Wilson Ready to Get Rolling

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

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — When he felt the searing pain in his knee, JR Wilson feared the worst. He’d missed his senior football season at Canarsie High School in Brooklyn, N.Y., while recovering from a torn ACL, and now, a few days into his third training camp at the University of Virginia, he was injured again.

“In that moment, I thought my season was over,” Wilson said, and he grew more anxious as he waited for the results of his MRI.

“That was really the hardest part,” Wilson said. “I thought, ‘This could be my season or it could not be my season.’ ”

Adam Mims, who coaches the Cavaliers’ wide receivers, did his best to put Wilson at ease. “JR had dealt with an ACL before,” Mims recalled this week, “and, of course, the first thing that you think of is the worst-case scenario. But at that point, we didn’t know what the issue was. I tell my guys any time they get hurt that we can’t worry about anything, we’ve got to pray about everything.”

Those prayers were answered. Wilson learned his injury wasn’t season-ending. “I’m just grateful that it wasn’t something major,” he said.

A 6-foot-4, 212-pound junior, Wilson had arthroscopic surgery on his knee in August, after which “he vehemently attacked rehab,” Mims said. “He got back way sooner than we even expected him to get back, and that’s just a testament to him and his character and just how he’s grown up and matured over the last couple years.”

Wilson is expected to make his 2024 debut Saturday at Scott Stadium, where UVA (3-1 overall, 1-0 ACC) hosts Boston College (4-1, 1-0) at noon.

“I’m excited about his return,” head coach Tony Ellliott said.

Wilson was cleared to play on the eve of the Wahoos’ most recent game, a Sept. 21 visit to Coastal Carolina, but with a bye week coming up, the coaching staff decided it made sense to give him a little more recovery time.

“I’m back out here feeling 100 percent,” Wilson said. “It’s great to be back. It’s everything.”

As a true freshman in 2022, Wilson appeared in seven games, with two starts, and caught two passes for eight yards. He played in all 12 games last season, starting five of them, and had 10 receptions for 98 yards. His potential was tantalizing, but not until spring practice this year did Wilson began to consistently shine. His progress was the talk of the spring for the Cavaliers’ offense.

“I like this 2024 JR Wilson,” offensive coordinator Des Kitchings said in April.

“He’s had a great spring,” Elliott said after the Blue-White spring game. “He’s a guy that we saw flashes [from] as soon as we got here, and then it’s just taken a little time to kind of figure things out, but now he’s really comfortable in the system. He sees an opportunity to have a big role, and I’m really, really pleased and proud of the spring that he’s had.”

For Wilson, whose hometown is Queens, N.Y., to experience a setback in training camp after making so much progress in the spring was “very frustrating at first,” he said, “but everything happens for a reason. I just took the situation and tried to make it positive, helping my teammates and encouraging them, because the best way to make a bad situation better is to just go about having positive mindset. It’s not doing me any good to think negative about the situation. So I came to rehab every day with a positive mindset, and I healed pretty fast. Overall, I just feel great, ready to compete.”

Through four games, another 6-foot-4 wideout, Malachi Fields, leads the Cavaliers with 24 receptions for 349 yards and two touchdowns. Wilson’s availability “takes a little bit of stress off Malachi from a snap count standpoint,” Elliott said. “I think he gives you similar production as Malachi. In my years of calling plays, when you had that two-headed monster, especially into the boundary with two guys that can stay fresh and keep attacking, it really, really helps the offense.”

Wilson will add “competitive depth to our room,” Mims said. “He’s a guy that’s played. He’s a guy that’s seen success. So he’s only going to help us out.”

Wideout is the Cavaliers’ deepest position group, and that’s helped them overcome injuries to Wilson, Suderian Harrison and Trell Harris, each of whom has missed at least one game this season.

“It’s testament to [the group], to be quite honest with you,” Mims said. “They’ve worked, they’ve had to struggle, they’ve had to fail, but they’ve learned how to navigate themselves through it and they haven’t cowered down to the challenge of stepping up.

“We have the mindset in our room, and really on our team, that when one man goes down, it’s the next man up. I tell those guys all the time that every single one of them is a play away. So you have to prepare yourself as if you’re a starter, and for the most part we’ve done a pretty good job of that.”

Boston College is a hard-nosed team that will look to dominate the line of scrimmage Saturday, and Elliott has challenged his players to match the Eagles’ physicality. The Hoos’ wideouts won’t be battling in the trenches, but they “need to have the same kind of mindset,” Mims said. “I tell our guys all the time that there’s nothing in the rule book that says receivers have to play soft. We want to play hard, we want to be a violent group in the passing game and in the blocking game.”

Wilson is on his third jersey number at Virginia. He wore No. 86 as a freshman and No. 17 last year. He’s now No. 6, the number his close friend Demick Starling, who now plays for Western Kentucky, wore as a Cavalier.

“I just wanted to honor him,” Wilson said.

An American studies major, Wilson has changed in other ways since enrolling at UVA as an 18-year-old in the summer of 2022.

“I feel like I’ve changed a whole lot,” he said, “just seeing different things, going through life experiences, and just learning how to really maneuver as an adult on my own. I feel like my mindset has changed about everything. How I go about things is very different. I’m just overall a whole changed person from when I first got here.”

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