By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Like most of the team’s other projected starters, tight end Dakota Twitty played only a few series in the University of Virginia’s spring game last month at Scott Stadium. Still, that was enough to remind fans how much No. 9 means to the Cavaliers’ offense, and it reminded Twitty how much he’d missed football when he was sidelined last season.
A graduate student in the School of Education and Human Development, Twitty is heading into his fifth season in head coach Tony Elliott’s program.
“This is my last year,” said Twitty, who had two receptions for 19 yards in the spring game. “I just want to take advantage of the moments. I don't want to leave anything on the table.”
Hoos back.
— Virginia Football (@UVAFootball) January 3, 2026
Dynamic TE @dakota_twitty is staying home for his fifth year#GoHoos 🔶⚔️🔷 pic.twitter.com/5OnLOdzApc
In Virginia’s first five games last season, the 6-foot-5, 245-pound Twitty caught 11 passes for 129 yards and proved to be a capable blocker, too. The Wahoos averaged 45.6 points and 539.6 yards in those games.
Twitty’s season ended in UVA’s sixth game. On the Hoos’ second play from scrimmage against Louisville, he broke his left ankle, which also suffered ligament damage.
Virginia went on to win that game, 30-27 in overtime, but its offense wasn’t the same after Twitty went down. In the Cavaliers’ final nine games, they averaged 22.6 points and 350.2 yards of total offense.
Other factors contributed to the offense’s decline, but Twitty’s absence “took a toll on us,” Elliott said. “I think you saw it in that Louisville game, just kind of how it deflated the unit a little bit, and then it took us a while to kind of kick it back into gear.”
When Twitty was healthy, UVA often used him and Sage Ennis in two-tight end packages. Without Twitty, the Cavaliers had fewer options in short-yardage situations, Elliott said, and were easier to defend. “And then it puts a lot of pressure on Sage, because now Sage is like the one-man wrecking crew.”
John Rogers, who was a redshirt freshman in 2025, took on a larger role in Twitty’s absence, “and he's giving us everything that he has,” Elliott said. “But he's still a young guy that's trying to learn on the fly.”
Virginia’s coaching staff, Elliott said, sees the tight ends “as the core of the offense. None of us likes to work the core. Nobody likes to do sit-ups and all that kind of stuff. Trust me, I know. When something's wrong with that core, though, you know it. When something’s wrong with the core, you feel it. The whole body is impacted. So whenever you lose the ability to be full strength in your core, it impacts the rest of the body.”
Twitty grew up in Columbus, N.C., a small town about 45 miles southeast of Asheville, and graduated from Thomas Jefferson Classical Academy, a charter school that prepared him well for his academic experience at UVA.
In May 2021, near the end of his 11th-grade year, Twitty committed to Virginia. The Cavaliers’ head coach then was Bronco Mendenhall, and Twitty expected to play wide receiver for Mendenhall in college. In December 2021, however, Mendenhall stepped down, and UVA hired Elliott about a week later. This twist led Twitty and his fellow recruits to re-assess their options.
“A lot of the guys in the class were like, ‘What do we do?’ ” Twitty recalled. “It was kind of last minute.”
As associate head coach at Clemson, Elliott had recruited him, Twitty said, so “I knew him a little bit.” Moreover, Marques Hagans was staying on as receivers coach, and Twitty knew and liked him. And so he stuck with his commitment.
Twitty signed a letter of intent with UVA in December. About two months later, he tore his ACL playing basketball. That injury set him back, and when he arrived on Grounds in the summer of 2022 he “was still kind of a small, scrawny kid,” said Twitty, who weighed about 200 pounds then.
The rehabilitation program he followed in North Carolina wasn’t as comprehensive as it should have been, Twitty said. “If I could look back and do it again, I would probably do it differently, but I didn't really know any better. It was my first time. I didn't have the crazy resources that we have here and the knowledge of what to do.”
By the start of the 2022 season, Twitty still couldn’t fully straighten his leg, and an MRI revealed scar tissue on his graft. Once again he underwent surgery, and once again a lengthy rehab followed.
Twitty didn’t make his UVA debut until 2023. Backing up Malachi Fields at wideout, he appeared in seven games and had one reception (for 7 yards) that season.
The spring of 2024 brought an unexpected opportunity for Twitty. With few tight ends available for practice, UVA coaches asked Twitty if he’d be willing to work at that position temporarily.
“I was real hesitant,” Twitty recalled, “because I was like, ‘I've always been a receiver and I want to be a receiver.’ ”
By lifting weights and following a nutrition plan, however, he’d bulked up to about 220 pounds, and “unless you're like DK Metcalf running a 4.4, a big receiver like that is hard to come by,” Twitty said.
At receiver, he said, he never felt like he was “playing free. And so when I switched to tight end that spring, that was the first time I felt like I was just playing ball. It was just a perfect switch.”
At the end of spring ball in 2024, Elliott gave Twitty two options: remain at tight end or return to receiver. “And I was like, ‘I want to stay, to be honest. I see a lot more opportunity at tight end,’ ” Twitty said. “Also, the way our team was set up, we already had receivers, so I would be able to help the team a lot more at tight end.”