Opening Night Approaches for Cavaliers

By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — The University of Virginia football team started training camp early this month with a sizable group of veterans, including six offensive linemen who started at least five games each last season.

Those seasoned linemen did not include Jack Witmer, whose 13 appearances as a Cavalier have all come on special teams. But the 6-foot-7 Witmer, a converted tight end, has earned a spot in the rotation at left tackle, and he’s expected to make his offensive debut Saturday in Virginia’s season opener.

At 6 p.m., UVA takes on Richmond at Scott Stadium.

“Witmer was was one of the best guys this camp, going against some of the top guys on the team, too,” said center Brian Stevens, an All-ACC candidate. “He’s really made that transition from a tight end to a lineman, and I think you don’t really see that a lot of times that quickly. It took him a little while, but his growth has been phenomenal.”

“He’s a big guy. I don’t know what he’s listed at, but he’s a true 6-7. He’s a hard worker, really gets after it, really wanted to study the playbook, and he’s really going to have an opportunity this fall.”

Witmer, a blocker on the kickoff return, field goal and punt units last year, is from the Houston suburb of Cypress, Texas. When he arrived at UVA in 2021, he weighed 243 pounds. He’s now around 300.

“He definitely looks the part,” Virginia offensive line coach Terry Heffernan said, “and he’s playing the part. I’m just really happy with his progression. Jack has had his best camp, he’s played his best football, and he really looks comfortable for the first time as an offensive lineman.”

Witmer, who redshirted in 2021, stayed at tight end in 2022. After that season, though, he switched to offensive tackle. Not long after Witmer’s position change, Heffernan was hired to oversee the Wahoos’ offensive linemen.

“That was kind of our first conversation: ‘Hey, I’m Jack. I’ve never played O-line before, but I’m one of your guys,’ ” Heffernan recalled after practice Tuesday.

Witmer said it probably took him a year “to just get the basics of it down, making sure my kick step felt good, my pad level felt good, getting that two-point stance felt like it should. Coming into this season, I was like, ‘I’m an O-lineman,’ and Heff was really behind me. He was like, ‘We’re not going to talk about you being a tight end anymore. That’s not what we’re thinking of you. You’re an O-lineman, and you’re gonna play like that.’ ”

The learning curve for a player moving from tight end to the line can be significant, Heffernan said.

“I think it begins with how much we bend our knees on the offensive line,” he said. “Our conditioning is being in a bent-knee position and staying low for an extended period of time. There’s no go routes, there’s no stick routes, there’s no anything besides kind of playing low. So that’s a different kind of conditioning from being able to run down the field [as a tighgt end]. It’s being able to stay bent, stay low, and play with leverage. And then there’s just the physicality and the aggressiveness of the position. You can’t let things come to you. You can’t let other people dictate on the line. You’ve got to attack and you’ve got to be the aggressor, which is, I think, a little different from other positions.”

The fall semester began Tuesday at the University, and Witmer started his second year in the McIntire School of Commerce, where his concentrations are finance and information technology.

He committed to the Cavaliers in July 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic. On an unofficial visit to UVA that summer, Witmer recalled, “I kind of just walked around Grounds and was like, ‘This is the place. Love the weather, love the people, love the program, love the school,’ and that’s what made the decision.”

Witmer and his fellow linemen will be charged with protecting quarterback Anthony Colandrea in the season opener. Head coach Tony Elliott announced last week that Colandrea had won the starting job after battling Tony Muskett during camp.

As a true freshman last season, Colandrea started the six games Muskett missed with injuries. To be named the opening-game starter this year is “awesome,” Colandrea said Tuesday. “It’s a blessing. But it doesn’t happen without all these guys in my crew, and that’s a huge part too.”

Colandrea played with reckless abandon at times last year, and that resulted in several untimely turnovers. He said he’s focused this year on “not turning the ball over. You lose games when you turn the ball over.”

At his press conference Tuesday afternoon at John Paul Jones Arena, Elliott said the coaching staff has been “not just challenging AC, but the entire program to take care of the ball. We refer to the ball as the program. So any time you touch the ball, you have the program in your hands.

“So we’ve been stressing that with everybody and putting all of our offensive skill guys through ball-security drills, and then we even took some time with some of our defensive guys, especially on special teams, to teach them proper ball security. But in relation to AC, what I’ve noticed he’s a lot more conscientious, when he pulls it down to run, of keeping [the ball] high and tight. And also from a decision-making standpoint, [on] some of those plays, he feels like he wants to pull the trigger. He’s being a lot more conscientious in understanding the situation that sometimes it’s better to just pull the ball down, throw it away, or run, get more yards, get down, as opposed to putting the ball into jeopardy by throwing it into coverage.”

In 2023, Colandrea set UVA single-season freshman records for completions (154), passing yards (1,958) and touchdown passes (13), and he ranked fourth on the team in rushing (225 yards). He led all Power 5 true freshmen in passing yards last season.

NAMES TO REMEMBER: Injuries at defensive end have pressed freshman Billy Koudelka into service, and he’s been one of the Cavaliers’ best stories this month.

Koudelka, who’s listed at 6-foot-8, 237 pounds, played eight-man football at Virginia Episcopal School in Lynchburg. His father is Steve Koudelka, head men’s lacrosse coach at the University of Lynchburg, a Division III power. The younger Koudelka starred in that sport at VES, too, and could have played lacrosse in college, but he chose to join Elliott’s program as a preferred walk-on.

“He’s tall, he’s lanky, but when he puts his hand on the ground, he plays football,” Elliott said. “He comes from a situation where he has a great background. So we have a lot of young guys battling [at defensive end], and he just happened to be the one that was the furthest along at this point.”

Another true freshman who’s impressed is Ethan Minter, who enrolled at UVA in January. Minter, who rarely played defense at Thomas Dale High in the Richmond area, is backing up All-ACC performer Jonas Sanker at free safety.

“First and foremost, Ethan is a very intelligent football player,” Elliott said. “Played quarterback in high school. You saw within about a week that on paper and in his head he was able to get the playbook down very, very quickly. It just came natural to him. Then you started to see the development of the skill set each day in practice and leadership, too. He’s a young guy that didn’t back down from a leadership perspective. So he started leading his peer group of young guys of first-years. Then you started seeing him having older guys leading him, just because of how he conducted his business.”

IMMEDIATE IMPACT: Since the end of last season, Virginia has added 14 transfers. Twelve are on the depth chart released Tuesday.

Tyler Neville (Harvard) and Sage Ennis (Clemson) are at tight end, Chris Tyree (Notre Dame), Andre Greene Jr. (North Carolina) and Trell Harris (Kent State) are at wide receiver, Ethan Sipe (Dartmouth) is at offensive tackle, Dorian Jones (Cincinnati) is at linebacker, Corey Thomas Jr. (Akron), Kendren Smith (Penn), Jam Jackson (Robert Morris) and Kempton Shine (Eastern Michigan) are in the secondary, and Payton Bunch (Coastal Carolina) is at long-snapper.

The newcomers have fit in well, and “I would say a lot of the credit goes to the other players in the locker room [for] being open to the way that you have to build a roster nowadays,” Elliott said, “and then as a staff we try to be intentional. We look for certain things, guys that we believe that’s going to translate into a smooth transition, and we also start with the first-years too. We treat it the same way.

There’s no hierarchy, so to speak. Everybody who makes a decision to come to UVA is part of the team. Nobody has to earn their right, so to speak.”

OPENING NIGHT: Virginia is 1-1 in season openers under Elliott, whose first game with the Hoos was a 34-17 win over Richmond, an FCS program. He’s understandably wary of the Spiders, who in 2016 spoiled Bronco Mendenhall’s debut as Virginia’s head coach.

“My assessment is we’ve got a really, really good football team coming in here that is not going to believe the hype that an FCS team is not supposed to beat a [Power] Four team,” Elliott said. “They’re going to come here expecting to win. They’re going to be very well-coached, and they’re going to battle for four quarters. We’ve got to play our best football right out the gate, because this is a very capable, experienced football team that’s very well-coached and they’re not going to back down.”

To receive Jeff White’s articles by email, click the appropriate box in this link to subscribe.