FanPost

UVa's loss to Duke: players, not plays.

From reading across the blogosphere, message boards, and other social media outlets this week, you would think that Virginia lost by double-digits to Duke last weekend. You would think that UVa was out-schemed, and that the players were not given the plays to win the game. To say this, though is to ignore the dropped passes, the overthrown passes, and the other missed opportunities in the game. If one of Matt Johns' early 10+ yard passes is caught instead of dropped, the game plays out differently. If UVa doesn't fumble its opening drive away, the game plays out differently. If Matt Johns can hit one of the many potential deep gains that he overthrew in the 2nd half, the game plays out differently. If UVa can hold gap discipline and seal the edge in the 4th quarter and negate Anthony Boone's game-breaking run, the game plays out differently. The key here is this: UVa was not far off from winning. And the loss was based on execution, not schemes. Players, not plays.

As fans, we never want to admit that our team just simply got beat. There has to be another reason - the coaching was bad, the weather was tricky, the players didn't have full effort (so blame the coaches), or simply we had bad luck. But the truth is that the other team has coaches and players, and they all put in a lot of work, too. Sometimes you line up and play, and simply get beat. The loss to Duke was not one of coaching or effort, it was one of simply getting out-executed. The team made many simple errors against Duke, and they let one get away that they could have won. No amount of preparation can make a wide-out catch the ball on Saturday - he simply has to catch it. Same goes for throwing passes that can be caught. Same goes for holding the edge in your base defense. The player just has to get the job done. The coaches can not do anything to help these simple tasks once the players are inside those white lines.

Players win the vast majority of football games. Not plays. There are some exceptions to this rule (UVa-VT in 2013 comes to mind as a game that the coaches lost with a lousy 4th down "go for it" call before halftime, as does the timeout fiasco of UVa-VT in 2012). But in this past weekend's game, the coaches gave the player the requisite tools to win and put them in situations that, if the players execute properly, leads to a Cavalier victory. The players simply did not execute the plays.

The players that UVa will field in the next 5 games are good enough to win 4 of them - only FSU is a genuine reach in terms of the players on the field. Does that mean they will win all four? Hardly. What it means is that the difference between winning and losing is going to be simple tasks such as catching the football, or not overthrowing the fastest player on the field. In games with a small margin for error, the players will be the difference between winning and losing.

And I don't know about you, but I'm not betting against Eli Harold & Co.

See you Saturday. Go Hoos.

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