Well, this season falls into the “long and strange” category, and if things keep up, it’ll be an interesting one Saturday night when Bronco’s Boys come to town.

Quarterbacks and Scheme

If you’re driving north through the heart of Ohio you won’t find anything close to a city between the border of Mansfield and the shore of Lake Erie. Historically, this is farm-and-factory country, and if you look back to the days of the revolution, you’ll see that much of this territory is part of the Firelands, which was land given to Connecticut families whose homes were burned by the British. Football rules in an old-fashioned way—there isn’t a ton of money or preening, but the stadiums are full, it’s considered an honor to dress out, and all the teams play tough. They aren’t backwards though; before COVID, every spring there’d be an exodus of coaches bouncing around the state going from clinic to clinic. I’m betting they’ve all been lighting up Zoom clinics in today’s unusual times.

As you drive through this part of Ohio, you’ll find a bunch of wide spots on the roads between the cornfields that are worthy of names and maybe even a stop sign, and a few towns where everyone goes to the Muck and the Amish markets for produce, and the big-name families own the local grocery or the funeral home. Willard is one of those towns, and not too long ago it put QB Charlie Frye in the NFL. Shelby is another, and it’s where Brennan Armstrong, UVA’s starting QB, hails from.

Starting around mid-season, Armstrong (#5) became the catalyst for UVA. I was on the “UVA is lost without Perkins” train, but that hasn’t been the case. Armstrong consistently finds and hits open guys deep, he’s accurate on mid-range throws, and he can read the field:

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