By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A game that started promisingly for the UVA football team ended with the Florida State Seminoles and their fans celebrating an emphatic victory at Doak Campbell Stadium.
After spotting Virginia an early score, FSU ran off 38 unanswered points. The final was 38-7, and the Cavaliers trudged to the locker room with multiple issues to address.
UVA missed tackles, dropped passes and failed to capitalize on several opportunities to stay connected Saturday. The Seminoles sacked quarterback Beau Pribula 10 times, for 68 yards in losses, and held Virginia’s offense to 205 yards.
“It was a rough day at the office for all of us, and we’re going to take accountability for it,” Tony Elliott said after his first game at FSU as Virginia’s head coach.
“We're not going to point fingers. We're not going to lay blame anywhere other than the things that we didn't control that we said we were going to try and control. And we're going to go back to work and have a great week of practice and show back up next Saturday and see if can we get this bad taste out of our mouth.”
Highlights were few and far between for the Wahoos, who dropped to 3-2 overall and 1-1 in the ACC. Tailback Jekail Middlebrook rushed 10 times for 65 yards, and Daniel Sparks shattered his own single-game program record after averaging 56.7 yards on seven attempts. One of them was a career-long 73-yarder.
“I thought he kicked the heck out of the ball,” Elliott said. “Really kind of kept us in the game a couple times.”
Late in the first quarter, a 53-yard punt by Sparks rolled dead at FSU’s 2. To that point, UVA’s defense had dominated, but the Seminoles (3-2, 1-1) drove 98 yards for a touchdown that tied the game with 11:48 left in the second quarter.
Quarterback Ashton Daniels capped that drive with 4-yard touchdown run. He later scored on runs of 3, 6, 81 and 1 yards. Not since Navy’s Zach Abey in the 2017 Military Bowl had an opposing quarterback rushed for five TDs against Virginia.
“We knew that [Daniels’] legs would potentially be a problem,” Elliott said, “and we were hoping that we would be able to keep him in in the pocket and not let him extend plays, and a couple times we lost contain and let him get on the edge and he was able to extend the play. And then unfortunately we misfit the run there on the [81-yarder] and he took it the distance.”
The game was UVA’s first at Doak Campbell Stadium since 2014. The Cavaliers haven’t won there since 2011, but they executed well on both sides of the ball early in the game Saturday.
Virginia forced a punt on each of FSU’s first two possessions and then took a 7-0 lead with 6:04 to play in the first quarter. Pribula passed to wide receiver Da’Shawn Martin for a 13-yard touchdown, and Will Bettridge added the extra point. Another standout on the drive was tight end John Rogers, who caught two passes for 22 yards.
The Cavaliers couldn’t build on that solid start. FSU dominated the rest of the half. Daniels rushed for two touchdowns, and Gabe Panikowski kicked a 44-yard field goal for the Noles, who led 17-7 at the half after totaling 256 yards to only 89 for Virginia.
“We can’t stall in the second quarter like that,” said Pribula, who finished 14-of-32 passing for 168 yards.
Down 10 at the half, the Hoos weren’t discouraged. After receiving the third-quarter kickoff, they put together an extended drive. It ended on a deflating note, however, when FSU stopped tailback Xavier Brown for no gain on a fourth-and-1 run from the 22.
Coming into the game, Virginia was 11 for 13 on fourth-down conversions this season, and “when you don't come up with that and you don't have any points out of it, that definitely hurts,” Pribula said.
“That was a play that I think all of us want back,” Elliott said, “but at the end of the day, we didn't execute. They out-executed us in that situation, and we gotta live with the result that we got.”
The Noles, fired up by their fourth-down stop, quickly gained more separation, covering 78 yards in eight plays for their third touchdown. By the end of the third quarter, it was 31-7. Early in the fourth quarter, the Cavaliers reached the red zone, but FSU broke up Pribula’s pass on fourth-and-goal from the 6.
“We knew it was going to be a hard-fought battle,” Elliott said, “and I thought that we missed some opportunities, and when we needed to fully flip the momentum, we couldn't. We missed some tackles, missed some plays on offense, a couple of dropped balls. And before you know it, the momentum had fully changed and we couldn't get it flipped.”
Those missed tackles helped the Noles amass 464 yards. For the second time in three games, an opposing quarterback rushed for more than 100 yards against Virginia.
Defensive tackle Anthony Britton said he believes “it comes down to us focusing on the details of everybody doing their job, getting in the gaps that they're supposed to be in, and us just not executing.”
Elliott said the Hoos have to “do a better job of wrapping when we tackle to get ball-carriers on the ground. There were some several explosive plays that came after we had contact on the ball-carriers, and so we gotta do a good job. We all gotta strain a little bit harder to make sure that we prepare them better, coach them better, and then challenge them to go out and execute to the best of their ability.”
It was not a game Virginia’s veteran offensive line will look back on fondly. On one series midway through the fourth quarter, FSU sacked Pribula on three consecutive plays.
“Everybody’s got ownership in it, starting with me,” Elliott said. “It starts with me, I gotta do a better job of making sure they're prepared and ready to play. Make sure that they fully understand the plan and are ready to go execute it.”
UP NEXT: The Cavaliers are back at Scott Stadium for their annual Homecomings game. At 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Virginia (3-2, 1-1) takes on Syracuse (2-2, 0-2). The game will air on ACC Network and the Virginia Sports Radio Network.
Syracuse won 42-41 in overtime at Connecticut on Saturday afternoon.
The Hoos are 3-3 all-time against the Orange. They haven’t met since 2022, when Syracuse edged UVA 22-20 at the JMA Wireless Dome. This will be Syracuse’s first visit to Scott Stadium since 2015, when Virginia prevailed 44-38 in triple overtime.