Will changes pay off for Cavs?

The wagons are circled at Camp Wahoo as Virginia’s football team braces for its ACC opener against ancient rival North Carolina this weekend.
Starting off 0-3, the Cavaliers’ worst start since George Welsh dared to take over the laughing stock of ACC football back in 1982, Virginia has its work cut out heading into Chapel Hill.
While much of the gridiron world is down on UVa’s immediate future, the players and coaching staff travel across the state border knowing that a win against the Tar Heels will make the Cavaliers 1-0 in the ACC, which would most likely put them only one back of Virginia Tech in the Coastal Division (the Hokies play at Duke are almost certain to advance to 2-0 in league play).
New philosophy
While the rocky start isn’t anything to e-mail home about, 1-0 is what’s on the Cavaliers’ collective minds. Sure, they could easily be 2-1 if they hadn’t coughed up the pigskin so many times against a good William & Mary team, and if they hadn’t resembled a Three Stooges fire drill on their kickoff coverage at Southern Miss a week ago.
Give Al Groh credit for being flexible enough to change things after two weeks of fizzle and flop in the no-huddle spread. If it’s broken, then fix it and that’s what he appeared to do with UVa’s offense, changing philosophy more than anything else in resorting back to the previous offense, which still kept some of the elements of the spread.
Obviously, the offensive line just wasn’t suited for the spread and its wide line splits and there was some question if the quarterbacks really had grasped that philosophy as well.
There was a big change in the offense in Hattiesburg. For a change, Virginia scored enough points to win a football game. Everyone in the program was baffled at how the rest of the team folded under pressure, particularly the special teams coverage units essentially blew the win.
Preparing for UNC
It’s not easy for a coach to make such a transition in a matter of three or four days, but Groh did and with an extra week to refine the system and to prepare for Carolina, one would think that Virginia would go to Chapel Hill thinking it can win.
Don’t forget that Groh’s teams are 9-4 after bye weeks, and two of those losses came last year when the team was in transition from Pete Lalich to Marc Verica, and the other came late in the season when Virginia should have beaten Clemson. The Cavs were plagued with turnover problems in both losses.
Still, it is interesting to revisit Groh’s change in philosophy, to go back to the former offense where he knew his teams had experienced some level of success last season in wins over nationally ranked teams and in an offense where the offensive linemen seemed to have flourished rather than struggled.
“I felt that we had a system that had a proven record of success ... it’s not snake oil,” Groh said of the spread. “It worked very well before. It’s working very well around the country, and we had players who had a proven record of success.
“But at that time there wasn’t a clean mesh,” Groh explained. “Clearly, more time will provide that. But you only get 12 [games] a year ... that’s pretty precious time. And, so, when we think some things need to be done the very next week to help us, we are very proactive on those things.”
Without question the line blocked better, although the pass protection for quarterback Jameel Sewell still needs to improve. The Cavaliers were the best protectors in the ACC last year, giving up only 16 sacks. In three games, they’ve already surrendered 13 and that’s inexcusable.
Still, the offense displayed signs of life as Sewell showed flashes of his 2007 self.
At this point it appears that so goes Sewell, so goes Virginia, at least offensively. That may not be bad because he led the Cavaliers to the Gator Bowl two seasons ago, albeit a bunch of close calls.
His 335 yards of total offense at Southern Miss was the sixth-highest individual yardage by an ACC player this season and his 312 yards passing was the seventh-most passing yardage by an ACC quarterback so far this year.
Not a bad guy to hook your wagon to if he can continue to deliver those types of performances. After all, Sewell has passed for 4,030 yards for his on-again, off-again career at Virginia, currently the seventh-best in Wahoo history.
Of UVa’s 78 offensive plays last week, he ran or passed for 69 of those and leads the ACC in number of total plays per game.
The trick is, can Sewell do it at Carolina in the South’s oldest rivalry game?
Carolina’s defense is ranked 14th nationally in total defense, third in tackles for loss, and 17th in passing efficiency defense.
One would think that with Groh’s proven ability to bounce back off bye weeks that the Cavaliers will at least have a fighting chance to beat their crusty old rival. Only five men have coached more games in the ACC than Groh: George Welsh, Bobby Bowden, Bill Dooley, Earle Edwards, and Frank Howard, so the guy knows what must be done.
Now that he’s made the necessary changes, the question is can Virginia get the job done?