Great post. But not only that, UVA was playing man under with two safeties high, and their CBs were playing 5-10 yards off the ball and hedging for over the top. Also, I think those verticals sent all our receivers deep. No chance at completing those. I remember initially screaming at Nkosi to "throw it" because he was holding the ball so long. Then the next time, I could see the problem and realized the play had NO chance based on the coverage. Richt's play calling simply does not allow our QBs to get in any sort of rhythm. Think back to the FSU game when we ran the ball into eight and nine man fronts on first and second down, and then asked Nkosi to make a tough throw on an obvious passing down rather than taking what the defense gave us on first down.
What's worse, is that Richt could have very easily gotten Perry warmed up with the short passing game against UVA, if he had called underneath routes because UVA's CBs basically conceded everything in front of them. Looking at their DBs pre-snap alignment, we literally just lost to D'Onofrio's pass defense. And that was a bad UVA team. I mean really bad. Their QB was playing with four fingers on his passing hand, and I believe the announcers said their defense was missing four starters. They opened with almost back to back turnovers. That game should have been over at the half.
The loss cuts deep, but Richt throwing the offense under the bus by implication including our QBs rather than directly taking responsibility for our poor play is even worse than the loss because it suggests he thinks he can fix this by tweaking something and putting more pressure on our QBs and other offensive players (OL) to be perfect. Nkosi and Malik could have had all night to throw those deep balls and no receiver running a vertical route was going to be open because that was the one thing UVA definitely wanted to take away based on the defense they played.
Another problem is that both of our QBs pre-determine where they are going with the ball. In fact, I think Richt has decided before hand where he thinks the ball should go. Remember back during the Fall scrimmage when he said he called a play that caused Nkosi or Jarren to commit an int? At the time, I thought "good" coach is taking up for his young QB, which was the case, but now I'm thinking Richt pre-determines where the ball is to go on certain plays. That makes no sense in today's game and especially when running what appears to me to be some sort of hybrid spread/wanna be pro-style offense with RPO. I say that because the game within the game is fluid and dynamic when using RPO, and the QB has to be able to decide where to go with the ball based on what the defense does on a given play while the play is taking place. The game has changed, and Richt seems to want to turn back the clock or to not keep up with it.
Running the ball into an eight or nine man front to pound teams was cool up to about a decade or so ago. That attitude is on display whenever Choc enters the field of play. Sure, nothing wrong with being able to pound it to get an important first down, we can all appreciate that, but your offense should be dynamic enough that the defense has no idea what you might do even when Choc does come on the field in a short yardage situation or when you come out in a certain formation. With us everyone knows what we're going to do based on personnel groups and formation. I bet more than half the board can call out or plays when they see the personnel and the formation, and if we can do it then you know DCs for other teams can.
Very frustrating to be in this position in year three. And I am not optimistic that our offense will look much different in two weeks. I just don't think Richt is capable of making the changes necessary to fix the problems. If he was, he would have done so already.