Hoos Ready to Get the Ball Rolling

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

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Much has changed in both football programs since Sept. 6, 2025, when NC State edged visiting Virginia 35-31 at Carter-Finley Stadium.

Players have transferred in. Others have transferred out. Freshmen have arrived, and older players have exhausted their college eligibility. All of which makes preparing for a season opener no easy feat in an era marked by prolific roster turnover.

“It is challenging,” UVA head coach Tony Elliott said Tuesday at the Hardie Center. “I just got done talking with offense, defense, special teams, just about my thoughts on personnel. And it's difficult because there's a lot of guys [on the opposing team] that you know are good players, but you don't have enough film to validate it, because they're moving from place to place, and tracking down that film is very difficult.

“So it does pose some additional challenges. But I think the biggest thing with any opener is, you’ve got to focus more on what you do and ... things that you see throughout the course of camp. A beautiful thing about where we are from a team is, what we do offensively is going to prepare our defense for pretty much anything that they're going to see, and then vice versa. With the complexity and versatility of what we do on defense, it prepares our offense.”

The Cavaliers’ fifth season under Elliott starts Saturday at 61,500-seat Scott Stadium. At 3:30 p.m., Virginia hosts NC State, which is in its 14^th year under Dave Doeren.

UVA officials are optimistic the game will sell out, and that’s welcome news to the team. Tight end Dakota Twitty noted Tuesday that home-field advantage helped the Wahoos pull out close games last season.

“The fans at Scott Stadium, they lit that place up, and it really makes a difference,” Twitty said. “I hope they really know how much we truly appreciate them, and how much of a difference they truly made in a lot of our games. So I'm excited to get back out there and see those people.”

Twitty is in his fifth year at UVA, so games at Scott Stadium are nothing new for him. For newcomers like defensive end Nnanna Anyanwu, however, Saturday will be even more special.

“I can just imagine,” said Anyanwu, a transfer from UTSA. “We did a little walk-through [at Scott Stadium] the other day, and being in that tunnel and hearing the echoes and imaging how many people can be in the stands, it is really exciting. I’m really looking forward to it.”

Ready to roll‼️#GoHoos #SellOutScott pic.twitter.com/XYI0IpJpJy

— Virginia Cavaliers (@VirginiaSports) August 25, 2026

The Hoos’ scouting report on the Wolfpack might be less than comprehensive, but Elliott knows CJ Bailey will test his defense. A 6-foot-6, 218-pound junior, Bailey is a dual-threat quarterback who threw 25 touchdown passes last season.

Elliott said he expects Doeren to “ride that Heisman hopeful that he has there. I wouldn't change up too much if I got that guy at quarterback.”

Against UVA last year in Raleigh, N.C., Bailey rushed six times for 44 yards and two touchdowns and completed 16 of 23 passes for 200 yards and another TD. He wasn’t intercepted.

“I don't know if you can contain him,” Elliott said. “I think you’ve just got to maybe hopefully minimize the impact that he has on the game. Going back and watching him, you realize just how good he really is. He's one of the best in the country, and he's multi-faceted.

“He can beat you from the pocket with his arm. He can beat you outside the pocket with his arm. He can beat you running between the tackles with his legs, and he can beat you outside the pocket with his legs. And so we’ve got to do a great job of having rush-lane integrity. We can't give him opportunities to escape the pocket. We’ve got to make sure that we disguise whatever we can disguise pre-snap and not giving him the ability to really know exactly what he's going to get post-snap, and see if you can maybe throw off his timing a little bit.”

After falling to the Wolfpack last season, UVA won its next seven games. The Cavaliers finished the year with a program-record 11 wins.

“I think it really motivated us,” Twitty said of the loss in Raleigh. “Not to say that we weren't already motivated, but we realized the margin for error is really small. I feel like we played a pretty solid game all the way around. We had a few mistakes at the very end that were very costly for us, and I feel like we took that and really learned, and the program as a whole grew from that experience.”

Elliott said: “I hope we don't have to learn like we did last year, because that was a tough locker room. Again, this is a group that has a ton of potential, but they haven't performed together yet. So we gotta try and find out a lot about ourselves [Saturday], hopefully on the right side of the win-loss column.”

In the media’s preseason poll, UVA was picked to finish sixth and NCSU seventh in the 17-team ACC.

MULTIPLE OPTIONS: Virginia has a deep, talented group of tailbacks led by Jekail Middlebrook, a transfer from Middle Tennessee State. His running mates include returners Xavier Brown, Noah Vaughn and Xay Davis and transfer Peyton Lewis (Tennessee).

“I feel good with all of them playing,” Elliott said. “I don't have a problem with any of the guys playing and touching the ball and being in a good position, any situation that comes up in the game. So I think that's a luxury.”

Brown is in his fifth year and Vaughn his fourth year at Virginia. Davis played in four games as a true freshman last year, including UVA’s win over Missouri in the Gator Bowl. Davis carried 12 times for 41 yards against Mizzou.

“Typically, you go into [an opener saying], ‘Well, I got a couple of young guys that I'm not sure about,’ but Xay Davis has done everything we've asked him to do,” Elliott said. “He proved it last year in the bowl game that he can function at a high level in tough situations, and he's only gotten better this offseason.”

Brown missed the final seven games of the 2025 season after tearing his ACL. The biggest concerns for Brown, Elliott said, are “his comfort level and his conditioning level coming off the injury. But he had some really, really tough physical big runs in this game last year. So I feel good with all of those guys playing.”

Elliott said this was his message to running backs coach Keith Gaither: “Roll ‘em, keep ‘em fresh, change it up.”

MARQUEE EVENT: Virginia and NC State are among the few teams playing on Week 0 of the season, and an impressive group of high school players is expected to attend the game during what Elliott called a “really big” recruiting weekend for his program.

“Probably the biggest one we've had since we've been here,” he said. “It helps that we're the only show in town. But then also, too, I think a lot of recruits are intrigued, based off of what they've seen happen in the development of the program.

“It's on national TV, and you're playing a very, very good opponent with some really, really good players. So it's a great opportunity for us to showcase. So the only thing we need now is just Scott Stadium to be sold out, and then it'd be a perfect recruiting weekend.”

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