The good
- Offensive rhythm and performance. Penalties aside (which I realize is a big "aside") our offense rolled yesterday. We only beat ourselves, UVA couldn't stop us. Everything we did worked. The screen pass was working, the quick-hitters to Quinshad and Switzer were working, Quise even did a good job of finding Bug deep along the sideline which is usually a ball MW struggles with. Hood ran all over the Hoos, and Logan continued to shine as he continues to get a bit more touches each week. If not for penalties and self-inflicted errors, we would've put up 42 easily.
- Pounding the rock. Between Marquise, Hood, and Logan, we had (36) rushing attempts, compared to (26) passing attempts. We figured out we could run it on the Hoos, and we exploited it.
- "Bend-but-don't-break" defense -- We continue to dominate opposing offenses in the second half. And we turned over the Hoos like four times in their last five drives or something like that. The offense couldn't put the game away and our defense stepped up time after time to make interceptions and force fumbles.
- Fedora showing some fire -- I loved that he gave the refs hell for the Mack Hollins "PI" call. We have gotten screwed too many times and that COULD have been a decisive call. Denied us the chance to take the lead right before half, which would've been big. I like that Fedora stuck up for his team (but then didn't complain about it in the post-game like Borin' Doeren would've done. He simply said he needed to work on restraining himself and that he has to live with what the ref calls. He was the bigger man. I respect that).
- Pass protection. IMO, our offensive line had an unusually poor day in pass protection. Heck, in particular, seemed to get beat a handful of times that all led to sacks or big hits on Marquise, which leads to...
- Marquise took WAY too many hits yesterday. Way, way too many hits. And I don't mean on designed runs, I mean on sacks and hits just after delivering the ball (which, by the way, UVA was intentionally trying to do. Some of those late hits on Quise were borderline dirty). That needs to be cleaned up immediately because Pitt loves to blitz and hit the QB.
- Run defense. UVA rushed it for 215 yards. Not good enough, considering that Mizzell is their only good player and we knew they were gonna run a lot.
- The obvious: penalties. Just can't have them. They killed our first drive when we were ROLLING. And they killed a few other drives and forced us to settle for 3 instead of 6.
- Not stepping on their throat. This is related to the above bullet. We just could not kill the game off, even though we had ample opportunities.
- Red zone lack of TD's. We were 5 for 5, but had to settle for 3 twice, including a drive where we STARTED in the red zone! Need to clean that up.
- 2-point try. If it works, so be it.......but good Lord. Prevented us from having the lead for a significant chunk of the game. Not a huge fan of it (unless it works LOL)
