1. Hoos are pretty banged up as they prepare to ship up to Boston.

Of late, Tony Elliott’s press conferences have been half football, half medical report. While UVa was pretty healthy during camp, the team has had some back luck as the season got started and now has several key injuries to overcome this week at Boston College.

On defense, Kam Butler, Lex Long, Paul Akere and Antonio Clary are all out for Saturday’s game at BC (2 p.m., CW Network). That’s quite a few key contributors missing, and several of them have been out for a few weeks. The hope is that Butler’s injury isn’t a season-ending one, and he can return to the field this season, but the team is awaiting MRI results. Elliott also listed Josh Ahern as probable after he missed last week’s game, and Ben Smiley is questionable, as he works through the concussion protocol.

On offense, the key conversation is at quarterback, where Elliott seemed to indicate that Tony Muskett would be able to return this week and would start the game. UVa has been coy about this particular injury in recent weeks, somewhat hyping up Muskett’s return only to start Anthony Colandrea instead. But perhaps this time, UVa’s original QB1 returns to the field.

2. Penalties will be a focus in Saturday’s game.

Virginia’s game against NC State on Friday was derailed as the Cavaliers picked up 45 yards of penalties, all unforced, in the final 36 seconds of the game. Those flags handed the game back to the Wolfpack. Elliott was asked about these particular infractions and how they compared to some of the silly penalties he decried after UVa’s loss at Duke last year. He said that the Ty Furnish unsportsmanlike call was avoidable and can’t happen, but the flags on Colandrea and James Jackson are harder to speak to, as they were unique situations.

Virginia will need to play cleaner going forward, starting with Saturday’s game on the road. UVa had a near perfect penalty game in the opener against Tennessee, when the Hoos were charged with two penalties for 10 yards. Since, they’ve recorded 195 penalty yards over the past three games, more than half of which were in the fourth quarter, with a lot of those flags contributing to game-winning scores by NC State and JMU.

The good news, perhaps, is that BC has been even more undisciplined than UVa has to this point in the season. The Eagles have 394 yards of penalties, dead last in the country, averaging 98.5 yards per game. In a closer-than-expected loss to FSU, BC was hit with 18 penalties for 131 yards. If Boston College is going to commit infractions, UVa has to take advantage by not doing the same.

3. The future is now for some members of Elliott’s first recruiting class.

While UVa’s injury luck has been bad and has hurt the team’s chances to win more, the silver lining is that younger players are getting a chance to shine. Colandrea is the most obvious one, and he has had three promising starts in Muskett’s absence and looks like the QB of the future. But there are other true freshmen that have had a chance to play a lot and hopefully those snaps will pay off down the road.

Freshman linebacker Kam Robinson earned a start against NC State with Ahern out and had a solid game, leading the team in tackles. During Tuesday’s press conference Elliott called Robinson a potentially program-changing player and the hope is that as Robinson gets more comfortable at the college level and within UVa’s defensive schemes, he continues to show out. The same can be said of freshman cornerback Dre Walker, who has been thrown into early action in a thin cornerback room. Like Robinson, Walker is learning on the job and has a ways to go, but the tools are there. Other true freshmen have played, particularly at receiver, where Jaden Gibson and Suderian Harrison have earned plenty of snaps.

With the portal it's harder to predict but the hope is this 2023 class can be the backbone of the team in a few years. And if it is, the experience some of them earned as true freshmen will be a big part of their future success.

1. What’s the right thing to do at quarterback?

Elliott indicated that Muskett will get the start in Chestnut Hill and if not, he will when he’s ready to play. No coach wants to be in the middle of a quarterback controversy, and for all we know that’s more of a fan talking point than anything going on in the locker room. But this situation is a difficult one for a coach to manage.

Here’s the case for Colandrea: He has shown a great deal of promise in three starts and has been borderline electric at times. He’s engineered a much-improved passing offense, is fun to watch, and perhaps most importantly, is hopefully the future of the program. UVa is 0-4 and probably headed towards a losing season, so why not start looking ahead to 2024 with Colandrea getting more on-the-job training? There’s also a chance that he’s simply the better quarterback, given what we’ve seen so far.

And here’s the case for Muskett: He won the job heading into the season and he’s the guy the program went out and got in the transfer portal to lead the team this year. The sample size we saw from him against Tennessee isn’t enough to evaluate his performance, and it was a near impossible situation anyway, given the blocking. He’s also a more experienced player, and while Colandrea has been quite good for stretches of games, his fourth-quarter interceptions have been costly. Perhaps Muskett can provide the same big plays but with a bit more consistency, and that combination helps UVa win games. Also, UVa is 0-3 with Colandrea as the starter, so it’s not like the staff would be pulling a quarterback that is reeling off wins.

This is a tough spot for Elliott to be in. He said on Tuesday that he’s not on social media and doesn’t listen to the critics from the outside, but if Muskett comes back in and plays worse than what we’ve seen from Colandrea, then Elliott will have probably brought more heat on his decision making and would probably need to throw the freshman back in. The second-year head coach said he’s trying to manage the QBs in the best way possible to win games, and I wish him luck on his decisions going forward, because they will be second-guessed regardless of what he chooses, if the Hoos don’t start winning.

2. Can UVa get the ground game going or should it be abandoned?

On Tuesday, Elliott said that he felt the running game got off to a good start against NC State but fell off after halftime until they eventually found success with some QB runs late in the game. For the season, the results have been relatively grim for the ground attack. UVa has 317 rushing yards on 146 attempts, or 2.17 yards per carry. Obviously, that’s quite bad. UVa finally hit 100+ rush yards last week against the Wolfpack, but it took 41 rush attempts to do so.

Conversely, the pass game has yielded results. Colandrea threw for 9.0 yards per attempt on 30 throws last week, and the ball moved best when they put it in the air. That was also true against JMU, where UVa ran for 18 yards but threw for 377 on 14.5 yards per attempt.

At some point, regardless of which quarterback is playing, shouldn’t UVa try to throw the ball about two thirds of the time, rather than less than half of the time? Some of the runs are designed pass plays with scrambles, but the ratio still seems a bit off right now.

Regardless, UVa does need to run the ball better in short-yardage situations, where they’ve run into some problems of late trying to convert 3rd-and-short and red-zone opportunities.

Malik Washington will parlay a big season at UVa into an NFL career.

The senior wideout was named ACC Receiver of the Week on Monday after a big game against NC State. The Northwestern transfer caught 10 passes for 170 yards and a pair of touchdowns against the Pack, helping the Hoos stay in the game until the end. He has a knack for finding space catching the ball and creating big yards after the catch.

On the season, Washington has 28 catches for 459 yards and three touchdowns, and should easily surpass UVa’s top receiver marks from the entire 2022 season by the bye week this year.

If he keeps it up, the NFL is going to take notice. I’m not sure what Washington’s NFL prospects looked like before he got to Charlottesville, but there’s no doubt that he’s improved them over the past four weeks.