Tony Elliott doesn’t want to have to burn Anthony Colandrea’s redshirt, but he may have to, if starting QB Tony Muskett’s injured left shoulder doesn’t hold up for the final six weeks of the 2023 season.
“Wouldn’t use it for just a snap because Tony, you know, feels a little bit of pain. But, no, if it’s a situation where Tony is going to be down for an extended amount of time, series or two, and we have to go win the game, then Colandrea is prepared to go in there and go play,” Elliott told reporters at his Tuesday press conference.
Colandrea has already appeared in four games this season, coming in for Muskett in the fourth quarter of the season-opening 49-13 loss to Tennessee after Muskett was injured on a sack, then starting the next three games.
Four games is the limit for a player to be able to hold on to the redshirt, so Elliott is going to have to be judicious with Colandrea’s usage going forward.
The issue came into the forefront in the Week 6 win over William & Mary. With Virginia up 20-13 early in the fourth quarter, Muskett appeared to reinjure the left shoulder after stretching the ball across the line to gain on a fourth-down run in plus territory.
As he grabbed at the shoulder and made his way to the sidelines, the game went into an injury timeout, giving Elliott three minutes to make a call on who to put in.
Colandrea took some warmup snaps, as if he was going to be the guy, but word got back from the training and medical staff during the TV timeout that Muskett was going to be able to go back in, so Elliott went with third-string walk-on Grady Brosterhous for the one snap that Muskett had to miss.
The early-season injury to Muskett gave Elliott a good look at the guy who should be the quarterback of the future at Virginia. Colandrea averaged 303.8 passing yards per start, led the offense to a season-high 35 points in the one-point loss to JMU in Week 2, and directed a game-tying fourth-quarter drive in the Week 4 loss to NC State, which went on to win that game on a walk-off field goal.
If Elliott is able to preserve Colandrea’s redshirt, the kid still has four years of eligibility to work with going into next spring, when you’d expect him to compete with Muskett, who will have one year of eligibility left after the 2023 season, for the starting job in 2024.
That would be a win-win scenario for Elliott going forward.
But in the here and now, the coach has to manage having a starting QB who is not 100 percent healthy, and won’t be.
“The plan is Tony is the starter, right, Colandrea is the backup. Colandrea is preparing every game as if he is a starter ready to play, all right. Colandrea knows that we’re going to try to protect that year just like we did in William & Mary,” Elliott said.
“If that situation were to present itself, then obviously now we would have to sit back and see what the situation is because now you’ve played Colandrea in his fifth game, and you want to take advantage of that year if you can, if opportunity presents itself, but then also, you have your starting quarterback who is out there battling day after day with a shoulder injury that’s going to bother him the entire year.
“So, really just trying to manage that in my opinion the right way, do right by both of them. So that would be the plan going forward,” Elliott said.
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