TILOCK: There are some holes in football's defense – and it's ruining the season – The Cavalier Daily

There's an old saying that perfectly sums up the current 2024 Virginia football team: “When it rains, it pours.” Well, the Cavaliers are practically underwater at this point. With two extreme defeats, pretty much everything that could have gone wrong went wrong Clemson And North Carolina. Offensive coordinator Des Kitchings and his offense have taken some criticism for these losses, but the main culprit isn't on this side. It's team defense. An ineffective pass rush, spotty pass coverage and a lack of talent have doomed this unit, which ranks 92nd in points allowed per game. Over the last three contests, Virginia's defense has gotten even worse, allowing nearly 38 points per game, good for 114th in the country.

A strong pass rush is essential to any defensive success. This 2024 team has drastically underperformed in that regard. No Cavalier has recorded more than three sacks in their first eight games. As a team, they have just 12 sacks – which is outside the top 100 teams – and have only recorded more than three sacks in a game once this year.

This ineffective pass rush leads to longer attacks from the opponent. The defense simply can't get off the field as often as needed to help their offense. These Cavaliers rank 100th in opponent third-down conversions per game. Virginia's defense hurts their offense much more than the other way around. Even though the defense occasionally makes a stop or two, they are the fifth-worst defense in the ACC. Allowing touchdowns at an alarmingly high rate usually spells defeat for the Cavaliers. Additionally, since the pass rush is missing, pass coverage becomes more difficult.

The opposing quarterbacks are given enough time to throw and the defensive backs are put in a difficult situation. It's worth noting that senior safety Jonas Sanker performed well despite little help up front and is not part of the problem. The glaring hole is that the Cavaliers have some terrible vulnerabilities at cornerback.

Since Fentrell Cypress and Anthony Johnson left after the 2022 season, the Cavaliers have not been able to repeat their former excellence at the cornerback position. This year, Virginia has allowed 298.7 passing yards per game, fifth-worst nationally.

The main culprit is junior cornerback Jam Jackson, who has consistently performed well bad as one of the worst Cavalier defenders. Graduate cornerback Malcolm Greene subsceptible to enable big profits even in the air. The studied cornerback Kempton Shine has performed better than his colleagues, but often allows unbearably poor performances missed tackles.

Most of the time, these defensive backs get beat in coverage. Ultimately, it's extremely difficult to win football games when your opponents can easily throw for 300 yards. To make matters worse, Virginia only threw five interceptions all year, and two of those didn't even come from the defensive backs.

Because the Cavaliers have poor pass coverage and haven't done much better at forcing turnovers, this defense has faltered. Sure, two forced fumbles helped them earn wins against Louisville and the Demon Deacons, but Virginia is outside the top 40 teams when it comes to total forced fumbles, interceptions, third-down percentage, fourth-down percentage, Down percentage, touchdowns allowed, red zone defense and total tackles go for loss and seemingly every other possible defensive statistic. There is nothing that makes this defense particularly good.

The cornerback room has performed so terribly that the best solution is to acquire more transfers after the 2024 season. Fixing these issues will be an incredibly difficult undertaking, and there is a strong possibility that adequate repair will be impossible until the off-season. But even this can be difficult to achieve. Virginia has failed to repair its cornerback room over the past few offseasons – the current trio of transfer cornerbacks were supposed to help bring the pass defense back to 2022 levels, but instead have been nearly unplayable. This coaching staff has consistently failed to bring in better cornerbacks in the transfer portal and has also failed to recruit top high school recruits for the position. But unfortunately the only way forward is to keep trying to recruit better players.

But the big question for the rest of 2024 remains — whether Virginia can win two of its final four games to secure a spot in the bowl game. To achieve this, the Cavalier defense must improve. Despite all of its glaring problems, improving it seems like a daunting task. But if Virginia can string together crucial games like it did against Wake Forest and Boston College, there's always hope for a surprise win or two. A game only ends when the final whistle sounds. For the Cavaliers, their season isn't officially over until the last game.