Marques Hagans, a holdover from the staff of former Virginia coach Bronco Mendenhall, doesn’t need to learn the personnel like his new colleagues do, but spring practice is a learning experience for “Biscuit” in terms of getting up to speed with new coach Tony Elliott’s offensive scheme.
“It’s been fun, getting to know a new staff, the opportunity to work for Coach Elliott and Coach (Des) Kitchings on offense. It has been a great experience so far. I’m learning a lot,” said Hagans, a 2005 UVA alum now in his 11th year on the football staff at his alma mater.
Elliott’s experience as an assistant was all on the offensive side of the ball, so you would expect him to be much more hands-on with the offense than Mendenhall, a defense lifer, and that’s proving to be the case, according to Hagans.
“You get a lot more frequent visits in the offensive staff meetings now,” Hagans said. “Coach Elliott’s resume speaks for himself, and so to have him come in and offer advice, or even in practice, you know, when he’s saying things to the receivers, it comes from a place of a lot of knowledge and experience and just finding ways to help our group and our team perform better. So, it’s been a good challenge. And like I say, Coach Kitchings is really smart, and really does a good job of developing all of us as coaches and challenging us and giving us an opportunity to grow.”
Kitchings, the new offensive coordinator, comes to Virginia after a stint in the NFL with the Atlanta Falcons, and stops at the college level at Furman, Vanderbilt, Air Force, N.C. State and South Carolina.
Garett Tujague is, like Hagans, a holdover from the Mendenhall staff, coaching the offensive line. Taylor Lamb is new, as the QB coach, coming to Virginia from Gardner-Webb.
Keith Gaither, most recently on the staff at Army, coaches the running backs.
“There’s a lot of wealth of knowledge of the game just listening to those guys talk, I mean, just very, very respected in their fields and what they’ve accomplished so far as coaches,” Hagans said. “Just being able to figure out exactly who we want to be as an offense, and what we want to do, I think we’ve arrived at a really good point, and I think now is implementing those strategies, those mentalities, those identities, and so far in spring ball, just continue to get better and better at the little things.”
Even with the returning personnel, highlighted by ACC Preseason Player of the Year favorite Brennan Armstrong, and wideouts Keytaon Thompson, Dontayion Wicks and Billy Kemp IV, there’s going to be a learning curve in the spring for the offense, which ranked third nationally (515.8 yards per game) in 2021.
“Where we’re going to be in 2022 is nowhere close to where we are right now,” Hagans said. “So, just continuing to build it from the ground up, we’re not going to be a high-octane offense right now. We’ve got to start from the ground up, we’ve got to get the fundamentals, and then we’ve got to focus on the steam.”
Elliott is the third Virginia head coach that Hagans has worked under. He welcomes the chance to grow as a coach that comes with having to learn new things.
“Just being able to start back up from the ground up has been exciting for me,” Hagans said. “It’s a new challenge for me, it’s a new opportunity to prove myself, that there’s room for me to grow and get better. And that’s the challenge within itself. And then just holding the guys the same accountable standard to grow and get better. And so, I’m excited for spring ball so far and the things that we’re doing, and we’ve just got to keep working to get better.
Story by Chris Graham
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