The play clock stood still — two minutes remaining in the second quarter. Virginia, in possession of the football, stared down the 67-yard field ahead. Little did the Cavaliers (4-1, 2-0 ACC) know, those 67 yards would constitute the most important of their season to date.
“Hey, to be a champion, you gotta go beat the champion,” Coach Tony Elliott said. “And two years ago, [No. 8 Florida State] was the champion of our league.”
As an excruciatingly long ESPN TV timeout wound down, The Killers’ “Mr. Brightside” blared from Scott Stadium’s speaker system. Fifty thousand fans sang along with the track. But as the music faded and Virginia’s offense took the field once again, those fans kept singing.
The lyrics, now unsupported by a PA system instrumental, soundtracked the Cavaliers’ inaugural snap after the two-minute timeout. Just four plays later, graduate running back J’Mari Taylor broke away. He found the endzone on a 26-yard rush. The Hill, at capacity, had a front row seat to the bellcow rusher’s celebration.
Rarely do teams put together game-saving drives before they enter the locker room for halftime. When battling a top-10 opponent, however, the usual goes out the window.
The Cavaliers welcomed one of those top-ten opponents Friday, when the Seminoles (3-1, 0-1 ACC) made the trip 600 miles north to Charlottesville. On its own, the 46-38 Virginia victory marks a leap forward for a program clawing at a return to conference success.
“At the end of the day, it’s about belief,” Elliott said.
But even more, the Cavaliers’ performance illustrates a degree of resilience not present within all collegiate football programs.
“That was a heck of a football game, and that was two teams [which] wanted to win, and they were going to fight,” Elliott said. “It was going to come down to who could find a way to make one more play than the other.”
That desire to win was imminent in Virginia’s second quarter two-minute drill. After securing a 14-0 lead, the Cavaliers surrendered a touchdown, threw an interception, surrendered another touchdown, threw another interception and gave up one last score to vanquish a once-formidable lead.
With Florida State set to receive the football after the break, offensive coordinator Des Kitchings and his unit needed to deliver.
“I had to get out of the hole that I was in,” graduate quarterback Chandler Morris said.
Thanks to Taylor, Morris and senior receiver Trell Harris, they did — tying the game at 21 heading into halftime.
“Everybody in our program [has] the heart of a champion,” Elliott said. “... I can tell by how they showed up for pregame that they believe. They didn't know how it's going to get done, but they believe, and I didn't know how it was going to get done, but I believe that at the end of the day, playmakers are going to find a way.”
Perhaps no Cavalier epitomized the necessitated rise to resilience better than Morris. Suffering a second-half hand injury, the Virginia signal caller had no choice but to stay in the game.
“[Morris is] a warrior,” Elliott said. “I’m just so happy for him. He came here because he believed.”
Such an easy decision may have stemmed from the game’s precarious nature — at no point in the contest did either team pull away. After the second quarter erasure of Virginia’s 14-point lead, neither team led by more than one score for the remainder of the game.
That inability to pull away hurt the Cavaliers again in the fourth, when a last-second Florida State touchdown turned an almost-certain Virginia victory into an overtime experiment for this iteration of Elliott’s roster.
Despite the adversity, it was an experiment that ended well for Morris and company. The Cavaliers and Seminoles went back and forth during the first overtime, but a Morris 4-yard touchdown run and an interception from junior defensive back Ja’son Prevard put an exciting button on a rollercoaster of a Virginia victory in double overtime.
As thousands and thousands of students rushed the field, the Cavaliers could do nothing but partake in the most joyous celebration Scott Stadium has seen in years.
“That was fun,” Elliott said.
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