The ACC media didn’t see it, pegging Virginia to finish 14th in the conference race back in the summer.
For that matter, I didn’t see it.
I had Virginia winning seven, eight, maybe nine games back in the spring, even as I wrote about how I loved what Tony Elliott had done with his Top 25 transfer recruiting class, which we now know was dramatically underrated.
Turns out, it can be hard to see a realignment as it’s happening.
“It’s extremely rewarding, but it’s not a surprise,” said Noah Josey, a fifth-year senior who was recruited by the Bronco Mendenhall staff, logged 20 snaps in the 2021 COVID season, and as a fifth-year player in 2025, is leading the offensive line with 828 snaps.
Virginia was 17-29 in Josey’s first four years on Grounds.
With the 27-7 win over Virginia Tech last night, the ‘Hoos are 10-2 this season, headed to the 2025 ACC Championship Game, and a win away from the program’s first-ever College Football Playoff berth.
ICYMI
- ‘Hoos dominate Hokies, clinch spot in Charlotte vs. Duke
- ‘State Champions’: UVA Football gets the Virginia Tech monkey off its back
Gotta concede to you here, when the ACC went to a 17-team, one-division setup a couple of years ago, I thought the days of UVA Football having a shot at this kind of thing in terms of postseason were over and done with.
Something happened in the 2024 offseason.
I mean, the obvious is, the money people opened up their checkbooks, and gave fourth-year coach Tony Elliott and GM Tyler Jones in the area of $35 million to put together a roster.
The school had to play ball as well, giving the coach and GM some leeway on admissions, which the folks in that office had famously, and forever, been loathe to do.
It’s not just money, though – because if it was, James Franklin would still be the coach at Penn State, where he had more money than god to work with, and not the shiny new object at Virginia Tech, where a reality check is about to come.
Still gotta go out and spend the money wisely, find guys that fit with what you’ve established in terms of foundation, then coach and scheme ‘em up.
“It’s been evident that everybody in the building has to understand your goal and just get everyone headed to a common goal and put everyone on the same page. And we’ve got a great culture here. Got great people throughout the entire building,” said Chandler Morris, who decided to come to Virginia for his sixth-year season after visits to money programs like Ole Miss and Oklahoma State, saying from the beginning that his goal was an ACC title and CFP berth.
Big goals there, for a transfer QB taking over for a coach who was 11-23 in his first three seasons, and finished last year’s 5-7 campaign with losses in six of the last seven, after a 4-1 start.
Elliott, asked to expound after the beatdown of Tech on how things got from there to where they are now, did what he does – put the credit on the shoulders of others, singling out the role of guys like Josey, like Jahmeer Carter, like Antonio Clary, a seventh-year who played in five games as a true freshman way, way back in 2019, and endured a long list of season-ending injuries.
“It’s so awesome when you get to see, quote, unquote, forefathers, that’s what I call Clary, I called them that in the locker room, yeah, they’re the forefathers of the program, but a lot of times they don’t get to see, right, the Promised Land, right?” Elliott said. “They envision it, they see the vision, but they never get to experience it. So to see Josey, Ja, (Stevie) Bracy, and I even count the guys that came in, you know, that were committed to the previous staff, just a confirmation that they made the right decision to stay, when the easy thing would have been to leave and to go somewhere else, but now they’re getting, at least, this season.”
Those forefathers endured more than a sea change in philosophy from Mendenhall to Elliott in terms of schemes, the losing that comes when you’re trying to put new approaches in place in a game as detailed as football.
On Nov. 13, 2022, a day after a 37-7 loss to Pitt that dropped that Virginia team to a 3-7 record, three UVA Football players – Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr. and D’Sean Perry – were shot and killed by a fellow UVA student, Christopher Darnell Jones, who also shot and wounded two others, a fourth football player, Mike Hollins, and another student-athlete, Marlee Morgan, a sprinter on the UVA track team.
ICYMI
The highlight of the Virginia Tech postgame presser for me was how Elliott got it going – before he was asked the first question, he put the spotlight on Chandler, Davis and Perry, and their families, for “the inspiration that they provide us on a on a daily basis.”
“Hopefully this brings them some joy, as they really kind of now get a chance to embark on their road to healing and recovery,” Elliott said. “I think that all of us outside of the families, the Davis family, the Chandler family, the Perry family, have had an opportunity to kind of, you know, move forward a little bit and grieve and heal. They haven’t. It’s been a very, very long three years for them, but we believe that now we can really embark on the road to recovery, but it’s still going to be a long way. And hopefully tonight is just an opportunity for them to just find some joy in the program that that their sons were a part of.
“We love you, we thank you, we’re always here for you, and hopefully going forward, they’ll be able to come back as often as they would like, and be a part of more nights like tonight.”
UVA-Virginia Tech in photos
- Facebook reel featuring photos by Mike Ingalls: click here.
There’s still the unfinished business – Duke is next, in the 2025 ACC Championship Game; win there, and the ‘Hoos are in the playoff.
Nothing wrong with taking a minute or two to enjoy the look back at the path to getting to where you are in the moment.
“I think, for me, always had a goal going to the ACC Championship,” said Carter, a sixth-year senior, who has a career-best 76.4 grade from Pro Football Focus for his work on the field in 2025.
“I didn’t know how it was gonna look, you know, also didn’t always want to be, you know, six years in college, and the landscape has changed so much since then, but I’m grateful for it all,” Carter said.
Carter had three sacks in last night’s clincher.
Clary, older by a year, had three tackles, and helped salt the game with a fourth-quarter INT, his second of the season, and fourth of his UVA career.
“We put the work in,” Clary said, summing up how we got from there to here. “Obviously, we got a lot of new players that we added on to the defense and offense as well. But yeah, man, we put in the work since January, and now it’s just starting to show, all the hard work that we put in. We’re a tight-knit group, and we’re just gonna keep rolling.”
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Chris Graham
