Hoos Looking to Spring Forward

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

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — “First off, it’s good to be back on the grass.”

University of Virginia head football coach Tony Elliott opened his post-practice address to his team with those words Monday evening. The first of the Cavaliers’ 15 spring practices had concluded moments earlier, and Elliott liked much of what he saw.

“It’s a start,” he told his players. “It’s a start. But that’s got to be the floor. It can’t be the ceiling.”

The UVA team that gathered Monday for a two-hour practice looked considerably different from the one that ended the 2024 season in late November. Gone were such players as Malachi Fields, Brian Stevens, Tyler Neville, Kobe Pace, Sackett Wood Jr., Chico Bennett, Anthony Colandrea, Tony Muskett, Kam Butler and Jonas Sanker, though Butler and Sanker were at practice: the former as a defensive analyst and the latter as a spectator.

Since the end of the last season, Virginia has signed 38 players, 25 of whom arrived on Grounds in January. That group includes 19 transfers.

With so many newcomers, Elliott said at his post-practice media availability, the “biggest adjustment is just that you might have to slow down … [and] take it a little bit slower, which isn’t all bad as well, because now you really get an opportunity to focus on fundamentals and the details of what you do. So there’s a little bit of a tradeoff.”

UVA’s veterans include defensive tackle Jahmeer Carter, who’s headed into his sixth season in the program. He anchors a defensive line that has added five transfers: Mitchell Melton (Ohio State), Fisher Camac (UNLV), Jacob Holmes (Fresno State), Cazeem Moore (Elon) and Hunter Osborne (Alabama).

“From a player’s perspective, the more depth you have, the better you compete,” Carter said. “I’m excited for the additions we’ve added to the team, and I think it’s going to be a great spring.”

To help the newcomers’ transition, Carter said Monday, he’s trying to show them “the standard and the culture of the program that Tony Elliott is building. I try to live that out every day. I try to inform the guys not only through my actions but my words as well. That’s first and foremost, and then just talking to them and getting them to understand defense is the next big thing.”

Ten of the transfers play on offense. They include wide receiver Jayden Thomas, who caught 18 passes for 167 yards and two touchdowns for Notre Dame last season.

“It’s definitely a lot bigger than South Bend, the campus I’m used to, but I love it so far” said Thomas, who’s from the Atlanta area. “It’s good to be back in the South, for sure, after spending some time in the Midwest.”

The key to adjusting to a new system and a new playbook, Thomas said, is “pretty simple. It’s just putting in the extra hours. It’s something I’ve basically done my whole life to get to where I am. It’s obviously going to be harder the first few days I’m up here, just trying to flip my brain to not really thinking about what I was doing or the name of a play that was in my old offense, so it’s challenging, but I’ve just got to put in the extra work and extra hours.”

His head coach at Pace Academy was Chris Slade, the former UVA great who now coaches the defensive ends at his alma mater.

“It’s nice to see a familiar face up here,” Thomas said.

As is often the case in the spring, the list of UVA players who are recovering from operations or injuries is a lengthy one. Among those rehabbing this spring are safeties Antonio Clary, KeKe Adams and Caleb Hardy, linebackers Kam Robinson, James Jackson and Trey McDonald, defensive tackle Jason Hammond, defensive end Chase Morrison, punter Daniel Sparks, tailback Noah Vaughn, tight ends Karson Gay and Sage Ennis, and offensive linemen Drake Metcalf, Noah Josey, McKale Boley, Blake Steen, Grant Ellinger, Dane Wleklinski and Houston Curry.

Metcalf, who missed all of last season with an injury, is “not fully cleared, but he’s out there running around,” Elliott said. “He was a non-contact guy for us today, but he won’t get any live contact.”

The injuries have left the Wahoos short-handed at several positions this spring, including the offensive line and linebacker, and they were already thin in the secondary. Even so, Elliott said, he saw increased competition among players during the first practice.

“Day one, they’re eager to get back out on the grass and practice,” he said, “but it definitely looks a little bit different, especially up front, even with the bodies that we’re down on the offensive line in particular. But the new additions and then some of the young guys stepping in was good to see today. And then defensive line-wise we’re probably in solid shape … Really the only position right now that that we don’t quite have the competitive depth that we would like is in the secondary.”

The coaching staff hopes to bolster the secondary when the transfer portal opens again next month. For now, Elliott and his assistants are focused on integrating the newcomers into the program as the Cavaliers work toward their April 12 spring game at Scott Stadium.

“It’s easy for me to get in here and put up a PowerPoint and say, ‘This is what we do,’ ” Elliott said, “but until they get out there and they experience it, it’s a different thing. And then you’ve got to learn who these guys are, what makes them tick, what their strengths are. You have an idea based off of what you’ve seen on film, but it’s different when you actually watch them live.

“So it’s going to be a fun challenge for us this spring, but so far it looks like there’s good chemistry and a good bond between the guys that are here. Now as coaches, it’s our job to come alongside them and pick up where the strength staff left off for the next five or six weeks and make sure we don’t mess them up too much, because they’re in a good spot, but also figure out what each guy is capable of and see how that fits into our system or see how we need to adjust the system to fit the skill sets that we got.”

Virginia’s top two quarterbacks in 2024 were Colandrea and Muskett, so replacing them was a priority when the transfer portal opened in December. The Cavaliers’ newcomers include two quarterbacks: Chandler Morris, who was most recently at North Texas, and Danny Kaelin, who redshirted as a freshman last season at Nebraska. Virginia’s returning players at that position include Gavin Frakes and Grady Brosterhous.

“We’re going to let them compete,” said Elliott, who’s in his fourth year at Virginia.

During the first practice, Morris, Kaelin and Frakes divided most of the snaps, “with Grady kind of getting some reps as well,” Elliott said. “As we get further into spring practice, if there’s some separation then we’ll change it up.”

HEAVY HEARTS: At the start of his press conference Monday evening, Elliott acknowledged the passing of two members of the UVA football family: former assistant coach Danny Wilmer and former safety Corey Mosley.

Wilmer, a longtime member of George Welsh’s staff at UVA, was renowned for his prowess as a recruiter. Mosley, who played for Al Groh and Mike London at Virginia, was only 36 when he died last month.

“They’re in our prayers,” Elliott said.

He also mentioned the death of Mason Alexander, a freshman on the football team at Pittsburgh. Alexander was killed in a car crash this week, and Elliott said he texted Pitt head coach Pat Narduzzi on Monday to let him “know that we support him and are thinking about him, thinking about his team and also thinking about the Alexander family as they deal with the loss of a loved one. So to all those that we lost, that were impacted, I just want everybody to know that we’re thinking about them, we’re praying for them and if there’s anything we can do, just let us know.”

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