Elliott signals that Anthony Colandrea likely to start at QB Saturday vs. Duke

It’s looking like Anthony Colandrea will get the start on Saturday when Virginia hosts Duke.

I say looking like, because though coach Tony Elliott told reporters at his Tuesday press conference that he doesn’t anticipate that Tony Muskett will be ready to go this week, the depth chart released by UVA Athletics still had Muskett at the top of the QB depth chart.

“He’s still day-to-day. He’s out of the boot. He’s walking around. I don’t anticipate that he’ll be ready to go this week. More hopeful for trying to get him ready to go next week,” was Elliott’s assessment at the presser.

So much for the value of the ol’ depth chart.

Things are to the point now as the 2023 season winds down that Colandrea, the true freshman and nominal QB2, is actually the guy, whether Elliott wants to treat him as that or not.

Assuming he starts on Saturday, and that appears to be a safe assumption, given what Elliott had to say yesterday, it would be the fifth start of the year for Colandrea, and he went most of the way in a sixth game, the 45-17 loss to Georgia Tech on Nov. 4, in which Muskett went down to an ankle injury on the game’s first series.

Colandrea has taken more snaps (364-357) and has more dropbacks (207-181) this season, and has been more productive through the air (1,396 yards passing, to Muskett’s 1,036; 8.2 yards per attempt, to Muskett’s 6.9) and on the ground (278 sack-adjusted rushing yards, to Muskett’s 197).

This is where I need to point out that with Virginia sitting right now at 2-8, there has to be at least some focus on the part of Elliott and his staff to the reality that the last two games of 2023 are somewhat about the future.

Doing the math there, then, Colandrea, as a freshman, has three more years of eligibility to build around; Muskett has one more year after 2023, his COVID redshirt year.

Elliott may have already hinted toward the future when he said a couple of weeks back that he assumes he’ll be looking for two QBs on the transfer portal in the offseason, implying that he’ll be looking to add depth to a position group that right now has a rising COVID-redshirt senior, a rising sophomore and then a walk-on as the third-string guy.

Maybe I’m just reading something into what he said, but the coach seemed to be telling us there that he’s assuming that one of his top two guys will be hitting the transfer portal next month.

Both guys would seem to have plenty of game tape against top Power 5 competition to be able to sell themselves to potential suitors.

It’s actually not a bad situation to be in if you’re Elliott, that worst-case, if one of your top two QBs decides to leave, you have a starter coming back either way.

In the case of Colandrea, the young guy, it may not be the worst thing that Elliott has been able to get a long look at him this year, and that Colandrea has been able to get tons of live game action that he can build on heading into his sophomore season.

“It looks like the game has slowed down. He looks more decisive in where he’s going with the football, and he can get to multiple progressions, which tells you that it’s slowed down. You even saw some instances throughout the course of the week in practice and a couple in the game where he’s changing his protection, so he’s standing to understand how to protect himself from a schematic standpoint,” Elliott said.