Josey Provides Steadying Presence Up Front

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

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — About 20 hours before the start of Virginia’s football game against North Carolina last month, Noah Josey received a phone call from his offensive line coach.

“Come up to my office,” Terry Heffernan instructed Josey.

The Wahoos’ coaching staff had just learned that starting center Brian Stevens would miss the UNC game with an illness. His backup, Ty Furnish, who starts at right guard when Stevens is healthy, would be unavailable against the Tar Heels, too. True freshman center Grant Ellinger is progressing well in practice, but the coaching staff wasn’t sure he was ready for a game of that magnitude, and that meant Josey, a fixture at left guard for the Hoos, was the next man up in the middle of the line.

For a lineman who rarely snaps the ball in practice, that was not an enviable position in which to find himself, but Josey didn’t flinch.

“Obviously, I wasn’t happy about Brian not playing, but it was a great opportunity,” he recalled this week. “I was excited for the opportunity.”

Josey, a 6-foot-5, 318-pound redshirt junior, had “to step up for the team,” Heffernan said, “and he did a really nice job for having never played center [in a game] before.”

On an afternoon when Virginia turned in its least-inspired performance of the season—UNC romped 41-14 at Scott Stadium—Josey had only one significant error. His errant shotgun snap on first-and-goal from the Carolina 1-yard line derailed Virginia’s first drive.

“Every center that’s ever played has probably got at least one of those. It happens,” Stevens said.

“That play was definitely unfortunate,” Josey said. “I got a little too trigger-happy down there on the goal line, but I feel like I recovered pretty well. I graded out to about 85, so it was a pretty good grade out for me. I was definitely lacking on some of the nuances of center. There’s some things at every position that you only get with snaps and playing time.”

For the Cavaliers, a bye week followed their loss to Carolina. When they took the field again for a game, they did so with the customary starting offensive line: McKale Boley at left tackle, Josey at left guard, Stevens at center, Furnish at right guard, and Blake Steen at right tackle.

Not coincidentally, perhaps, Virginia rushed for 170 yards and two touchdowns in its 24-19 upset of then-No. 23 Pitt at Acrisure Stadium in Pittsburgh.

“The guys were very deflated after North Carolina, understandably so,” Heffernan said, “and they kind of worked through that on the bye week and then said, ‘Hey, we’re going to change our trajectory.’ That’s what they did last week in practice, and I think they felt really confident in the game plan and went out and executed. It was a very calm demeanor on the sideline, which I thought was great.”

UNC recorded 10 sacks against Virginia, and the offensive line took most of the blame.

“Everybody in this building challenged us coming into last week,” Josey said, “and I feel like everybody took that challenge head on. Nobody was discouraged by it. It was really motivating for us and we knew that we were better than the performance we put out there [against UNC]. So we just had to go out there and show it.”

Having all the offensive linemen in their usual spots was crucial, Josey said. “With how many snaps we’ve all played together, it makes it a lot easier. You’re not guessing as much on what a person is going to do. There can be less communication, and sometimes in those situations less is more. You can focus on just playing fast, which is a big key.”

Josey, who’s from Brentwood, Tenn., a suburb of Nashville, enrolled at UVA in 2021. He played in only one game as a true freshman that fall and thus retained that season of eligibility. He started four games in 2022 and then became a full-time starter last year.

He’s become accustomed to playing through pain. In December 2022, Josey had surgery to repair two herniated disks in his back. A long rehabilitation period followed, but he played in all 12 of UVA’s games in 2023.

Then came two more offseason surgeries: one on a hip and the other on a shoulder. For the second straight year, Josey missed spring ball while rehabbing, but he returned for training camp and has been a pillar up front.

“He’s been really, really steady,” head coach Tony Elliott said. “Shows up every week. Does his job. It’s almost like, okay, you don’t worry about what’s going on at left guard. You feel really good that he’s going to take care of business. He’s been leading, too. That’s been the awesome thing: He’s really embraced his role as a leader keeping those guys focused, keeping those guys going.”

Josey was named ACC Offensive Lineman of the Week for his performance in Virginia’s Sept. 21 win over Coastal Carolina in Conway, S.C. His blocking that afternoon helped the Hoos amass 384 yards rushing, their highest single-game total since 1998.

“He’s just had a great year,” Heffernan said of No. 77. “I think he’s shown a tremendous amount of growth and development. He spent the offseason kind of rebuilding his body for the struggles to come. He’s proven durable, he takes care of his body, he’s got a great routine.

“The thing for me is, he’s really bought into the process. I’ll go in the O-line room and he’s in there all times of the day just watching tape. He asks great questions, he brings other clips to the meetings for the other guys to see, and he’s just fallen in love with the process of preparing for the game.”

Elliott names four captains every week, each of whom has a chance to address the rest of the team after a practice ahead of the game. Josey was one of the captains for the Pitt game, and he shared an old proverb he’d learned from one of his coaches.

“It’s that a man never crosses through the same stream twice, because it’s not the same stream and he’s not the same man,” Josey said. “So, basically the point of that is every week is a new week, every game is a new game. The man you are for that game is built during that week of preparation. I was really just trying to hone in on how important, especially, Tuesday and Wednesday’s practices are for getting the game plan down and getting ready to play.”

An applied statistics major, Josey is on track to graduate in the spring. He arrived at UVA hoping to be admitted into the McIntire School of Commerce. When that didn’t work out, Josey said, he looked for a major “that I thought would help me kind of get into the finance industry. That’s what I want to do. And statistics is extremely data-driven, and I thought that would be a valuable skill.”

It’s been a good fit for him, Josey said. “I’m big into data, I’m big into numbers. I feel like everything has to be backed up by a statistic. If not, it’s anecdotal and I don’t really think it’s valid. So I think data drives the world.”

Three regular-season games remain for Virginia, which needs another win to become bowl-eligible for the first time since 2021. UVA plays at No. 8 Notre Dame on Saturday, hosts No. 14 SMU next weekend, and then visits Virginia Tech on Nov. 30.

In a game to air on NBC, the Cavaliers (5-4) take on the Fighting Irish (8-1) at 3:30 p.m. Saturday. Virginia is 0-4 all-time against Notre Dame.

“It’s an exciting opportunity,” Josey said Tuesday. “That’s the word [Elliott] used after practice today. I thought it was a great word, opportunity. This is a really, really good defensive front and defense as a whole that we’re going against, a bunch of really talented guys who have played a lot of snaps together. They play really fast. So I think it’s going to be a great kind of check to see where we’re at right now this late in the season and see really how much we’ve grown together.”

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