Special Teams Are Just One of UVa's Problems - WSET.com - ABC13

CHARLOTTESVILLE - Virginia has several problems in all three phases of the game and on Monday at his weekly news conference, coach Mike London was asked if any changes were going to be made. He replied with a two minute and 48 second answer.

"Sure, yeah.  We are always talking about decisions.  The thing of note is not particularly the scheme of things - it's the execution.  If you're the kickoff cover team, your lane is a certain lane, you see a block coming, instead of taking on the block that's taught and preached and practiced time after time again, you think you can make it, so you do a quick swim over the top.  All of a sudden that lane you're supposed to be in, it's vacated and you get a long return.

A point after a touchdown is kicked.  There's no reason to try to block a defender when basically the play is over, there's no reason to block that defender, you get a personal foul, so the ball is kicked off at the 20 yard line, which leads to another field position issue for them to score a point. 

So the schemes and things like that are not as much the issue as the people that are executing them and having to quantify, you got to make better decisions, because if not, as you see, the first one led to a touchdown.  The second one - the second penalty after the PAT led to a touchdown for them.  Not executing the field goal that got blocked, the young man basically doesn't have to jump.  The ball was kicked way, way too low and it got blocked. 

As I said, it's our job to make sure we teach them the schemes - we try to get them in positions to make those things happen.  One of the things that Coach Poindexter and I have talked about, you know Anthony, he's one of the best players ever played here.  People are like - maybe he's been here too long.  One of the best recruiters we have on the staff.  Does an outstanding job of that.  He wants the special teams units to perform better. 

So we talked about let's just simplify things.  We got one return, fine, let's go with that.  Let's do one of this, whatever it is.  Whatever it is, let's get it right and let's practice it enough where we can be successful so these guys don't have the different techniques. 

You like to go in and teach different returns, different style of kicks, all those things like that.  But when you assess your team to see where you are talent-wise, execution-wise, sometimes you got to say, All right, let's just make it simple.  I think that's to the point of where we are right now, is just making it simple.