Tony Muskett dreamed of playing on a Power 5 football stage and after a productive start to his career at Monmouth, he saw a chance to chase those dreams in earnest. After he entered the transfer portal, he chose chose Virginia with eyes on competing for a starting job.
Now as preseason practice approaches next week, he’s the only quarterback in the room with extensive experience at any level in a college game. Brennan Armstrong had already transferred to NC State, but Jay Woolfolk elected this summer to focus on baseball after juggling both sports at UVA for two years. While Woolfolk had started just one game in his career, that’s more than the remainder of the depth chart can offer with young players like sophomores Delaney Crawford and Grady Brosterhous just settling and true freshman Anthony Colandrea enrolling this past January for his first set of college practices.
In what could be a critical year to show growth for the program in the second year of the Tony Elliott era, that pushes a significant amount of weight to Muskett’s shoulders. He’ll need to win the starting job in preseason camp, but in all likelihood he will be QB1 when it all shakes out. With that comes not just starting quarterback pressure, but program future pressure. Muskett said that comes with the territory, though.
“To be honest with you, I think there’s pressure any time you play,” Muskett said at the ACC Football Kickoff. “I went to Monmouth. I was fortunate to start there for three straight years as a true freshman and then sophomore and junior year. Any time you are playing college football, you go out and try to win. I don’t let external factors dictate how I handle my business. Every time I approach a game, I approach it the same way, whether it’s a championship game or you are playing the worst team in the division. Every game is as important as the next. When you have that mentality, it doesn’t matter if you are playing in front of 3,000 people or 75,000 people. I go out there. I put internal pressure on myself, and I try to perform my best every single time I take the field.”
That’s an answer you’d expect from most athletes in that spot, but it’s also something that experience yields. Muskett has been through practices at the college level and won the job there as a true freshman. He started for three years. That tends to build on itself. He carries himself with confidence.
Of course, when programs are sifting through the portal and studying film, it’s not always easy to see that part of their game. Coaches have to rely on word of mouth, trusted opinions, and the like to make a decision. Then once you get someone through the doors to your program, situations arise to where you can evaluate the intangibles that any coach wants.
Muskett showed those traits of leadership, belief, and purpose quickly at Virginia.
“The thing about Tony Muskett is from day one you saw his confidence. It’s not a cockiness. It’s not an arrogance, but it’s a confidence,” Elliott said at the ACC Football Kickoff. “From day one he wasn’t afraid to go into the locker room and say, you know what, fellas, I’m here to compete. I’m going to do it the right way. I have tremendous amount of respect for everybody in here, but this is the way that I lead. It quickly galvanized the guys.”
The Hoos will need that in 2023. They finished Elliott’s debut season at 3-7 and they’re entering year two with a performance albatross still hanging over the offense.
How big is that bird in this case? Virginia averaged 17.0 points per game, the sixth lowest total among all 131 Football Bowl Subdivision teams last season and the third worst among Power 5 teams. The offense managed just 344.1 yards per game to rank 103rd in that statistic. Plus, the team has been outside the top 50 in interceptions lost for four straight seasons with 12, 12, 14, and 15 in those seasons ranking 85th, 85th, 121st, and 112th.
Among ACC quarterbacks last season, Armstrong had just 7 touchdown passes to rank 14th and he was just 59th nationally in passing yards per game. The UVA offense as a whole produced the 81st ranked passing attack with 221.0 yards per game. In Armstrong’s case, the new scheme and staff just didn’t mesh with previous success (he is still the school’s record holder with 9,034 passing yards). He chose to transfer, in part, to try to recapture some 2021 magic in his final season.
For Virginia, though, the key in shopping the portal was to try to find someone that could succeed in the system. Muskett, of course, was doing the same from his side of the process. After spring practices, he thinks he found a good fit.
“I love Coach E’s system. It’s very similar to what I ran back at Monmouth,” Muskett said. “More pro style. We want to establish the run game. We want to give our guys open looks at the ball. I’m very comfortable with it. I’m coming in, like Coach E was saying, they didn’t necessarily run the same system, so there is a bit of growing pains with that, but now the guys coming back, it’s their year two in it, so they’re more comfortable with it. I’ve had exposure to it.”
Muskett’s exposure to a similar system produced big numbers for the Hawks. The 6’2”, 210-pounder posted 5,687 passing yards (5th in school history), 51 passing touchdowns (5th in school history), and a 150.14 passing efficiency (1st in school history). He was named to the First-Team All-Big South list twice in his career.
Muskett started 23 games. He helped the team post a 10-5 record his first two seasons, including a bid to the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs in the spring of 2021 (the FCS delayed its fall season due to the pandemic); his final season ended after 8 games due to an injury and the Hawks were 4-4 in those games (including a 7OT loss to Rhode Island).
That playoff appearance produced one of his big performances with 297 yards passing against Sam Houston. In other highlights, he threw for 261 yards and 3 TDs against Lehigh last season and put up a pair of 4 touchdown games as a sophomore with 294 yards and 289 yards against North Alabama and Gardner-Webb, respectively. Virginia quarterback coach Taylor Lamb was the offensive coordinator at GW that year.
“When you go back and you watch him on film, one, he was very, very productive at Monmouth,” Elliott said. “He led his team the way that he needed to lead to be successful. You watch him throw the ball in adverse conditions, and you see that the accuracy is there. That’s always a challenge when you are evaluating because you do a lot of evaluation on tape, especially when you are dealing with the transfer portal. When you got to see him in spring practice, like, okay, now he does throw an accurate ball. You know what, it’s a very catchable ball. Then from there he just continued to be who he is, and he is a guy that’s got a lot of confidence, but he knows how to manage it. He is a team-first guy. He is always going to promote his team, and he just has that ‘it’ factor. It’s hard to describe. When you talk about quarterbacks, you can’t coach it, right, but you know it when you see it, and he just has that presence about him. I think his teammates will attest to that.”
The big question, the one that circles back that pressure word, is whether Muskett can translate that production and ability to the ACC.
The Hoos face NC State, Boston College, North Carolina, Miami, Georgia Tech, Louisville, Duke, and Virginia Tech this year as the conference goes to a format without divisions. Muskett said on the ACC Network that he grew up watching ACC football and that “obviously it’s going to be a jump” so he is aware of the challenge ahead. That doesn’t even account for the season opener against a Tennessee team projected in the top 15 nationally or a road trip to Maryland.
Still, Muskett wants to prove that he belongs and that he can help get the offense on better footing than a year ago. Part of that is familiarity with a similar scheme and part of that is the confidence factor. Either way, he believes a successful year is ahead for the Virginia offense.
“This is my fourth straight year now. So certain little things, whether it’s getting out of a play fake and throwing that dig route on time or just knowing where the back is supposed to be on his check-down route and little things that I’ve had the exposure to and had the opportunity to work through for years now,” Muskett said. “It’s translating to that to the new terminology and then implement it in the system. I’m very comfortable with it, and I think we’re going to be successful this year.”
