Will We Make a Bowl Game?

(Note: This is going to be rough, unorganized, and potentially angry, so I'm including pictures of cute animals to balance out the mood)

Haha BOWL GAME - GET IT

It's been more than 24 hours since I watched the debacle of a game and I'm still having trouble with which perspective I should take. On one hand, I was pretty sure we were going to lose. GT was clearly the better team and our young defense was going on its first road trip to face a gimmicky and tiresome offense. We looked like crap against Penn State the week before and really had little to build on in terms of finding any answer on offense to keep pace with the Jackets. On the other hand, we played GT tough last year and continue to hear about how great our offense should be, so there was reason for optimism.

As I've said before, the expectations for this team should include winning conference games on the road. We did it at FSU and Miami last year, we should be able to (at the very least COMPETE) in Atlanta. Yes, we're still very much in rebuilding mode, but that doesn't excuse the fact that the entire team looked slow and lost from the first play on. We looked unprepared, much as we did against PSU. There's bound to be a balance between accomplishing what's feasible and continuing to build on a foundation set in the first couple of years under London. In that sense, this game was a disaster.

It's important to keep the result in perspective. It's just one game - and only the team's first loss. But when getting completely dominated by a pretty-good opponent, the truly troublesome aspects are the ones that speak to weaknesses in the team that could last all season: 

-- The tackling was abhorrent. 

-- The interior o-line really couldn't have played worse.

-- Perry Jones looks like a completely different player - though exactly like he looked to end last year against VT/Auburn.

-- Mike Rocco missed all sorts of throws, a few to wide open receivers.

-- The defense played with a remarkable combination of over-running misdirection while failing to get much pressure in the backfield.

-- We were completely out-coached in every facet.

And I get it. Teams have bad weeks. Hell, y'all saw VPI get completely outclassed by PITTSBURGH. Shit happens. Good teams lose to bad teams. Mediocre teams get blown out by good teams. But the crap put on by the Wahoos Saturday was worse than that. It was demoralizing and embarrassing. For a perpetually rebuilding program with the most fragile of fanbases. (Did you see how many people were LEAVING THE STADIUM after our TD last week? GETTING IN THEIR CARS TO BEAT TRAFFIC BEFORE A GAME-DEFINING DRIVE BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT'S MORE IMPORTANT TO A DISTRUBINGLY-LARGE PART OF THE UVA FANBASE: GETTING BACK TO THE WEST END WITHOUT SUFFERING THE INDIGNITY OF SITTING ON FONTAINE AVE FOR 30 MINUTES. I know no one reading this blog is like that - unless someone forwarded this to Jay.

So. It's just one game. But that's a lot of issues to magically repair before it becomes "It's just three games." And make no mistake, we're going to lose at TCU and, if we play like we did in weeks 2 and 3, we're going to lose at home to Louisiana Tech.

Are there solutions? Well...somebody's bound to know how to block and can play guard...right? Young players get better and better with more experience, right? No one else we face spends the entire game chop-and cut-blocking 11 players every single snap. Mike Rocco isn't bad. Right? He's got to remain the starter for now...I think...?

Hell if I know. I do know this team looked just as bad last year (really, every previous year) at times. How did we turn the corner last season after Idaho? Focus. Playing to our strengths. Effort. Everything that comes down to coaching. The personnel on the field is in place. This isn't a mediocre group of players. Can our coaches get them to play better? I hope so. But, taking every experience of the London era so far into account, I can point at more negatives than positives. 

It'd be just like this team to bounce back and go 3-1 in its next 4 games. That tends to be what we do: Screw things up some weeks, surprise in others, and maintain some consistent success in a few. But what if they don't? What are we supposed to say sitting at 4-8 at the end of the year? Same old UVA, I guess.

However, the same old UVA team should do what they always do and turn things around (sort of) at some point. It won't be this week, but it could be week 5. Wins against LaTech, Duke, UMD, and Miami put us in a lower boring bowl, but keeps the impression of a growing program stable. Out of all of this, look for that to happen, hope for a better response for the team, and pray we don't have to face the opposite.