Perkins Proves To Be 'Absolute Perfect Fit'
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By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com
CHARLOTTESVILLE – Outside the George Welsh Indoor Practice Facility, rain fell on a raw afternoon. Inside, on a dry field, Bryce Perkins took a shotgun snap and rolled to his left on the final play of an 11-on-11 period that matched the first-team offense against the first-team defense.
What happened next should surprise no one who’s watched the Virginia Cavaliers play this season. Perkins eluded oncoming defenders, keeping the play alive until he spotted tight end Tanner Cowley uncovered on the right side of the end zone.
Touchdown, offense.
Frustration, defense.
“He’s been a home run,” UVA quarterbacks coach Jason Beck said of Perkins, a 6-3, 210-pound junior from Chandler, Ariz.
All Perkins has done this season is transform an offense that sputtered for long stretches in 2016 and ’17. He’ll close out his first year as a Cavalier on Saturday afternoon in Charlotte, N.C. In the Belk Bowl, UVA (7-5) meets South Carolina (7-5) at Bank of America Stadium.
“To be honest, this whole year has blown by fast, from me signing [last December] to right now,” Perkins said. “It’s been an awesome experience with these guys in a different location, coming all the way from the West Coast to the East Coast. It’s definitely been a journey. The guys made it easy, though.
“As soon as I came in, the guys here made time fly. But it’s definitely been a big learning experience for me, my first year in a major-college football program. I’ve been trying to establish myself as a leader and do all the little things for this team to be successful.”
At this time last year, as the Wahoos prepared to face Navy in the Military Bowl, they had only two scholarship quarterbacks, record-setting starter Kurt Benkert and unproven Lindell Stone, and there was uncertainty about their long-term prospects at that position.
Benkert was a fifth-year senior and Stone was a true freshman. Both are pro-style quarterbacks. Virginia, looking to change its offensive scheme, had added two dual-threat quarterbacks during the December signing period, but neither had taken a snap in a Division I game. Perkins had spent the fall semester at a junior college in Arizona, and Brennan Armstrong was about to graduate from high school.
It would have been a stretch then, Beck acknowledged last week, for UVA’s coaching staff to have predicted that Perkins’ impact would be so profound in 2018.
“He came in and really exceeded expectations,” Beck said. “He’s just a smart kid, and he’s really picked things up fast. And he’s played so well in games and in pressure situations. You don’t know that [ahead of time].”
Head coach Bronco Mendenhall said Perkins has been more consistent, especially in the passing game, than the coaching staff expected.
“So I wouldn’t say there’s an area where he hasn’t exceeded what I thought he would be in Year 1,” Mendenhall said. “Some of the things are approaching what I thought we’d get Year 2, so his acceleration has been great.”
Perkins, who turned 22 this month, also has meshed perfectly with the earned-not-given culture Mendenhall has established in his three seasons at UVA. Evaluating a player’s football skills is one thing, Mendenhall said, but sometimes “we miss in terms of the personality. With Bryce, it was just an absolute perfect fit.”
Perkins began his college career in his home state. After leading Chandler High to a state championship in 2014, he spent two seasons at Arizona State. He redshirted in 2015 and then missed the 2016 season with a neck injury, after which he transferred to Arizona Western College.
The Cavaliers knew they’d lose Benkert at the end of the 2017 season, and so quarterback became their No. 1 priority as they began assembling their 2018 recruiting class. The more UVA’s coaches saw of Perkins, who guided Arizona Western to the National Junior College Athletic Association championship game in 2017, the more they liked him.
Still, Beck said, there are limits to what college coaches can learn during the recruiting process about a player’s character and personality, “because you only get to talk to those kids so much. You talk to coaches and people that know them, their high school coaches and everybody, so you get an idea, but you never know how much those people are being honest with you, either. And so there always is a bit of an unknown, for every recruit.”
Perkins enrolled at UVA in January – as did Armstrong – and quickly won over his new teammates. Perkins won the starting job in the spring and in the summer was among the 12 players honored as The Dirty Dozen for excellence in director of football performance and development Shawn Griswold’s offseason program.
When his UVA debut finally arrived on Sept. 1, Perkins did not disappoint. In a 42-13 win over Richmond at Scott Stadium, he rushed 13 times for 108 yards and two touchdowns, and completed 13 of 24 passes for 191 yards and two more TDs.
Three weeks later, in a 27-3 victory over ACC foe Louisville at Scott Stadium, No. 3 twice hurdled defenders, the second time on a 8-yard touchdown run.
“You turn on the tape,” South Carolina head coach Will Muschamp said, “and Bryce Perkins jumps out at you as a guy that creates a lot of issues for you defensively.”
A year after the ‘Hoos finished 6-7 and advanced to a bowl game for the first time since 2011, Perkins has helped elevate the program further. The Cavaliers have seven wins and put themselves in position to win several other games. Virginia lost by four at Indiana in September and closed the regular season with back-to-back overtime losses.
“He’s a good leader, he’s a good person, and his energy, the way he plays, is just infectious to the whole team,” said Bryce Hall, UVA’s All-America cornerback.
At a Dec. 12 banquet in Richmond, Perkins received the Dudley Award, which is presented annually to the top Division I college player in the state. The award is named for former UVA great Bill Dudley, who died in 2010 in Lynchburg.
Before coming to UVA, Perkins said, he wasn’t familiar with Dudley’s feats, “but people caught me up real quick when I was a finalist. So that was a great honor, to be mentioned with him.”
For the season, Perkins has completed 202 of 318 passes (63.8 percent) for 2,472 yards and 22 touchdowns, with nine interceptions. With 842 yards and nine touchdowns on 197 carries, he’s second on the team in rushing behind fifth-year senior running back Jordan Ellis.
Among FBS quarterbacks, only Heisman Trophy winner Kyler Murray of Oklahoma has also passed for at least 2,400 yards and rushed for at least 800 this season.
“You see how dynamic of an athlete he is,” Ellis said of Perkins. “When he’s 100 percent, he’s kind of unstoppable, especially running the ball, and that opens up everything in our offense.”
Perkins played most of Virginia’s final two regular-season games with a badly sprained ankle, but he still rushed for 73 yards and one TD in the first, against Georgia Tech, and for 112 yards in the second, against Virginia Tech. He passed for 217 yards and one TD against the Yellow Jackets and for 259 yards and three TDs against the Hokies.
“Bryce at a little bit less than 100 percent is still more than most,” Mendenhall said.
For the first time in more than a decade, the ‘Hoos will play in back-to-back bowl games, and they have an opportunity to finish with eight victories for the first time since 2011.
“I don’t think any of those things happen without the way Bryce played this year,” Mendenhall said.
Even so, Perkins said, “I’m not even close to reaching my potential. I think I’ve done all right this year, but I know that I can do so much more.”
He needs to work on “being patient and keeping my eyes downfield, just having total command of the offense,” said Perkins, who lives with teammates R.J. Proctor and De’Vante Cross.
“Sometimes routine throws get away from me, and we didn’t really start hitting long shots until later in the season. I think me knowing these guys, knowing each and every person and having that kind of core chemistry, is definitely going to help leading into next year.”
Perkins was already an accomplished runner when he joined the Cavaliers’ program. He’s improved most as a passer. He’s much more accurate now than at the start of spring practice.
“The biggest thing has been the work he’s put in to really develop chemistry and timing and consistency with the receivers,” Beck said, “on top of everything we’ve asked of him with our formations and adjustments and all those things. He’s really taken it all in.
“We thought we probably would have [to go slowly with] some of that, but he really worked hard to pick it up both mentally understanding it, but also working with the guys to develop that chemistry and timing.”
When he went home to Arizona after the spring semester, Perkins said, he worked on his mechanics with quarterbacks coach Dennis Gile. Perkins also has trained with Dan Manucci, another well-regarded quarterbacks coach.
He’s majoring in American Studies, with a concentration in Popular and Visual Culture. If Perkins was anonymous when he arrived on Grounds, that’s no longer the case. He was among the student-athletes who made cameos in UVA president Jim Ryan’s holiday video, and his trademark dreadlocks make him easy to identify, even with a helmet on.
“For me, the big indicator is the dreads,” Perkins said. “I have the long hair with the dyed tips at the end. So even if [fellow students] don’t know what I look like, they know the hair. A lot of people look at me and say, ‘Are you the quarterback?’ “
After an unsatisfying end to 2017 – Navy won the Military Bowl 49-7 — the Cavaliers set several goals for this season. They wanted to defeat Virginia Tech, they wanted to return to a bowl game, and they wanted to win that bowl game.
“We came up short on some of them,” Perkins said, “but it definitely can and will go better next year.”
He’ll shift his focus to 2019 after the Belk Bowl, where his cheering section will include his parents; his brother, Paul, a running back for the New York Giants; and several relatives who live in North Carolina. For now, it’s all about beating South Carolina.
“None of these seniors have won a bowl game since they’ve been here,” Perkins said. “So I’ll do everything in my power to help them go out strong and reach one of our goals. I’ll lay it all on the line for these guys.”