Five big questions for UVa football as the offseason arrives

With the final regular-season weekend of the college football season in the books, the offseason has officially arrived. And while many other programs are preparing for roster changes and other typical offseason tasks, the Virginia football program is still working through grief caused by the tragedy of November 13th on Grounds.

The Cavaliers spent the weekend attending the funeral services of departed teammates D’Sean Perry and Devin Chandler, and they will honor the life of Lavel Davis Jr. in South Carolina later today.

While the primary focus for Tony Elliott and his staff is helping the team heal and process the grief the program is working through, they will also have plenty of program building work to do, too. It’s probably not in the forefront of their minds but in the weeks to come, Elliott and Co. will have to handle an evolving roster, complete a recruiting cycle while starting a new one, and start to plan out spring football.

Today, we’re looking at five key questions the football program will need to answer in the months to come, as they continue to heal from a terrible tragedy and attempt to turn the page to a 2023 season.

1. How will departures and arrivals shake out?

In modern college football, there are going to be transfers in and transfers out. Every program has to cope with the fact that its roster is going to shift more than it might have in the past. And while there are plenty of teams that lose talented players to other schools for a variety of reasons, there are plenty of success stories, too. Hendon Hooker moving from Virginia Tech to Tennessee helped the Volunteers to their best season in about two decades. South Carolina grabbed Spencer Rattler from the portal and went 8-4 this year; Caleb Williams has USC on the verge of a playoff berth and maybe a Heisman Trophy. There are plenty more examples.

UVa finds itself in a place where the transfer transactions will likely shape what kind of season the Hoos can have in 2023. Starting with departures, it’s very possible that they lose quite a few players to the portal after a tough season on the field and more turmoil off of it. All of that aside, transfers after the first year of a new coaching staff are very normal, anyway. There will be plenty of players that stuck it out after the coaching change but don’t feel like they have a pathway to playing time or don’t fit within the current schemes because they don’t mesh as well with the current staff as they did with the one that recruited them to Charlottesville. And with the tragedy that unfolded several weeks ago, there may be a few more that wouldn’t mind a change of scenery and a chance to hit the reset button. There will be plenty more players that simply want to stay at UVa and complete their course of study, or are just happy to stay in Charlottesville, even if their role or the team’s success hasn’t been what they hoped it might be.

And of course, there will be plenty of players at other schools that enter the portal and might see UVa as a fit. Virginia has proved to be an attractive destination for transfers for a number of reasons and in the last few years, the Hoos have been in a “sweet spot” of sorts. UVa’s roster might offer more access to playing time than a player at a big-time program can get there, so Virginia can be a fit in that regard. UVa has also been a fit for players looking to level up from a G5 or FCS school to play better competition in a power conference. The Cavaliers have also done a nice job recruiting players from other academically prestigious institutions, like Ivy League schools or FBS programs like Stanford, and so on.

How the 2022 season went may make the program a tougher sell for some players, and an opportunity for others. Playing time, particularly on offense, should be available. Having said that, the offense was so bad that it may scare some players looking to propel themselves to an NFL career at their next stop, away from a potentially bad situation. Regardless, Elliott and his staff will need to identify fits for UVa and sell those players on the opportunity to come to Charlottesville and achieve whatever goals they have in mind, athletically and academically. The success of the team in the immediate future will likely depend on the staff’s ability to pull double-digit players out of the portal, as the Cavaliers will likely have plenty of departures of their own.

2. Will the coaching staff remain the same in 2023?

There’s no speculation happening here. It seems unlikely that Elliott would want to dramatically shake things up after one season in Charlottesville, when he’s still trying to build the program the way he wants it to be. But there is so much turnover annually in college football, that this becomes a question worth asking.

Continuity is typically for the best and programs can suffer when the voices in the room are constantly changing. Elliott brought together a staff from a variety of backgrounds, many of whom were not at power five jobs prior to joining up with the Wahoos. Elliott also kept three coaches on staff from Bronco Mendenhall’s group, and Mendenhall’s name has been thrown around for vacant jobs this offseason. Only Garett Tujague remains from Bronco’s BYU staff however, and the other two coaches, Clint Sintim and Marques Hagans, are UVa alums.

While there’s no real reason to assume changes are coming, it’s also clear that anything is possible, always, in this sport.

3. What’s the future of the quarterback position?

This is probably the biggest football-related question this offseason. Brennan Armstrong struggled with the new offense in 2022 after a record-setting 2021 campaign. Granted, the issues were not all with the quarterback, but the drop-off in production is impossible to ignore. Everyone assumed that this would be Armstrong’s final season at Virginia and in college football, but after a tough campaign, there are plenty of people wondering what is next for Virginia’s quarterback.

Armstrong has one year of eligibility remaining, should he wish to pursue it. That year could be used at UVa, or Armstrong could always enter the transfer portal and try his luck elsewhere if Virginia’s new offense simply doesn’t feel like a fit for him. Armstrong could just as easily decide his college football journey has reached its end, and try to catch on in the NFL, or go do something else altogether. What Armstrong decides to do will have a ripple effect for UVa and others.

If Armstrong does not return as some expect, UVa has Jay Woolfolk waiting in the wings. He played very sparingly this year after being forced into action against Notre Dame last season with Armstrong hurt. Woolfolk has received plenty of praise from coaches and teammates through this season, while he also focuses on his baseball career. UVa has a couple of younger quarterbacks on the roster in Davis Lane and Delaney Crawford, with Anthony Colandrea set to sign with the Hoos next month.

So heading into 2023, Virginia is set to give the keys to Woolfolk or add a transfer to compete for the job at a minimum.

It would be wise for UVa to add a veteran quarterback from the portal, no matter what. He could be someone brought in to backup Woolfolk and maybe push for the job, or Elliott could try to bring in a transfer who is coming to Charlottesville with the intention to be the team’s starting quarterback.

How Virginia handles the quarterback position and who the staff chooses to go after in the portal, if anyone, will have a major impact on what the 2023 season looks like, and what expectations UVa fans next fall.

4. Will recruiting pick up as the 2023 cycle ends and 2024 comes into focus?

While the transfer portal will be a major focus for the staff, so too will be improvement to traditional recruiting. With Signing Day less than a month away, UVa currently has 13 commits for a recruiting class that was always expected to be relatively small. The 2023 group ranks 73rd nationally, ahead of only Syracuse among ACC teams, and behind programs like Central Michigan, Western Michigan and Temple among others.

Recruiting rankings don’t always get it right, and UVa has landed plenty of underrated players over the years that bloomed once they got to Charlottesville. With all that said, UVa probably needs to recruit more effectively if the Cavaliers are going to field competitive rosters in the years to come. There are plenty of challenges making it difficult for a new staff to hit the ground running in their first year, but we’ve also seen other programs, like Duke for example, get a boost in the first year of a new staff.

Elliott and his staff will be judged far more on the 2024 class than their 2023 haul. It seems that are positioned relatively well for some well-regarded players, though whether they will have staying power in those recruitments remains to be seen. This coaching staff hasn’t developed a lot of off-field momentum during their time in Charlottesville through recruiting, but an improved effort in the next cycle could go a long way towards demonstrating some proof of concept.

5. How favorable will the 2023 schedule be?

We already know a lot about UVa’s schedule, but the order of the games, when the bye comes, and whether there will be short weeks or not, can have a major impact on how the season plays out.

Here’s what we already know: The Wahoos will open the season in Nashville against a resurgent Tennessee program. Then they’ll open their home slate the next week (September 9th) against a more-than-dangerous JMU team. Then it’s a return to College Park to face old rival Maryland, which just completed a solid 7-5 season, and appear to be on better footing each year under Mike Locksley. UVa will wrap up non-conference play with a game against William & Mary on October 7th. Mike London has the Tribe turned around, going 10-1 this season, winning the CAA and getting the program back into the FCS playoffs. It’s also safe to say that UVa will close the season against Virginia Tech in Charlottesville, as is customary

We also know the other ACC opponents in the first season without divisions. Along with the Hokies, UVa is also set to host Duke (8-4 this year), Georgia Tech (5-7) and NC State (8-4) at Scott Stadium. Virginia’s four road games in league play will take them to Louisville (7-5), Miami (5-7), North Carolina (9-3) and Boston College (3-9). The difference between UVa’s 2023 schedule and what the Hoos would’ve played in a division format is that they’ve replaced a road trip to Pittsburgh with a road trip to BC, probably a favorable trade.

We should get the final schedule from the ACC in January, which will include the order of the games as well as revealing whether the Cavaliers will have any Thursday or Friday games, and so on.

One thing to keep in mind is that the schedule rarely turns out how it looks before the season begins. The 2022 slate looked more favorable for UVa than it has in some time, with seemingly winnable road games and a backloaded slate of home games down the stretch. Instead, UVa lost to a much-improved Illinois team, a Syracuse team that started 6-0, and a Duke team that went from 3-9 in 2021 to 8-4 this year. So just remember to take any preseason expectations with a major grain of salt.