UVA, anyone else terrified?

Who will be more predictable? Rob Anae or tuiaki?

BYU offense that struggles vs UVA Bronco Mendenhall defense that will be out for blood (IMHO).



Wish I had more faith in BYU in this one. Anae and Bronco have laid a few eggs in their days however. Perhaps this will be one of those games. Certainly the best opponent left on the schedule.

BroncoBot wrote:

Who will be more predictable? Rob Anae or tuiaki?

BYU offense that struggles vs UVA Bronco Mendenhall defense that will be out for blood (IMHO).



Wish I had more faith in BYU in this one. Anae and Bronco have laid a few eggs in their days however. Perhaps this will be one of those games. Certainly the best opponent left on the schedule.

In my mind UVA does a Baylor to BYU. I see UVA in the 40's and BYU in the low 20s in this game. Fortunately I have a church obligation that will keep me from seeing this monstrosity. And if I'm completely wrong - its a home ESPN game. I'll have plenty of opportunities to watch it later.

I am definitely worried about this game. However, there are a couple of things we have in our favor:



1) Unless you're Duke or William and Mary, you can score points on Virginia this season. Not being terrible on offense is probably good for 4 TDs.

2) Anyone remember what the kryptonite for a Bronco Mendenhall defense (allegedly) was? Mobile quarterbacks. Back then we could make a Christian Ponder look like a Lamar Jackson. And it just so happens we have one of those.

3) If I were going to choose a defensive mind to shut down Robert Anae, my first choice would be Gary Patterson. Talk about diminishing returns - starting with the 51-50 "inconclusive review" overtime game, Anae scored fewer points against him every single year. But if Patterson isn't available, the next guy I'd go for would be the DC for Utah that kept beating Anae. And for many of those years, that was none other than Kalani Sitake. Except for 2009, he held Anae to just enough points to allow whoever was OC that year to win with the crappy offense they had, including scoring some of the points himself.

4) Virginia likes to pass. Tuiaki's defense is pretty decent about keeping the points down on teams that want to throw all over you. Remember, USC in 2019 had OC Graham Harrell calling the plays. Graham Harrell is a Mike Leach Texas Tech Air Raid graduate. But he ended up calling 45 run plays that day to stay in the game, because that was what was working. They threw 1 pass in the 3rd quarter. One. I think teams like Boise and Baylor figured this out earlier; Boise seemed to change their entire gameplan to exploit the problem. You know who *doesn't* change their entire gameplan to exploit a weakness? Robert Anae. Nope, he's gonna run his gameplan and just out execute you. What's that? Harvey Unga is averaging 7.7 ypc and is basically unstoppable? Better throw the ball to Utah defenders more... What's that you say? Jake Heaps is leading a brilliant 2-minute offense and could probably get a TD? (Shocking, I know!) Better run it into the pile to set up a field goal. So if anyone's not going to exploit our problems in run defense and getting off the field, it's Robert Anae.



Speculation at best, and I'm still awfully concerned about this game, but I have logicked my way into optimism about it. It will be close, low-scoring, and we will win.

Robert Anae is a master at possessing the football, Tuiaki is a specialist at not getting his defense off the field. This is a recipe for disaster. I feel the only chance BYU has in this game is to keep Virginia's offense off the field with long time consuming drives which they really haven't been able to do all year. I see this game as a loss. I hope I am wrong and it will irritate me if we lose.

I expect UVA to pass at will and score at will. If they don't score in the 40s I'll be shocked. I just hope we can score a few more than them.

hawkwing wrote:

I expect UVA to pass at will and score at will. If they don't score in the 40s I'll be shocked. I just hope we can score a few more than them.

This is what I'm afraid of. Unfortunately, if it comes to a shootout, I don't think BYU can win that game.

If the D can keep Virgina at 35 points or less, I think we have a chance. I think our offense will do fine, but maybe not 35+ points good. I agree we are not able to win a high scoring shootout. Overall I see this as a oss up game. This Virginia offense will likely have a field day. Maybe our offense can keep up.

TulaneVandyRiceCoug wrote:

If the D can keep Virgina at 35 points or less, I think we have a chance. I think our offense will do fine, but maybe not 35+ points good. I agree we are not able to win a high scoring shootout. Overall I see this as a oss up game. This Virginia offense will likely have a field day. Maybe our offense can keep up.

I agree with you that we need to score in the 30's to win this game. BYU's highest scoring against a P5 opponent this year is 27 points so scoring 35+ is highly unlikely this week. I think our defense has to hold Virginia to under 30 points to have even a chance to win this game so go off of that probability to guess who will win. I think our offense can score 35 points but I don't think our defense can hold this virginia offense under 35 points. I look at this as a loss. My guess is we will probably end up with a score similar to the Baylor game. I hate to say it. I hate watching them lose.

The key will be if we can get some turnovers. We will run the ball alot to milk the clock, keep the score down and hopefully wear their D out.

I'm not sure what to think about this game, here is a simple run down of Virginia's schedule:

5-2 William & Mary, score 43-0, total yards 545 vs 183

3-5 Illinois, score 42-14, total yards 556 vs 337

4-3 @North Carolina, score 39-59, total yards 577 vs 699

7-0 Wake Forest, score 17-37, total yards 506 vs 473

3-4 @Miami, score 30-28, total yards 449 vs 372

4-3 @Louisville, score 34-33, total yards 522 vs 503

3-4 Duke, score 48-0, total yards 528 vs 325 (Duke had 4 turnovers)

3-4 Georgia Tech, score 48-40, total yards 636 vs 570



They have played 3 away games going 2-1, but the 2 wins have been by a total of 3 points. Provo Utah will be much different than Miami, Louisville, and Chapel Hill. Also the game will played after 10pm EST at a high elevation in fairly cold weather. Which all seem to favor BYU, Armstrong has been putting up huge numbers through the air and is often the teams leading rusher.

I hope we hold them to under 100.

BoiseBYU wrote:

I hope we hold them to under 100.

Well, if BYU's defense gives up 70 points in the second half, which isn't out of the question after giving up a 35 point second quarter with no offensive turnovers.

well, had me on the edge of the seat for most of the game.

pleasantly surprised with the outcome.



This had WAC football written all over it.

Well, I whiffed on all my predictions except the win. I'll take it.