POST-MORTEM

Okay, let me start by reminding everyone that we have to give Mike London FOUR YEARS to get this thing rebuilt and heading in the right direction.

With that being said...  Tonight was bad.  Really bad.  And on the heels (no pun) of a downright disaster in Atlanta, and a home field beat-down at the hands of Florida State... just really, really bad.  Mike London isn't a guy who can X and O a bad team into fluke wins, he's a guy who can rah-rah a team into playing with more passion and he's a guy who can recruit a higher quality level of athlete.  It takes time for that change to take root.  But gawd, tonight was bad.  Really, really bad.

We obviously have a quarterback problem.  It's time to thank Marc Verica for his hard work during the last five years, and send him to the bench as honorably as possible.  It's time to recognize that Ross Metheny probably isn't the answer either --- I've only seen him in action a few times, but he looks an awful lot like a left-handed version of Verica.  No, for my money, it's time to hand true freshman Mike Rocco the keys to the kingdom, and let him take his lumps for the rest of the season.  If you're going to switch quarterbacks, NOW is the time to do it.  Eastern Michigan is an ideal "ramp up" game, with winnable contests against Duke, Maryland, and Boston College looming on the horizon.

We also obviously have a defense problem.  And I'll admit, this one surprises me... though it really shouldn't.  With the switch to the 4-3, and the switch of so many players to new positions... the defense was bound to struggle.  I guess I thought Mike London and Jim Reid were the kind of coaches who could spin hay into gold.  I'm sure they're trying their damnedest, but this defense is just not playing very well.  We can't tackle, we suddenly can't cover, and we can't generate turnovers.  The run-stopping has improved, but at the expense of rolling a safety up into the box and giving up big plays in the passing game.  Ras-I can't seem to beat the injury bug, which is a real shame.  A Dowling/Minnifield CB combo is worlds better than a Minnifield/Wallace combo.  The pass rush is non-existent.  The list goes on and on.  I have a feeling that we are facing a much bigger talent deficit on defense than I ever thought.  Turns out, most of these guys on defense just aren't as good as I desperately want them to be.

We have a spice problem.  What I mean by that is, everything is vanilla.  Too vanilla.  Where are the exotic blitzes?  Where are the gadget plays on offense?  I understand wanting to play everything by the book right now, as you install the basic fundamentals of your schemes... but we need some razzle dazzle and some trickeration if we want to win games.  And we need wins if we want to keep the fans (and recruits!) interested in what's happening with Virginia Football.  Fake it til you make it.  It seemed to work for Boise State.

Here it is.  Time to stop lying to ourselves.  Time to face facts.  We are a BAD football team.  The new car smell of the Mike London regime is already fading.  I love the guy, and I still think he will succeed, but we're getting close to "show me" time.


Next week is Eastern Michigan.  Today they won their first game in two years, beating Ball State in overtime (their last win was over Central Michigan on November 28th, 2008).  Virginia is a bad football team, but EMU is terrible.  We should be able to pull enough together to beat the Eagles handily, and hopefully it will be with a new QB, a new swagger on defense, and a few new wrinkles in the gameplan... enough to give us all a somewhat renewed sense of hope for the second half of the season.

We'll see, I guess.  Having lived through last year's nightmare loss to William & Mary, I won't rest easy until that W is in the books.

GO HOOS!