KYLE GREEN The Roanoke Times

Gregg Brandon, offensive coordinator this past season, is eager to talk to next UVa coach.

Al Groh's Virginia football team was experiencing offensive difficulties long before the arrival of Gregg Brandon.

Some might have believed that the "spread" offense installed by Brandon would work miracles, but Virginia ended up in a familiar position, outside the nation's top 100 in total offense.

An accompanying 3-9 record led to the dismissal Sunday of Groh and most of his staff, including Brandon.

"I have a proven system," said Brandon, whose version of the spread was a result of his collaboration with current Florida coach Urban Meyer.

"Obviously, we would have liked to see it work and done better with it. If I get another chance to run my system, I'm going to run it again."

Brandon, formerly the head coach at Bowling Green for six years and a Meyer assistant before that, was named UVa offensive coordinator in December 2008 and given a two-year guaranteed contract at a salary of $275,000 per year.

He thinks some of UVa's offensive problems could have been helped with more time.

"In fairness to the kids, it's just not something you can do overnight," Brandon said. "If we had that operation going for at least another year, I think we would have won some more games. Some of those games we lost, we were a score away."

"At the end of the day, we just ran out of gas and some of the other teams had more talent across the board."

Brandon said the Cavaliers' offense in the first quarter against Virginia Tech, when quarterback Jameel Sewell carried seven times for 91 yards, was close to what he had envisioned from the outset.

"His ability to run the football is key in the type of offense that I wanted to run at Virginia," Brandon said. "Early on, going back to Southern Miss and [North] Carolina, he ran the ball effectively. Against Indiana, he did the same thing.

"Then, he started to get dinged up. He got hurt at Maryland and I was reluctant to call the runs with him as frequently. He was beat up and I don't think he was healthy until last Saturday. That's the risk you take when you run your quarterback some time."

But, Sewell also "didn't have the weapons around him that would have helped him," Brandon said. "There's no guy at Virginia like the guy at Virginia Tech [Ryan Williams]. He gets the ball in his hand and you're thinking, 'Whoa!'

Vic Hall, who was Virginia's starting quarterback in the opening game, said recently that he would have liked to play slot receiver for his whole career.

After moving to that spot in the fourth game, he finished with 24 receptions.

Hall also carried the ball seven times for 39 yards in a 42-13 loss to Virginia Tech, some on reverses and some on direct snaps out of the Wildcat formation.

"In fairness to him, shoot, he played quarterback all spring because we had some eligibility issues [with Sewell] and we just had to do that," Brandon said. "The kids, to their credit, they worked at [the spread]. They embraced it. They wanted to be good at it.

"They were willing soldiers."

Much has been made of the offensive changes that followed losses to William and Mary and TCU in UVa's first two games. The next week, when the Cavaliers visited Southern Mississippi, the offensive formations more closely resembled what UVa had run in 2008.

Some interpreted those changes as Groh's work. Groh served as his own defensive coordinator, but because he had a one-voice policy that kept assistants from speaking to the media, there was considerable suspicion that Groh had been interfering with the offense.

Brandon didn't find Groh to be a meddler.

"He was pretty good that way," Brandon said. "Al was the head coach and I have a great amount of respect for that position, having been one myself. I could see it from his chair. The adjustments we made before the Southern Miss game were not drastic."

Brandon did speak to the media on UVa's Meet the Team Day in August, when he acknowledged that he had not called plays during his six seasons at Bowling Green.

"It was a big-time adjustment," he said. "It's like anything else you haven't done for a while. There were things I hadn't done for six years that I had to do again, and I had to do them pretty fast."

Brandon, who turns 54 in February, doesn't know what's ahead. He'd like to be a head coach again and he'd be eager to talk to Groh's successor, although it's highly unlikely UVa would go in that direction.

"It's nice here," Brandon said. "I like it, but if [Southern Cal coach] Pete Carroll calls and wants me to coach his tight ends, I'd probably look at that."