Starting again, Verica struggles

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — If traveling to South Florida to face 16th-ranked Miami wasn’t enough of a challenge, Virginia’s struggling football team had to play Saturday’s game against the Hurricanes without starting quarterback Jameel Sewell.

The results weren’t pretty.

With backup Marc Verica playing the entire way as UVa’s quarterback, the Cavaliers put forth their worst offensive performance of the season and were pounded 52-17 at Land Shark Stadium.

An aggressive Miami defense held Virginia to a season-low 149 yards of total offense and a season low 75 yards passing. The Cavaliers mustered only 10 first downs in the game (four in the first half) and converted 2 of 12 third-down situations.

As bad as Virginia’s offense had been (No. 116 out of 120 FBS teams in total offense), it just got worse without Sewell, who made the trip but did not play due to assorted injuries, mostly a shoulder problem.

Verica, who had played in 10 games last season and started nine (Vic Hall started the season finale at Virginia Tech), had been considered a relatively accurate passer. He completed 63.8 percent of his attempts last season, and had a completion percentage higher than 70 percent in four of those nine starts.

His biggest problem a year ago had been interceptions.

Against the Hurricanes, though, Verica had the worst game of his career. The junior completed a mere 11 of 29 attempts for 75 yards (by far the lowest total in any game he had started), was intercepted once, sacked twice and did not throw for a touchdown. His longest pass of the 11 completions went for 16 yards.

His pass efficiency rating for the game was 52.76, one of the worst in memory for any Cavalier quarterback, especially compared to Miami QB Jacory Harris, who completed 18 of 31 for 232 yards and two scores. Harris’ efficiency rating for the game was 135.77.

“A lot of the coverage was tight man-to-man,” UVa coach Al Groh said of Miami’s defense. “When a quarterback faces that, whoever the quarterback might be, that’s a question of you’ve got to get some individual wins up the field [by receivers]. Give the quarterback a target. If the quarterback doesn’t have anybody to target and he’s standing in the pocket and throws it away, then it’s grounding. That puts a lot of pressure on the pass protection.”

That was the case against the Hurricanes who pressured Verica throughout the afternoon, causing some of the inaccuracy.

“Our defense did a nice job on third down today,” Miami coach Randy Shannon said. “The defensive line has been working on the pass rush side of it and they did a good job of harassing the quarterback.”

We don’t know what Verica thought about Miami’s pass rush because he uncharacteristically blew off interview requests after the game.

“I’m not talking,” Verica said when approached by reporters outside the Virginia dressing room as he made his way to the team bus.

Last season, and even in backup appearances this season, Verica had always showed up for postgame interviews and patiently answered every question.

“[Miami’s] pass rush made it difficult for us to have enough time to get free for the quarterback to do much,” Groh said.

Sewell did not practice at all in the week leading up to the Miami game and participated in only light stretching before Saturday’s game. Groh said that his senior quarterback could possibly have played, but “only if we needed somebody to conduct the game, but not to do very much.”

Groh said that Sewell’s passing would have been greatly affected by a shoulder injury in addition to possibly worsening the injury had he been hit or landed on the shoulder.

Sewell’s status for next Saturday’s home game against Boston College is unknown.

“It’s impossible to gauge what that [status] is,” Groh said about whether Sewell’s injury will permit him to play the next game or whether it may affect him in the long term.