Boise St- They are beatable. BYU is a tough team, but this is not the Boise team of a few years ago. Good, but not great. I think our kids will be ready for a rare Friday night game. #MattJohnsforpresident

with the Knicks! Good for him and I think the Triangle could be good for him.

Greetings from Charlottesville, where it's overcast and a bit muggy here about two hours and 15 minutes from the kickoff between No. 9 Notre Dame and UVa. I'll be back with some personnel updates and recruit nuggets in a bit.

As always, have at it folks!

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Will you feel better as a fan knowing they did it against a top notch OOC schedule or would you rather have replaced ND/UCLA/Boise with crap/crappier/crappiest in order to win 8/9 games even though you know in your heart of hearts that they are a better team for facing the tough competition that they did?

Don't revise, don't laugh, just play along as if this is about to happen. The scenario that I am laying out for you is 2-2 OOC, 4-4 or 5-3 ACC. That is what I am seeing happening, that is my prediction.

Two of our three goals were scored by defenders. The ladies scored six goals in the two games by five different players.

First of all I want to say that I was encouraged by much of our play yesterday, particularly in the 2nd and 4th quarters. There have been a few posters who have thrown verbal rocks at the team and coaches after the game, and a few who have gone overboard in the other direction saying that we completely outplayed ND. Unfortunately, the stats indicate that we came close to ND, but we certainly did not dominate them. ND rushed for 253 yards on 34 carries for a 7.4 average; UVA rushed for 127 yards on 30 carries for a 4.2 average. ND completed 15 of 30 passes for 13.8 yards per completion; UVA completed 26 of 38 passes for 11.1 yards per completion. ND had an average punt return of 12 yards, and UVA's average was 11. The ND average kick-off return for ND was 17.5 while the UVA average was 12.8 ND had 4 penalties for 40 yards while UVA had 9 for 55 yards. UVA led in time of possession 33.23 minutes to 26.37 minutes, but 11.23 of our minutes were in the 3rd quarter when we scored 0 points, and ND scored 14 points. We showed improvement in several areas, but it was obvious to me that we still must have improvement in several others.

Completely disgusted at the embarrassing way some so-called "fans" behaved today. To openly mock and denigrate our team after the gutsy, brave performance we put on today is an outrage.

This team should be commended for the way we played today. From the coaches all the way down.

It was almost surely Fairchild's best called game of his tenure. Tenuta bounced back from one of the defense's poorer performances last week to an admirable job today. London made good decisions.

We weren't perfect and we let a team outplay us on the last drive when we had all the momentum and most of the advantages, but there is no reason to come away from this game with anything other than admiration for these players and coaches.

I know it's frustrating. I know we've seen winnable games slip away so many times. But the number nine team in the nation, a team that destroyed Texas was a winnable game today!!!

Don't you dare besmirch this team's performance.

This team deserves better fans than some of you out there. And that's saying a lot with our record and shortcomings.

What a game!!

Play calling on offense was miles better.

CS, Smoke, Johns, OZ, Reid, OL- this made me think what this team could be like with Thorpe.

Why was Mo returning punts?

Defense was hit or miss on pass rush. Mike Moore and Kiser stood out to me on defense. Pass defense was better most of the game other than a few plays that killed us.

Matt Johns- Going towards being the best QB we have had since Matt S. We just need to make this his offense.

Smoke- One of his better games running the ball. Doesn't show in the stat line, but he is not dancing anymore and really may breakout soon.

Reid- Much better effort.

OZ- Brad was correct- this kid is a playmaker.

CS- He is playing all-ACC ball right now.

We need to find the TE more and other playmakers at WR, but the improvement from last week was huge. Did we finish? No, but this was an improvement.

I worry about our defense. We rely on pass rush to keep our DB's out of those long plays and it's not happening yet.

Still hurting ourselves with penalties, but as the game went on we started getting better.

We must beat Boise St. 2-2 going into October and this will feel ok to me. We just need more playmakers on both sides of the ball, but we are trending upwards and my feelings about this team are much better than last week.

When was the last time we had a WR play like that?

Kudos to him

like a Hunter commit.

I was just watching College Game Final, and the talking feet were discussing the loss of Maryland to Bowling Green, and they mentioned that this was not good for the ACC. Someone might let them know that the Terps are now in the BIG.

Forgot to set the DVR.

is our QB now and for the next 2 years Watched some of Vandy Georgia and the announcers went off about how Lambert NEVER threw downfield Johns made some amazing plays today. This game may be the turnaround of this program Reminds me of ND in 1989- we end up going 10-3.

Looks like Fairchild FINALLY is opening up the O. Now up to Tenuta to get the D to play on the level from last year. This team goes to a bowl.

I have had this feeling too many times.

Kids played their hearts out. I can't even blast the bad or praise the good, but I will give a shoutout to Steve Fairchild. Very good play calling this afternoon. Very much improved from last week.

We have an ACC QB for the first time in years. This hurts like hell.

Am I being unfair when I wonder why Cannady didn't even seem to try and catch what looked like a certain pick 6? You have to be thinking 'end the game' there, seemed like all he wanted to do was bat it. Then the one near sack where the QB found Prosise for a decent gain really killed us. Those were the 2 daggers before the dagger, in my opinion.

broken ankle. Feel for the kid. Knew it was bad when the announcers said they had called the parents into the X ray room.

I did not see a Score prediction thread.
I jumped the gun a little last week sorry Brad.

why has there been nothing about the Hunter visit this weekend?

What are you looking for in the game today? If we have another offensive conservative day where we're playing not to win the game but to just get out of the stadium alive then I really think London needs to look into what Texas did and have other people on the staff take more of a role in the offense. If we can just play and keep the game close through three quarters anything can happen.

But, it's clear that London will not be able to turn this thing around. It's time to start dreaming about our possible replacement. However, we will never get a decent coach in here if Oliver is allowed to control him.

The new coach must be able to make his own hires, make his own decisions, without pressure from above. I really wish they would get rid of Oliver. Has he done anything positive for the program? Please, somebody tell me what he has accomplished. Brad? Anyone?

The FB program has reached the point in the next hire that CL and company reached with the TB hire. Think about it -- basketball became increasingly irrelevant about five or so years before football, so our football program is right where the hoops program was six years ago. There are good lessons to be learned from each hire.

When we hired TB, we needed someone committed to a system that could get his recruits in to implement that system and regain respectability. Regaining respectability allowed to recruit better players, which increased winning, which has become a virtuous cycle.

Football is in the same spot right now. We've been bad so long, we need someone (like a TB or a Cutcliffe) that is deeply embedded in a system and can get respectable results with 3* guys to help rebuild the brand. We don't "need" to recruit more talent, we need to get some results. Think about how mediocre VT, NC, Duke, etc., have been the last few years and we have beaten very few of them very few times. Respectable teams win 40-60% of those games instead of the 10ish% we've won. The weird success against Miami has been just about it since 2007, with the obvious exception of 2011. The bar isn't really high right now.

We need a head coach from a lower level (either lower I-A or high I-AA), who has a philosophy and will stick to it in building the program. We need someone who has built a program. And we need someone who has developed talent. TB was the home run hire on the hoops side (I was familiar from time of the Palouse, so I was sure that was the right hire). So this time we need someone who has done it at a MWC/SunBelt/MAC type environment, or maybe has even been good at a resource-strapped P5 (like Tony was at Wazzu). Mid-Atlantic ties are not necessary. At this point, out-recruiting Urban Meyer, Jimbo Fisher, Jim Harbaugh, and Brian Kelly are NOT required as they are pillaging the best VA talent year in and year out. Out-coaching Frank Beamer, Larry Fedora, Paul Johnson, David Cutcliffe, et al, at least SOME of the time, is.

My quick list -- Mark Hudspeth @ ULaLa (offensive guy), Justin Fuente @ Memphis (offensive coach before HC @TCU and Illinois St), Ruffin McNeill @ECU (defensive, but has a good offensive staff). Fuente really intrigues me for some reason ...

OK, who is the TB to be hired on the football side?

Kind of refreshing to hear them blast the program and even take it back to the end of the Mac Brown days after McCoy left in '09. When your program starts to go downhill for a long period of time you have to look at the program as a whole for the administration, coaches, and players. To hear this from them about Texas really could easily have been talking about our program and how it's gone from decent to downhill in the last 10 years and patching problems will not work unless we have a reset if needed at the end of the season.

I'm at the DePaul Catholic VS Good Counsel Game tonight. It's going to kick off in just a few minutes. I'll bring you as much info as I can about Hasise Dubois' performance as I can tonight. I'll also be available to answer some questions. Please keep in mind that I cover D-1 prospects from North Carolina to New England and out to Pittsburgh and West Virginia.

In the meantime, here is a preview of the match up: Preview Article

I'm in Richmond this evening and at the game tomorrow.

Shoot me your email if you are interested.

Thx

OK so the UCLA game is obviously over and I've come to grips that that's a really good team that probably would beat us 7 out of 10 times. My hope for this week is we just don't rollover with our playcalling on offense and attempt to be aggressive. On defense it's the same deal. Can our defensive line not only pass rush, but get their hands up trying to back down balls and stay in the rush lanes so the Notre Dame quarterback doesn't get outside? Can our young linebackers continue to improve from last week which I actually think they did an OK job? Can our quarterbacks be a little more aggressive as long as were getting a pass rush up front? I don't care how good of a secondary you might have, but if you're getting no pass rush no team in America is going to hold coverage that long.

Will we let Johns play in Shotgun more and set up the run with the passing game?

How many big passes can we get?

Do we make changes in the running game?

Pass rush or it's a long day?

Turnovers or big plays on special teams to keep crowd in the game?