By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — For the University of Virginia football team, where there was jubilation a week earlier, there was frustration on Saturday.
“Rough day at the office right there,” Tony Elliott said after UVA’s road opener. “But you live and you learn and you grow. We’re gonna find a way to get better.”
Two games into Elliott’s first season as a head coach, Virginia is 1-1. The Cavaliers opened Sept. 3 with a 34-17 victory over Richmond, which competes in the Football Championship Subdivision, but their second game brought stiffer competition and an unsatisfying result.
In front of 33,669 at Memorial Stadium, UVA fell 24-3 to Illinois. The Wahoos mustered only 222 yards, their fewest in a game since 2017, and 62 came on one play: a completion from quarterback Brennan Armstrong to wide receiver Lavel Davis Jr. The Fighting Illini sacked Armstrong five times and harassed him on countless other plays.
“It was a bad day, bottom line,” said Des Kitchings, Virginia’s new offensive coordinator. “Bad day across the board. We were unable to run the football, unable to throw and catch it down the field.”
Elliott said: “Hats off to Illinois, but it’s gonna be a hard film for [UVA’s players] to watch, because they’re gonna realize there were so many things that they could have done better to give themselves a chance to be in the game in the fourth quarter.”
At Scott Stadium last season, the Wahoos totaled 556 yards in a 42-14 rout of the Illini. The rematch, in Big Ten country, bore no resemblance to the game in Charlottesville. The Hoos’ defense forced four turnovers Saturday, but their offense was unable to capitalize on those takeaways or generate any momentum.
“I’m obviously frustrated,” said Elliott, a former offensive coordinator at Clemson. “Don’t like losing. I felt like we definitely could have played better and made it a much better ball game. Would we have won the game? I don’t know. But I would love to have been in that position to find out.”
The Cavaliers had their chances. On the second play of the game’s opening possession, cornerback Anthony Johnson intercepted a pass by Illinois, and Virginia took over just inside midfield. Three plays later, the Hoos punted.
The Illini’s second series ended in a turnover, too, this one a fumble caused by UVA’s Antonio Clary. Fellow safety Langston Long pounced on the ball at the Illinois 32, but again the Hoos’ offense sputtered. After a first-down run lost four yards, a penalty moved Virginia back five more yards, and an incompletion followed. Armstrong’s 17-yard completion to wideout Keytaon Thompson on third-and-19 left the Cavaliers shy of the first down, and they had to settle for Brendan Farrell’s 42-yard field goal.
“Our defense gave us the ball in plus territory twice,” Armstrong said. “What else could you ask for? If we get two touchdowns there or just 10 points, that’s a quick jump on right off the rip, especially coming into this stadium. That’s kind of what you want to do when you’re away: jump on them quick, get the crowd out of it, kind of put their momentum down, just keep that momentum on our side. We didn’t do that.”
Virginia, which finished with 13 first downs, had only four through three quarters.
This marked the second game in the past two seasons in which UVA has failed to score a touchdown. In the first, though, a 28-3 loss to No. 7 Notre Dame at Scott Stadium, Armstrong was out with an injury. Armstrong, a fifth-year senior who holds multiple program passing records, played Saturday, but his inexperienced offensive line gave him little protection and opened few holes for the Cavaliers’ running backs.
UVA gained only 42 yards on the ground. Armstrong finished 13-of-32 passing for 180 yards, with two interceptions. His program-record streak of 18 consecutive games with at least one touchdown pass ended in Champaign.
Illinois applied relentless pressure every time Armstrong dropped back to pass, and “you could see that it wore on him as the game went on,” Elliott said. “He didn’t trust his protection, he was moving in the pocket too much, he was throwing off his back foot. He had some wide-open guys and just felt the pressure and never could get settled to be able to go through his progressions. So overall, offensive line-wise, I was disappointed in how they played. Again, in games like this, to come up here and play this defense that’s going to play you with a five-man front, you’ve got to win in the trenches, and we did not.”
The Illini hadn’t forgotten how Virginia had humbled them last year at Scott Stadium, and they “definitely came out with something to prove, a chip on their shoulder,” Armstrong said. “Kudos to them. I mean, what we did last year, the whole week I’m just harping, ‘That does not matter, does not matter, does not matter coming into this game.’ I don’t know what happened with us mindset-wise, but they came out ready to play and the five guys up front got after me a little bit. Those guys in the back end [of Illinois’ defense] did their job. It’s hard playing man all the time, but they did a heck of a job. too.”
The game provided a “good eye-opener of what we need to actually work on,” Armstrong said, “because, shoot, [other] teams could see what just happened there and come out and play us man every time. That’s a possibility. So we better figure out how to protect and how to get the ball out and how to get open in man.”
Special teams were an issue for the Cavaliers, too. UVA led 3-0 in the first quarter when, after fielding an Illinois punt, Billy Kemp IV tried to run. Kemp fumbled at the Cavaliers’ 6-yard line, and the Illini recovered in the end zone for a touchdown that put them ahead to stay.
“Was Billy trying to fumble?” Elliott said. “No, he wasn’t trying to fumble, but he was trying to press too hard and make a play in that instance, and it backfired on him. So now we gave them seven points.”