Unknowns may decide UVa vs. UR

Football is always a chess match between coordinators as they maneuver and carefully watch how an opponent reacts, or perhaps doesn’t react, to various strategies during a game.

Saturday’s opener for Virginia against visiting Richmond will take that chess match to the extreme as both staffs make educated guesses on how to get to checkmate.

Neither staff really can predict what the other might do. Richmond’s Latrell Scott is a head coach for the first time, and his offensive coordinator, Wayne Lineburg, is an offensive coordinator for the first time. Defensively, schemes don’t vary that much, but exactly what kind of offense the Spiders are going to throw at Virginia is unknown.

Unknowns on both sidelines

Scott and his UR staff are in the same boat, though. While Mike London has been a head coach for two years and there’s plenty of film available on what his philosophy was the past two seasons at Richmond, there’s a guess that London’s new offense at Virginia won’t be the same.

While there’s certainly a strong possibility there will be some influence from what London brought with him from UR to UVa, new offensive coordinator Bill Lazor has brought an entirely different world of experience with him from three NFL teams — the Seahawks, the Falcons and the Redskins. However, it isn’t the current Seahawks, Falcons, and Redskins, but Mike Holmgren’s Seattle team, Dan Reeves’ Atlanta club, and Joe Gibbs’ Washington franchise.

So, how are Virginia and Richmond preparing for the unknown? There’s a standard operating procedure when one team knows little or nothing about the other: Research and a lot of guessing.

“I think from both standpoints, [Scott’s] staff and our staff, what you can do is you can assess players skill level,” London said during his press conference on Monday. “You can evaluate players as far as strengths and weaknesses.”

Coaching exchange

Four former UVa coaches are now at Richmond — Scott, Lineburg, Bob Trott and Chad Wilt — while four former Richmond coaches are now on Virginia’s staff in London, Mike Faragalli, Vincent Brown and Jeff Hanson. So, while this is a rather unique circumstance in college football, the mass crossover will allow for coaches from both sides to at least evaluate the personnel they left behind.

However, as London pointed out, some of those players have changed their bodies and perhaps their games since last December, so even those memories of how a player was last season may not be completely accurate heading into this weekend.

“I know both sides will probably talk about the personnel, who can do what, who can’t do this, who is susceptible to that move or whatever it may be,” London said. “And whatever scheme that you have, we won’t know. There’s speculations. You try to find out where the coordinator was from and who he has been influenced by, and all of those things.”

UR coaches have probably been studying film of those three NFL teams that influenced Lazor, while looking at games from London-coached Richmond games as well, trying to be prepared for whatever might be thrown at them.

Meanwhile, UVa coaches might have a more challenging puzzle. Neither Scott or Lineburg have run their own offenses before, so where do they go for information?

Because both served under Dave Clawson when his UR offenses shattered longtime Spiders records, theres a good bet that both Scott and Lineburg retained and were influenced greatly by that success. So, don’t be surprised if UVa’s coaches have looked at old Richmond film, perhaps some Tennessee (Clawson was there for one year as offensive coordinator) and Bowling Green film from last season (Clawson replaced Gregg Brandon as BG head coach as Brandon took UVa’s offensive coordinator’s position last year). Small world.

Even if both staffs develop a good idea of what kind of schemes the other team will run, there’s still a chance of the unpredictable.

“We will possibly do something that they haven’t seen or practiced for, and that’s what you hope for by taking care of yourself — being able to adjust and being able to play and not get paralyzed by what you see out there,” London said. “So with two new teams and two new coordinators, just the whole aspect of what’s going to happen, well, we have to be prepared for anything.”

London said that his staff may have to match their best player against whatever Richmond is doing, against a perceived weakness or scheme of a particular side of the ball.

“So, during the game it will be important to learn what [Richmond] is doing, and [for Richmond] what we are doing and how we can both adjust,” London said.

Virginia’s players said they haven’t gotten caught up in all that stuff, but rather have focused on doing their jobs properly, then let the coaches worry about adjustments.

When footballs begin to fly Saturday night, there will likely be a great deal of adjustments being made on both sides throughout the entire game.

“I think that’s reasonable to expect,” said UVa quarterback Marc Verica. “We don’t have too much to go off in preparation for them, and the same can be said from their standpoint of us. We have to focus on what we do and what we do well.”

UR defensive coaches have probably spent a lot of time studying Verica from his 2008 season, when he led the ACC in passing percentage and enjoyed an incredible six-week ride of success before being plagued by turnovers at season’s end.

Virginia coaches are looking at USC tape of new Richmond starting quarterback Aaron Corp, a 6-foot-3, 200-pound redshirt junior that transferred from Southern Cal to UR and won the job in training camp. If he was recruited by the Trojans of then-coach Pete Carroll, then you know he has to be good.

“I know he came from USC and he played three games and he’s a highly-recruited player,” London said. “So he’s probably upgraded their ability to do a lot of things that I know they want to do with the ball. We are going to have to do what we need to do to hopefully minimize any opportunities for him to spend a lot of time back there.”

If coaches don’t get anxious enough before a game to begin with, all this mystery has just added to the suspense. London’s stomach butterflies might seem the size of pterodactyls by game time.

“The night before, I’m Nervous Nellie,” London said. “Stay up ‘til one o’clock, watch SportsCenter, drive my wife nuts.”

And, it’s a long, long time from 1 a.m. early Saturday morning to 6 p.m. Saturday evening.