Virginia and NC State meet this week for a crucial early-season litmus test, as both teams are hoping that this fall marks a clear step forward from 2024. In Virginia’s case, that means getting to a bowl game for the first time under Tony Elliott, and a win in Raleigh would pave the way for a probable 4-0 start.
It’s Elliott’s fourth season in Charlottesville, and it’s gettin’ into now-or-never territory for his tenure. Superficially, 2024 represented a modest amount of progress, as UVA went from
three wins to five, but a look under the hood shows us that no real improvements were made on a down-to-down basis. The Hoos’ best win came at Pittsburgh, and they lost six of their last seven. Five of those six losses were by double figures.
In an effort to turn things around, UVA ushered in the revenue share era by adding a ton of guys through the portal—32 transfers in total, with over 120 college starts to their credit. The Cavs had a lot of starters on both sides of the ball to replace (14 in total) and added about as much experience as they could, though of course we aren’t talking about a ton of power-conference experience here.
Virginia has 19 guys on the roster in their sixth or seventh college seasons—three seventh-year guys! They’re calling them the old-ass Cavs, folks. A lot of people go to college for seven years. They’re called doctors football players.
Leading the group, and the most important add by far, is sixth-year quarterback Chandler Morris, who is coming off a productive season at North Texas in which he threw for 3800 yards, 31 touchdowns, and 12 interceptions. He also had stints at Oklahoma and TCU.
UVA’s passing game was dreadful in ‘24, ranking 114th in success rate and 115th in EPA/play. Primary starter Anthony Colandrea averaged just 6.6 yards per attempt, and collectively UVA quarterbacks threw 14 interceptions.
Morris clearly is better than anyone the Cavaliers had on hand last season, and he threw for 264 yards and two scores on 9.8 yards per attempt in the team’s opener against Coastal Carolina. While Coastal clearly is not very good, that performance is nonetheless encouraging, and importantly for UVA, Morris has the track record to suggest he can actually be an above-average passer consistently. And that’ll be a must for UVA to have a good season.
But Coastal also wasn’t good enough to probe some of the questions that UVA’s offense has—the Cavs have three new starters up front (C, RG, RT) and it’s difficult to tell how good the remade skill corps will be.
Receiver Cam Ross starred in the opener, with a 100-yard kickoff TD to go with seven grabs for 124 yards and a score and seems likely to remain a major target, as he had productive seasons at both UConn and James Madison previously. He’s the best candidate to replace Malachi Fields, who was UVA’s best offensive player in 2024.
UVA brought in running back J’Mari Taylor from NC Central to help replace the departure of its top two rushers, and Taylor is coming off an 1100-yard season, though his impact in Week 1 (10 carries, 32 yards, 2 TD) was somewhat limited. It was a committee approach in that game, and Morris ended up leading the team with 50 rushing yards.
On the defensive side, Virginia is wholesale replacing a secondary that was quite terrible in 2024, so I mean, from that perspective you could look at it as a good thing. UVA’s pass defense was as bad as its pass offense last season, and it’s tough to imagine drastic improvement in this regard.
The Cavs added some quality up front, including ex-UNLV defensive end Fisher Camac, who had 7.5 sacks and 15 TFLs for the Rebels last year. They also return a productive linebacker in Kam Robinson, who was second on the team with 64 tackles last season, though he is recovering from injury and will not play against NC State. Robinson was the only returning player to rank in the top 10 on the team in tackles last season.
No telling how this defense is going to look in the final accounting, or on Saturday, for that matter. Bad, hopefully.
Should NC State win this game by more than three points? No idea! We’ll just have to wait and see what’s what and who’s Hoo.
