Virginia quarterback Tony Muskett throws a pass during the first scrimmage of the preseason at Scott Stadium. ~ Photo by Kris Wright/TheSabre.com
The Virginia football team rolled into a new week of practice Monday with almost two full weeks of work complete and a scrimmage under its belt. As UVA now enters the full pads phase of the preseason on a regular basis, preparations hit another gear.
Cavalier coach Tony Elliott said that position battles – including the highly visible positions of quarterback and cornerback – will begin to crystallize as these workouts progress. The Hoos open the season against Richmond on August 31 at Scott Stadium with a 6 p.m. kickoff.
“I thought both the quarterbacks, they’re battling. Both of them made a couple of big plays,” Elliott said. “Still have to push through the competition and make the routine plays and not press and not try to win the job on every single play. Some of the guys around them have to do a better job of helping too, just overall.”
The two quarterbacks in question, of course, are Tony Muskett and Anthony Colandrea. Both players started games last fall with neither gaining a dominant statistical edge in those appearances.
Muskett, who had been a three-year starter at Monmouth before his transfer to Virginia, turned in his fourth 1,000-yard passing season despite a shoulder injury that happened against Tennessee in the season opener. He completed 93 of 147 passes (63.3%) for 1,031 passing yards, 6 touchdown, and 5 interceptions. Muskett added 66 yards rushing with 1 TD, while being sacked 22 times. He started the wins against William & Mary and North Carolina. Colandrea completed 154 of 246 passes (62.6%) for 1,958 passing yards, 13 touchdowns, and 9 interceptions. He added 225 yards rushing, while being sacked 21 times. Colandrea started the win against Duke.
Flipping to the defense, the cornerbacks are in a similar position. Kempton Shine, who transferred in from Eastern Michigan, had the best scrimmage of the players in Elliott’s estimation. Shine started started 40 games at EMU with 176 career tackles and 27 passes defended. Jam Jackson, Malcolm Greene, Dre Walker, and others continue to battle it out as well. With an eye on run support as one key character trait for the corners, Elliott said that full padded practices will help the evaluations moving forward.
In general, though, the defense had the edge in the first scrimmage.
“Saturday’s scrimmage felt like in totality that the defense came out with a little bit of an upper hand,” Elliott said. “I thought they had good energy. I saw what I needed to see. Really challenged our pass rushers to get back to the quarterback and I thought they did a better job.”
Special Teams Leadership
Throughout the offseason, special teams has remained a hot topic at different checkpoints. Early in spring practice, the Spring Game, preseason media conversations, and now early in fall practices, there have been questions about those specific units.
The Hoos return their two specialists in field goal kicker Will Bettridge and punter Daniel Sparks, who both had solid statistical efforts in the middle of last season’s 3-win campaign. Bettridge made 18 of 21 field goal attempts in 2023 and that 85.7% success rate ranked 16th among Football Bowl Subdivision kickers. He’s one of five returning FBS players to make at least that mark on a minimum of 21 attempts. He’s 8-11 in his career on kicks of 40 or more yards. Sparks earned second-team All-ACC honors in 2022 when he averaged 45.9 yards per kick and then followed it up with a 42.9 average in 2023. That ranked in the top 40 nationally.
Beyond that duo, however, questions remain. Per BCF Toys’ FEI ratings for special teams, UVA tied for 110th out of 133 teams in its special teams ratings (SFEI), which are ‘opponent-adjusted data representing the scoring advantage per special teams event a team would be expected to have on a neutral field against an average opponent, calculated from the results of non-garbage, regulation possessions in FBS vs. FBS games.’ Coach Elliott said this spring that “we weren’t very good on special teams” and that Virginia “put some bad stuff on tape” when asked about the output there.
With the NCAA clearing the way for analysts to help on the field in practice, there’s some hope that more eyes and more hands on deck will help UVA make progress. But the added focus and more available coaches may not make the dent the Hoos hope for if the players aren’t part of the push. The players trying to make sure that happens are some of the older voices on the team, players say.
“I think one of the areas we needed to assess was special teams last year,” Virginia center Brian Stevens said. “We lost the battle in a lot of areas there. This year seems to be a better attitude toward it. Jonas [Sanker is] being one of [leadership voices]. He’s not just going to be a first-team All-ACC safety that needs a break off, he’s going to be the gunner, he’s going to do his part too. There’s a lot of guys there. Sackett Wood, that’s big him coming back. He’s been a great voice in that special teams room.”
“Pretty much the same leaders you’d say throughout the football team,” said UVA safety and Akron transfer Corey Thomas Jr., who noted that you have to be on special teams as a versatile guy like himself. “Guys like Jonas, Antonio Clary, Kendren Smith, Kam Robinson, Malachi Fields – just guys that know how important special teams is and understand how vital it is to winning a football game.”
Virginia Offensive Line Cohesion
Speaking of Stevens, he figures to be in the middle – both literally and figuratively – of the offensive line’s development again this season. While he missed some recent practice time and sat out the first scrimmage as a precaution, Stevens helped Virginia make some strides last season when he moved to the center spot in game three. He started the final 10 games there.
By the end of the year, Stevens had earned honorable mention All-ACC recognition and he owned the fourth highest Pro Football Focus grade (77.3) for centers in the country. That included being the top-graded run-blocking center in the ACC while allowing only one sack in pass protection. He enters this season on the Rimington Trophy Watch List, the award for the best center in the nation.
The Hoos made some progress on offense last season. They climbed from 126th nationally in scoring offense (17.0 points per game) and 103rd in total offense (344.1 yards per game) to 95th in scoring offense (23.3) and 78th in total offense (368.8). It’s unclear how much of that was the Malik Washington effect after his record-setting season as a receiver, but the offensive line stabilizing for a stretch before dealing with late-schedule injuries certainly had to be a contributing factor.
Stevens said building the needed trust up front is a big part of that development as an offensive line. Virginia brought back all five of the starters that finished the season and seven players in total that started at least one game in 2023. That alone could lead to another step forward in the Hoos’ eyes.
“A lot of the O-Line hadn’t played together,” Stevens said. “You’ve got to not fabricate trust, but genuinely build that trust because if you can’t trust that guy next to you, sometimes you may try to do too much, try to be Superman, do two man’s job. You do that, you get beat. You do too many things, it results in a lot of losses.”
How Do Transfers Learn New Lingo?
UVA brought in 14 transfers this year via the portal with players joining at tight end, cornerback, receiver, quarterback, long snapper, and offensive line. As those players adapt to school surroundings, there is also the task of learning new schemes with the program. Many times, and this comes with coaches that join new staffs too, there is a layer to learn beyond plays and drills, though.
Call it a language barrier. While concepts carry over from one coach and one program to another, the lingo, names, and descriptors can vary. Some of Virginia players that came in the spring talked about getting a “lot more comfortable” as the practices progress like Thomas, who credited defensive backs coach Curome Cox with doing a great job breaking down installs to make the verbiage easy to grasp.
Still, new players have to study to get it all down consistently. Here are what a few transfer had to say about that part of the preparation.
“Back in the day, I was told when it was a spelling test, you’ve got to write things out,” Thomas said with a smile. “You’ve got to write things three times, write each word three times. So I’m a bigger writer. I’m constantly writing notes, rewriting the same thing. I’m a big note taker and go back over them later.”
“It’s just memorizing it every day, re-saying it every day. It’s not too hard, but we learn something new every day, but it’s just like homework a test – you’ve got to study,” Shine said. ”Visually, I write it down a lot. I ask questions continuously. That’s me. Even sometimes, Coach Cox gets mad with me asking questions all the time.”
“The way we do practice is we’ll have a script and it’s maybe 50 or 60 plays on there. The way I do it is continuing to write those things out,” Notre Dame transfer receiver Chris Tyree said. “Then if I have any questions, I have a good relationship with the players and coaches here so any time I have a question, I can just go up to their office or ask somebody in the locker room. Another thing is just watching film with the players. That really helps a lot. So just continuing to memorize the plays and seeing it visually on film and then coming out in practice is beneficial to learning plays as well.”
Virginia Extra Points
- In terms of special teams at the scrimmage, Coach Elliott said that he saw some progress with the kicking game. He noted that the heaviest focus so far on special teams has been on field goal and punt protection because 2 blocked kicks proved costly in one-score games last season.
- The competition at long snapper right now is between Coastal Carolina transfer Payton Bunch, the leader, and Luke Byrne and Hayden Rollison as the backups. Rollison is picking up work there as a tight end. Linebacker Stevie Bracey worked on it in the spring, but a meniscus injury right before the start of preseason practices is expected to cause him to miss the whole season.
- Another Virginia injury update is the loss of Xavier Brown at running back for at least a couple of weeks with a shoulder injury. That’s pushed Jack Griese, who sat out the spring with his own injury, into more work and a possibly bigger role.
- Coach Elliott said that offensive linemen Brian Stevens (day to day) and McKale Boley (couple of weeks) should not miss game time, though they did sit out the scrimmage. Receiver JR Wilson had a knee scope that will cost him to miss the start of the season, while Bryce Carter is dealing with a knee injury that will be on a longer timetable as well. Many of the other players dealing with injuries or rehab like receiver Chris Tyree and James Jackson are folding back into practice this week.
