No. 5 Louisvile beats Virginia on late TD

CHARlottesville, Va. – When he trotted back onto the field with about 2 minutes to play and No, 5 Louisville suddenly trailing Virginia 25-24 on Saturday, Lamar Jackson was well aware of what was at stake.

"Everything," he said. "Our whole season. We just knew what we had to do."

Jackson, as has been the case all season, did the most, engineering a 75-yard drive and capping it by floating a perfectly placed 29-yard touchdown pass to Jaylen Smith with 13 seconds remaining as the Cardinals survived 32-25.

It was Jackson's fourth touchdown pass and kept the Cardinals (7-1, 5-1 Atlantic Coast Conference) in the College Football Playoff picture.

Virginia (2-6, 1-3) had scored with 1:57 remaining and used a two-point conversion to take a 25-24 lead, whipping the sparse crowd at Scott Stadium into a frenzy that could only have made the challenge more daunting.

Not for Jackson.

He ran for 18 yards on the first play, hit Cole Hikutini in traffic for 5 yards on fourth- and-3, ran twice more for 16 yards before hitting Smith in the end zone with a pass over tight coverage by Juan Thornhill.

Jackson did not have one of his better days, getting sacked five times and turning the ball over twice, but still finished 24 of 41 for 361 yards. He ran 18 times for another 90 yards, and boosted his TD count to 38.

The Cavaliers had driven 75 yards in 14 plays to take the lead.

A touchdown pass to Doni Dowling and Kurt Benkert's conversion pass to Albert Reid put the Cavaliers ahead by a point with 1:57 left.

"I wanted to win and I didn't want to go to overtime," first-year Cavaliers coach Bronco Mendenhall said of the decision to go for two.

He added that he wanted his team to know he had faith in them to come though.