Florida State fifth-year quarterback — not running back — Ashton Daniels rushed for 136 yards and five touchdowns against Virginia Oct. 3. The Seminoles’ running back room did not fare badly either, with sophomore running back Ousmane Kromah contributing 80 yards on his own and the unit logging 126 as a whole. All together, the rushing attack logged nine plays of 10 or more yards and averaged over six yards-per-attempt.
Two weeks prior to the Cavaliers’ (3-2, 1-1 ACC) second loss of the season, they experienced their first defeat in a neutral site game in Charlotte, N.C. against their final non-conference opponent. In the contest, West Virginia sophomore quarterback Michael Hawkins Jr. and senior running back Cam Cook combined for 246 yards and three scores on the ground.
Allowing opposing offenses to run amok has become a defining early-season trend in losses for Virginia — nearly 60 percent of the combined 901 yards of their opponents in those two games came on the ground.
At Wednesday’s media availability, Coach Tony Elliott offered a simple solution towards addressing run defense concerns in the future.
“Yeah, I mean the biggest thing is we got to tackle, right?” Elliott said. “We got to down the ball carrier.”
The Cavaliers missed 29 tackles in their loss against Florida State, a number they will certainly seek to mark lower in against their next opponent. While Syracuse is winless in conference play so far, Coach Fran Brown made a recent pivot at signal-caller which could have the home team facing a much more dynamic offense than the Orange (2-2, 0-2 ACC) displayed earlier this season.
Syracuse entered 2026 with a returner on top of the depth chart at quarterback — graduate Steve Angeli started the first four games of last season before missing the rest of the year with a torn Achilles tendon. Angeli’s time as a starter was cut short for an entirely different reason after three starts this year. With the former Notre Dame passer turning the ball over five times while only throwing four touchdowns, Brown turned to senior quarterback Amari Odom to lead the Orange offense. He excelled in Syracuse’s overtime defeat of Connecticut last week, totaling five touchdowns and what became the game-winning two-point conversion.
While Odom will miss the game with a shoulder injury, his fill-in, senior quarterback Malachi Nelson could present just as similar a challenge to defensive coordinator John Rudzinski’s front that Daniels and Hawkins Jr. did.
In addition to ensuring the defense can improve their aptitude at handling mobile quarterbacks, the Cavaliers will require more from the offense that only scored once and went three of 19 in third and fourth down situations last week. Postgame, Elliott was asked about the possibility of a change in Virginia’s own starter at signal-caller. However, in midweek media availability, the coach made his perspective clear.
“It wasn’t the quarterback necessarily,” Elliott said. “There were a lot of things that were going wrong in that situation. “[I’m] not — at this point — considering [a change] … If you’re going to change the quarterback, then I need to change a lot of other positions too, because there were a lot of guys that just didn’t do their job the way that they are capable of.”
While Elliott’s response reads closer to an acknowledgement of unit-wide issues — the offensive line struggled mightily — rather than an explicit endorsement of current starter fifth-year Beau Pribula, the former Missouri Tiger carries a 12-to-1 touchdown-to-interception ratio into this weekend’s matchup. Fourth-year quarterback Eli Holstein does wait closely behind, but the job is still firmly Pribula’s to lose until further notice.
Pribula and company will seek to bounce back against a Syracuse defense that ranks around the middle of the pack in yards allowed per game in the ACC. Virginia’s dynamic yet underwhelming — thus far — group of receivers could be in for a big day against an Orange secondary that has struggled significantly as of late, having allowed 318 passing yards last week.
The Cavalier offense has spread the ball around to their pass-catchers so far this season, without a single receiver having crossed 20 receptions or 200 yards — over a third of their total yardage came from Virginia’s dominant win over Delaware Sept. 26. Saturday presents an opportunity for field-stretchers such as Da’Shawn Martin, who has racked up four receiving touchdowns on only 11 receptions, to break free for the big plays that were absent from their defeat last weekend.
Kickoff is slated for 7:30 p.m., with the game being aired on ACC Network.
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