Part I

Yesterday, I laid out what I think our expectations should be for this football season and what I think it will (should) take for Al Groh to save his job -- simply, 7+ wins or 6 wins including a victory over Virginia Tech. Of course, nothing will play a larger role in that effort than the schedule.

At first blush, this is sort of a ho-hum football schedule. But dig a bit deeper, and it's loaded with interesting match-ups. Here's a quick peek at the first three games, along with a hipshot prediction.

William & Mary
W&M is a fairly solid FCS team. They have developed an explosive passing game and a solid defense under coach Jimmye Laycock. Still, they're just a FCS team, and they're not anywhere near the caliber of Richmond... a team we beat 16-0 last year. In this game, I expect to see a very vanilla version of the Gregg Brandon spread offense, as we don't want to tip our hand too much for TCU to see. We'll run the ball a lot, churn the clock, and make it a short evening in the Hook. Hoos 31, Tribe 7.

TCU
Let me be crystal clear about this: at this point in time, TCU has a better overall program than UVA. They went 11-2 last year, and have high hopes of crashing the BCS party this year, like their Mountain West brother Utah did last year. They fully expect to come to Charlottesville and crush Virginia. The Frogs have an excellent defense, and Andy Dalton at QB gives them an experienced, capable passer to power their offense. Our best shot at springing the upset is to go balls-out with the spread in an effort to lure them into a shootout-style game. It won't be easy. I think we have a good chance to keep it close (mostly due to Vic Hall and Jameel Sewell's scrambling ability), but TCU is just too tough. Horned Frogs 27, Hoos 21.

@ Southern Miss
Casual fans will see "directional school" and dismiss this as an easy win. Not so fast. I think we'll be the underdogs in this game, as Southern Miss has a quality program and is ascending quickly. They run their own version of the no-huddle spread offense, and in Austin Davis they have a battle-tested QB who has already found quite a bit of success in the system. They also have a great tailback in Damion Fletcher, who led the C-USA in rushing (1,300+ yards) last season. They return eight starters on defense. Yikes. This is going to be a very difficult game for us to win. I think our defense can slow them down, but I'm not confident that our offense will be able to deliver the goods on the road against a quality opponent this early in the season. Golden Eagles 38, Hoos 24.

Part II coming soon...