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ACC QUESTION of the week: How did Bronco Mendenhall make Virginia the ACC’s most surprising team so far this season?
You saw the carnage around the country on Saturday in Week 9. You saw one ranked team after another bite the dust, often in startling upsets such as California over Washington and Arizona over Oregon. This past Saturday took to an extreme the basic development we have seen this season: There aren’t a lot of excellent teams. If you prefer, there aren’t even a lot of really good teams. There are a ton of moderately good, slightly-above-average teams in the Power 5 conferences.
In this context — where few teams seem capable of ironing out the various problems they have — it makes sense that stories such as Washington State and Virginia and Kentucky and Northwestern are emerging. We could have a Northwestern-Washington State Rose Bowl. We could have Kentucky and North Carolina State in New Year’s Six bowls. So many teams which were expected to be especially good — Washington, Auburn, TCU, Penn State, Wisconsin, Stanford, Miami — have been awful at worst, moderately competent at best. None have excelled. All have fallen short of expectations.
In the ACC, this has meant that Clemson is the only particularly strong team in the conference. It means that the ACC Championship Game is likely to be a complete bloodbath.
It also means that in the scramble to be the second- or third-best team in the conference, the winning formula doesn’t have to be found through normal avenues or forms. Usually, a No. 2 or No. 3 team in a Power 5 conference has high-end talent and whole units or position groups which can dominate.
Virginia doesn’t quite fit that description — UVA was handled easily by North Carolina State — but in the ACC Coastal, it is not even a debate: The Cavaliers are by FAR the best-coached team in the division.
They didn’t mess around and lose to Old Dominion — right, Virginia Tech?
They haven’t bungled the management of their quarterback situation or fallen short in player development — right, Miami?
They have a good secondary — right, Pitt?
They own Duke and Daniel Jones.
They protect the ball — right, Georgia Tech?
They aren’t an ungodly mess — right, North Carolina?
Virginia is that steady, competent, not-very-flashy team led by Mendenhall, a defense-first coach, who consistently has his players (especially on defense) in the right positions. This is exactly the context in which Mendenhall’s emphasis on defense and a don’t-lose-the-game offense can blossom.
What is more particular to Virginia and Mendenhall this year as an explainer of the Hoos’ success is the fact that Mendenhall wants to make it hard for offenses to hit the big play. The best defensive coaches in college football do this. Kirby Smart at Georgia, defensive coordinator Jimmy Lake at Washington, coordinator Dave Aranda at LSU — they and others want to dare opposing quarterbacks to be patient enough to move the ball down the field in small bits. They know that they have the horses to generate a pass rush and contain the running game, which means that sooner or later, a third and long will emerge. The quarterback will either make a mistake or fail to overcome the other matchup disadvantages posed by the 11 defenders on the other side of the line of scrimmage.
Mendenhall is steadily winning this battle. Yes, ACC erosion is part of the story, but this is the circumstance Mendenhall exploits really well, and so far, he is acing all the winnable tests in the ACC Coastal. If he aces a few more, especially the Virginia Tech game, the Hoos should make their first ACC Championship Game appearance.
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