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Saturday's game can tell us something.

What we want to see is domination. We want the result decided by halftime. We aren't going to pay attention to the recent VMI results, they are a different kind of FCS team. We are going to pay attention to our CAA opponents, WnM and Richmond. In case you haven't noticed, most of these games since London took over have been harder than expected except one, the 40-3 beating of WnM in 2011. That is what we want to see. We don't want to see 13-3 at halftime that turns into a misleading 43-19 by the end of the game. We want this game over at halftime. We want to be up 21-28 points at the half.
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OT: Cowboys Steal One

Just to show it can happen even at the professional level, check out the result in Dallas tonight. The Cowboys drive 72 yards in approximately 1:30 to score a game winning TD. Final score: 28-27. Sometimes the other team just makes the play(s). Guessing New York is feeling a bit like we did yesterday.

(With no time outs.)

OZ, Smoke and Reid

Reid improved yesterday. OZ has it to the point we can put Smoke out as a WR a little more. I really enjoyed seeing us do different things yesterday. With CS and maybe Thorpe down the line we actually have an offense where we have moving parts teams have to pay attention to. Just the fact we can move CS around and Smoke out wide at times will be fun to watch. Pounding it inside with Reid and letting OZ get it on the outside will having others as decoys. The game plan to move CS around getting match ups for him really made Fairchild look like an actual college football coordinator. How about that. Looking forward to us progressing and getting better.

Reflections on the game, thoughts on the season.

Man, what a brutal 2nd half.

I actually put most of the credit on UCLA. We definitely hurt ourselves with penalties, we still can't get the ball in the end zone and cash in when we play well, and our playcalling is still atrocious, but I think the Bruins win this one even if we'd scored a TD for every FG. They are just really, really good. They made adjustments at the half and got in a groove and I don't think Duke with their great coach in his 8th year beats UCLA today. Hats off to them.

As far as we stand, it's a little tough to say. The defense looked markedly downgraded from last season. Not sure how much of that is our personnel and how much is just UCLA being a top 15 program with a superstar QB and great OL, but it was a disappointment from what's generally been a strength. Playcalling is bland, bad, predictable, and a huge handicap. I think Fairchild is going to end CML's career here. I think the offense showed some improvement. Johns was strong, other than that series where you could tell he was panicking. We'll see how that translates to easier opponents in conference play.

I still think we can win 5 and maybe even 6 games this season. It's easy to just throw your hands up and give up, but you can't tell but so much from a game like this. It's a top 15 program and they played like it, especially in the second-half. I honestly don't think we can judge where we are by this game. And it doesn't get much easier this month.

Regardless, there's no reason to keep Mike London under contract. Barring an all but impossible scenario where we improve each week and finish with eight or nine wins, there's nothing he can do to make it a net positive to retain him. Even if he gets six wins, which I genuinely believe is possible, or seven, which I don't even consider a remote possibility under the circumstances, we've seen the ceiling here. Best case scenario and we're not going to be better than an eight win team season after season, and we're nowhere near the best case scenario. I think firing Fairchild could get us to six wins with London, but at this point the program is better off letting Mike London go and starting over. We'll be competitive again in three to four years, if we make a solid hire. And we as the University of Virginia need to do it. The level of our athletics department demands it. The prestige of our university demands it. We must be competitive in the number one sport. We must strive for excellence.

I love Mike London. He's an amazing human being. I wish with all my heart he had been successful, but it is time to move on.

But now and always, I love this team. Go Hoos!

Brad - Dowling, Thorpe, Levrone

Brad, any rumors on when Dowling may get fully cleared? How about Thorpe's recovery? Those two dudes on the sideline looked pretty healthy i.e. Thorpe was dancing and moving his arms and shoulders just fine, hoping hes further along than 8-10 weeks. What happened to Levrone? Man, if the last 3 qtrs werent a 1 hit wonder from fairchild id love to see this offense with thorpe and dowling as a part of it. Still cant believe our dbs continue to get beat deep, and two seniors too that have been good players. Need the next two, get a few of these weapons back and we might be in business. A win today wouldve changed the trajectory of the season, but there is hope at least.

Good start for the Redskins, but coachings staff shows they are playing not to lose, not playing to

win.

Gruden is almost a mirror of our coach, with playing not to lose mentality when it comes to inside of the twenty yard line or the red zone. Both seem to be really soft spoken nice guys, but their play calling (with the exception of yesterday) is way to conservative in the red zone.

Too conservative and this team has the same bad luck year in and year out our Cavs have with key injuries from day one.

Cousin looking good but several of his receivers don't have their head in the game. Twice Jordon Reed made big mistakes that either cost downs or and INT. Morris' run for big gains to have it moved back to a late hook and pull down to the ground of a DB after Morris had gotten by. The announcers really said it was a very unnecessary and dumb move. Also on the INT, Reed did not come back for the ball and pulled a Roberts move of back pedaling to get more yards to catch the ball down around his knees, but instead he allowed a DB to jump the route and pick Cousins instead of stopping or coming back for the ball.

I'm concerned now that Hall has gone out and with Amerson (was named THE worse DB in the league for being burned) replacing him as the go to guy for the other teams QB. Continues to play too far off, take all day to react and continues to be beaten so bad he is falling down on his knees/back side for easy touchdowns.

He really knows how to play just hard enough to make the cut each year and then play like a 5th or 6th string DB for easy TD; for the other team!

When UVa wins 6/7 games this year

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.

A half cup of cold water

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.

I am disgusted at what I saw today. Embarrassing.

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.

Game Thoughts

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.

Matt Johns

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.
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Tough loss

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.
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Last drive

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.
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