Tony Muskett decided to transfer from Monmouth after last season for a chance to prove himself at a higher level. He’ll get that chance at Virginia where coach Tony Elliott officially announced him as the starter on Monday.
“I thought the quarterbacks battled their tails off and gave us everything that we needed to be able to make a decision,” Elliott said. “Coming out of that second scrimmage after evaluating it, Tony Muskett will be our starting quarterback.”
The Cavaliers recruited Muskett out of the transfer portal last winter to improve the depth in the room and provide competition with two-year back-up quarterback Jay Woolfolk. After quickly picking up the UVA system in the spring while Woolfolk focused mainly on baseball, Muskett appeared to have the inside track to the starting job. Woolfolk, of course, ended up stepping away from football to entirely devote his time to baseball this summer.
That left Muskett and true freshman Anthony Colandrea, who also enrolled in January, as the mostly likely contenders to start at QB. That duo took the majority of the reps in the spring as well. Muskett simply has significantly more experience so it was his race to lose for all intents and purposes.
Colandrea flashed his potential and moxie frequently in his opportunities to at least make it an interesting. After the first scrimmage of the preseason, Elliott even said that Colandrea was “pushing” Muskett, though he didn’t say for the starting job specifically. Virginia played a second scrimmage at the end of last week and Muskett sealed the deal for good in that setting.
“Colandrea, man, he battled all the way to the end – really excited about the development and progress that he made,” Elliott said. “Tony had a great week last week. Challenged him to show me some of the true leadership things that I know that he has. He was a lot more vocal, took a lot more command of it, and then played well in the scrimmage.”
With the most likely outcome now official, Muskett will prepare for the season as the starter and chase the chance to prove himself at the ACC level in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS). He started 23 games for Monmouth in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) and helped the team post a 10-5 record his first two seasons, including a bid to the 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).
Playing in a similar system to what Virginia has installed under Elliott and offensive coordinator Des Kitchings, Muskett left his name in the school record books several times over. The 6’2”, 210-pounder recorded 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). Those types of stats have continued within UVA practices as Kitchings mentioned Muskett’s efficiency and passing accuracy regularly over the past six months.
The Cavaliers need a more efficient effort from the quarterback position in order to turn around the offense after it struggled last season. 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 quarterbacks completed just 54.1% of their pass attempts in 2022.
Muskett gets his first chance to prove himself and to try to get the offense in a better place in less than two weeks. Virginia opens the season in Nashville on Saturday, Sept. 2 against Tennessee at noon.
“Muskett continually was consistent every day,” Kitchings said. “Through 15 practices, that’s a great accomplishment for him. Taking care of the football, finding completions in the pass game, getting us into the right check if necessary – so he checked the box in all those things. Then you look at it when we actually play football in practice, when he was out there, we moved the ball and gave us a chance to score touchdowns.”
