Hoos Benefiting From Clarity at Quarterback

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

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — In 2024, University of Virginia head football coach Tony Elliott didn’t name a starting quarterback until a week before the season opener.

There’s no such suspense this year. Early this month, Elliott announced that Chandler Morris would begin training camp as the Cavaliers’ No. 1 quarterback.

Brennan Armstrong and Tony Muskett took most of the first-team snaps during camp in 2022 and 2023, respectively, and it was clear where each stood on the depth chart. Last year, however, Muskett and Anthony Colandrea alternated running the first-team offense for the first three weeks of camp until Elliott declared Colandrea the victor in that battle.

Neither Muskett nor Colandrea is still in the program, and the Wahoos added two quarterbacks from the transfer portal after the 2024 season ended: Morris (North Texas) and Daniel Kaelin (Nebraska), both of whom enrolled at UVA in January.

Morris, a graduate student, is heading into his sixth year of college, and so he’s vastly more experienced than Kaelin, a redshirt freshman. Elliott decided long before the start of training camp that Morris would take most of the snaps with the first-team offense.

“I think the advantage is just clear direction in the summer to foster leadership in the locker room,” Elliott said Wednesday afternoon after his team’s first practice. “There’s more of a consistent voice than trying to have two guys that are battling for the position and for leadership.”

The timing of the decision allowed Morris to provide “leadership throughout the course of the summer so that the offense can gel, the team can gel,” Elliott said. “So when we hit the grass, we’re not trying to make up that time.”

UVA is the fourth college for Morris, whose father, Chad, coached with Elliott at Clemson. Morris spent one season at Oklahoma and three seasons at TCU before transferring to North Texas, where in 2024 he completed 62.9 percent of his passes (322 for 512) for 3,774 yards and 31 touchdowns.

“One of Chandler’s strengths is throwing the ball on the move out of the pocket,” Virginia offensive coordinator Des Kitchings said, “but also being a good decision-maker with that ball.”

Kitchings smiled. “I hate to say it, but he sees the game kind of like a coach. You hate to say, ‘Oh, he’s a coach’s son,’ because that stuff doesn’t always work. I can promise you that. I’ve had experiences with other coaches’ sons, and I’ve had experiences with former NFL players’ sons that don’t pan out.

“But the conversations that Chandler and I have had have been really good conversations. We talked about offensive football and attacking the defense and kind of what he sees and what he’s not comfortable with. Our biggest thing is, this guy may have run a certain play a thousand times. We’d be idiots not to run that play for him, because of comfort level, and we adapt to him.”

The quarterback competition last year was necessary, Kitchings said, because so little separated Colandrea and Muskett, but he acknowledged it might have been slowed the offense’s progress.

Kitchings expects Kaelin to play this season but said the coaching staff knew that in Morris “we have a guy that has played a gazillion snaps and has got a very good kind of aura about himself. People migrate to him, so all that said, let’s name him the quarterback and give this thing some direction.”

Morris, who’s known Elliott for more than a decade, was one of the four players who represented the Cavaliers last week at ACC Kickoff in Charlotte, N.C. He was asked about his decision to transfer to UVA.

He’s had a “a roller coaster of a career,” Morris said, and when he entered the transfer portal he asked himself what he truly wanted in his final college season.

“And it was to be around good people,” Morris said. “That was something very important to me. I know Coach Elliott is a great person. I knew he was going to have great people on his staff. I wasn’t too familiar with many people on his staff. I got to come up on a visit, and it was phenomenal.”

After the Wahoos practiced on a hot, humid afternoon Wednesday, several players were available for interviews at the Hardie Center, including tailback Xavier Brown and wide receiver Andre Greene Jr.

Knowing that Morris will lead the offense “gives us a little bit more sense of direction,” Brown said. “Everybody’s still repping with both guys, but I think it gives us a sense of direction and just more confidence … just an idea of what we’re looking at going into season, so we can build more chemistry.”

Greene said: “It’s great, because you get a chance to build a relationship with [Morris].”

That Morris has seen a little bit of everything as a college player is clear to his teammates. “One hundred percent,” Greene said. “[UVA’s coaches] give him a lot of freedom, and he’s definitely a guy who knows ball. He’s definitely a guy who’s been immersed in football for a long time.”

Brown praised Morris’ leadership.

“Off the field he’s brought the offense together a lot,” Brown said, “and I think that’s something we haven’t done as much in the past, just trying to bring everybody together to mesh as an offense more so we’re all on the same page out on the field.”

Morris said he’s “not the one who’s always going to step up and say something. I think I’m going to get out there and sweat with my guys and show that I’m there by their side through it all. But also, too, in the huddle, that’s when I’m going to step up and I’m going to really say something and really break it down and command the best out of my guys around me.”

He’s not the only leader in the locker room, Morris stressed. “We’ve got a group of 12 of us that really command everyone’s best and show up every single day and do that. I think it’s a great balance. I think I’ve got a lot of help on this team leadership-wise, and I just came in and kind of felt it out, and I really learned that quickly, that we’ve got a lot of guys that are going to be able to help out with the leadership roles.”

The Cavaliers are coming off a season in which they finished 5-7 overall and 3-5 in the ACC. Virginia’s fourth season under Elliott begins Aug. 30, when Coastal Carolina visits Scott Stadium for a 6 p.m. game.

In the preseason media poll released Wednesday, UVA was picked to finish 14^th among the 17 teams in the ACC. Elliott said he would mention the poll to his team and “try to use it as some motivation, but at the end of the day, I think this group, this team knows that nothing externally is going to get us to where we want to go. It’s all internally in the way that we think, the way that we approach things.”

This is the most talented roster Elliott has had at UVA, and he’s going to push hard during camp.

“Today was just a start,” he told his players Wednesday before they headed inside. “It wasn’t a bad day, but it wasn’t our best. There was a lot of want-to, a lot of effort, but we need more precision.”

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