The Post I Never Wanted to Make

I hate it. It hurts. I felt sick the entire way back from Scott Stadium on that bus. We lost by one measly point to a good, but not excellent, UVa team.

I'm not sure what to say. Our defense played well for all but a couple of plays (I'm not really sure what happened on the touchdown to end the 1st half - certainly didn't look good). Our offense played hard, even though they didn't play their best game. We missed 2 field goals and we lost. That's basically what it comes down to.

Did we play too conservatively? Most likely. I saw a lot of the UVa/NC State game, and Rob reiterated it this week; its very clear that UVa's secondary is not very good at all. Why didn't we attack that more? We seemed to run the ball almost all day until we had to throw on third down or until we had to drive quickly in the 4th quarter. I'm not usually one to criticize Lobo and Grobe for play calling, as that's the style of football we play. I'm all for being conservative, I just also think we need to take advantage of what's available to us. The strength of UVa's defense is their run stopping ability. So throw the ball.

A lot is being made of how we handled the last 30 seconds of the game. When we have 1st down on the 31 with 1 timeout and that amount of time, it's definitely a tough call. Is it within Sam's range? Definitely, but should we have worked harder to get more? I don't know. We did it the conservative way we always do, and today it didn't pay off. If we make the field goal, this discussion probably isn't even happening.

One last thing...many were complaining about not centering the ball with the last run. I can't imagine that Grobe didn't know what he was doing. I don't know if I could find data on this anywhere, but my guess is Swank prefers to kick his field goals from the right hash. Otherwise, with a run play called like that, it definitely would be going to the center of the field.

From my viewpoint in the stands, it was difficult to see exactly what went right and wrong, but hopefully I'll be able to see it again (if I can bring myself to watch) and comment further later.

For now, I'm as disappointed as any of you. Didn't need to happen this way, shouldn't have, and it sucks. We'll bounce back, though, and I still believe we can win 9 games. It starts next week with a solid performance down at Clemson. Time to get it done. We can all feel bad today, but it's time to put it all behind us tomorrow. We're still a very good football team.

Don't give up. Go Deacs.