The Virginia Cavaliers are hoping to bounce back from a few difficult recent seasons in 2024 and put together their first winning campaign since 2019.
Looking ahead to the season, Andy Staples had Roddy Jones of the ACC Network on Andy Staples On3. There, the two broke down what they see going into the 2024 season from the Cavaliers and what they think Virginia’s win ceiling and floor are going to be next season.
Ultimately, the two were able to come to an agreement that Virginia is going to take a small step forward. That’s going to look like making a bowl game for a ceiling and finishing at 4-8 for the team’s floor.
CEILING: 6-6 with a bowl game
Tony Elliott is going into his third season as the head coach at Virginia and while the win and loss record hasn’t been great, some of the issues have gone beyond football and Elliott’s immediate control. When taking those into account, Andy Staples feels like he’s done a good job.
“This is one of those cases where Tony Elliott at Virginia, the job he’s had to do is completely not what anyone else has had to deal with,” Andy Staples said. “His first year at Virginia he has a shooting involving his players, essentially, a former player murdering current players, and it almost makes me say you can’t even judge him on the field because of what he’s done to keep that program together. But, I will say, if you watched them last year as the season went on, that team got better.”
For his part, Roddy Jones agreed that football success is secondary give the circumstances in recent years. However, he did make it clear that he sees improvement on this team.
“I agree with you,” Jones said. “The judgement of Tony Elliott comes outside of football I think, and you can judge the football based on the improvement, but not only did he deal with the tragic circumstances you just detailed and honestly having been around that program the offseason after, being there their first home game after, there was a lot of last year [being] a season of healing that needed to happen. But even if you back up further than that, he inherited a group that basically the entire offensive line left…but on the field this year I do think you will see improvements. I think they’ll be able to run the ball better because they rebuilt that offensive line for multiple years.”
Beyond that, this is a team that does have some interesting players and, with continued improvement, could be looking at a bowl game.
“So, it’ll be interesting to see. Chris Tyree is one of the most interesting transfers in the entire country to me because he moves into that Malik Washington spot,” Jones said. “Malik Washington was one of the best receivers in the country last season in the slot. That being said, I think the ceiling for Virginia, you could work yourself and I have worked myself into saying the ceiling is a bowl game. I think they can go 6-6.”
FLOOR: 4-8
The reality for Virginia is that there are still plenty of question marks that they’ll need to answer in 2024 and beyond. One of the biggest of those questions is going to be at the quarterback position.
“It does feel like Virginia has some seeds of this could get turned around,” Staples said. “And of course at quarterback, Mr. [Anthony] Colandrea is a lot of fun to watch but maybe less fun if you’re one of his coaches because there’s a lot of ‘No, no, no, no. Yes, yes, yes,’ with him.”
Roddy Jones laughed at that but also emphasized that there are times when Colandrea’s style of play leads to mistakes. That’s why he’s not guaranteed the starting job in 2024.
“And some, ‘No, no, no, no, noooo.’ There was a little bit of that too…You mentioned the quarterback position,” Jones said. “I think the Anthony Colandrea-Tony Muskett there’s a quarterback battle there, and I think it’s about if you want the ceiling or whether you want the average because the average of Tony Muskett on a play-in, play-out bases is probably higher than Anthony Colandrea. The variance that you get with Anthony Colandrea is certainly wider but he gives you the higher ceiling.”
Still, important for Jones was that even having a floor of 4-8 is growth for Virginia. Before this, the team’s floor was more like two wins. So, while it is incremental growth, there is still growth there for the program.
As for Staples, he does come into the season with concerns about how Virginia is going to be able to compete with the opponents on its schedule.
“I think the back half of the schedule is very hard. I think they need to make their hay in the early part of the season. North Carolina seems to have issues with Virginia. North Carolina comes to Charlottesville,” Staples said. “They go to Pittsburgh. They got to Notre Dame. Then, they have SMU. So, it’s not easy as that season goes on, but if they can make their hay early then I think we’ll get to see a confident team going into the second half of the start of that schedule and it will be really interesting to see how it goes.”
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