What’s wrong with the spread?

There was hope. There was hype.

Unfortunately, Virginia’s newly-installed spread offense did not live up to the label attached during spring practice and training camp.

Stumbling out of the gate, the Cavaliers (0-1) were plagued by seven turnovers and an inability to move the ball down the field with proficiency.

On its way to a 26-14 loss to William & Mary, Virginia’s spread and the three quarterbacks entrusted to operate it managed to move the chains just 12 times.

The Cavaliers, who host No. 16 Texas Christian (0-0) on Saturday at 3:30 p.m., also had just three offensive drives that lasted over five plays, a flaw that must be corrected in the up-tempo offense.

While the amount of turnovers caught Virginia coach Al Groh off guard, the “learning curve” with the spread offense was expected.

“I know that a lot of the teams that are majoring in this system are Big 12 teams. This style of offense has prolificated throughout high school football — lots of teams are running it,” Groh said. “Texas is an area where it’s very abundant — in fact, the coaches there at North Texas achieved tremendous success in high school in it, and went directly to the job at North Texas.

“Many of the quarterbacks who are playing in the Big 12 in these systems have been in this system now literally for eight, nine years, because it’s what they played in high school. Then they came and redshirted for a year, and now at Kansas and Missouri, for example, the three previous three or four years, both those teams had great success after switching to this offense.”

Todd Reesing, the signal-caller at Kansas, ranks No. 16 in passing efficiency and the Jayhawks are 11th in total offense. Missouri’s Blaine Gabbert is No. 14 in passing efficiency after one game as the heir apparent to Chase Daniel.

“Those quarterbacks chose their schools and were recruited by those schools principally because they knew this offense almost before the coaches did,” Groh said. “I think that probably the learning curve is probably a little bit more significant or a little bit more extreme for [Virginia’s] players than if they were players that had a long-term background in it.”

Groh noted in the preseason that different teams operate the spread with different desired plans of attacks.

Some teams run. Some teams pass. Some teams offer a combination.

Virginia fell into the latter category against William & Mary, whether it was by design or based on the numbers shining on the brand-new scoreboard.

The Cavaliers finished with 39 carries for just 131 net yards, a number that was skewed by the loss of 20 yards, respectively, by quarterbacks Jameel Sewell and Marc Verica.

Through the air, Virginia’s trio attempted 36 passes and completed just 18 for a woeful figure of 137 yards. The operation finished with an average of just 4.2 per pass.

Sewell threw three interceptions, but led the quarterbacks with 80 yards passing as he completed 9 of 17 attempts.

Verica, the third to play in the rotation, had 50 yards through the air on 7-for-11 passing.

Vic Hall, the starter in the opener, managed just seven yards passing and completed just two attempts.

On the ground, a majority of Virginia’s runs came from the quarterbacks as Sewell carried 13 times and Hall managed eight rushes before a hip injury limited him offensively.

“We certainly didn’t anticipate that, and I didn’t have a full sense of that during the course of the game, although clearly it was apparent that the quarterbacks had quite a few carries and were fairly effective in doing it,” Groh said. “The fact that both touchdowns came on excellent runs by the quarterbacks does point out their capability of doing such, but we don’t want it to evolve into where they’re the primary runners, no.”