Virginia graduate defensive end Adeeb Atariwa is out for the season with an unspecified injury that had limited him to two games and 38 snaps in 2021.
“Wow, and a significant loss for us, because he is such a good player and a great person,” UVA coach Bronco Mendenhall said Monday.
Atariwa logged 30 snaps in the opener against William & Mary, missed Weeks 2 and 3, then got eight snaps in the Week 4 loss to Wake Forest.
The 6’3”, 265-pounder got 317 snaps in 10 games in 2020 at UVA, with a Pro Football Focus grade of 70.4.
Atariwa had played three seasons at JMU. In his junior year, in 2019, he earned an 82.9 PFF grade over 740 defensive snaps.
Aaron Faumui (PFF grade: 54.7) has moved from nose tackle to left end. His backups on the depth chart for this week’s game with Georgia Tech are redshirt freshman Olasunkonmi Agunloye (PFF grade: 60.3) and sophomore Ben Smiley III (PFF grade: 33.6).
Agunloye returned to the lineup in the Week 6 win over Louisville after missing the previous four games. He logged four snaps in that game, and 32 last week in the win over Duke.
Smiley hasn’t played since getting 30 snaps in the Week 5 win at Miami.
Atariwa is an interesting kid. He’s already got a degree in economics from JMU, and is working toward completing a master’s degree in systems engineering at UVA.
Which means: he’ll be OK.
“He’s also really, really motivated academically, and that was a huge reason for him to come to UVA, so I’m not concerned about his future at all off the field, but he’s certainly being missed on the field,” Mendenhall said.
Story by Chris Graham
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