We haven’t heard much from UVA Football coach Tony Elliott since the OT win at Louisville on Oct. 4, with Elliott taking the bye week off from having to talk with the media.
They don’t even send out smoke signals during a bye week, so the questions have been stacking up.
These should be the points of focus – and probably won’t be, because reporters like to go off on tangents.
Chandler Morris
Starting QB Chandler Morris, for the second time this season, didn’t finish a UVA win because he was hit hard scrambling near the goal line.
Morris’s 7-yard scramble set up the game-winning score in the 30-27 win at Louisville in Week 6.
All indications – from the way Morris sprinted to the end zone and leapt up and down, up and down in celebration after J’Mari Taylor’s 2-yard TD run – are that Morris would have been a go for a next snap, had there been one needed.
O line
Left tackle McKale Boley left the Louisville game in the second quarter with what appeared to be a leg injury.
His status going forward is rather important.
Elliott told us going into the Louisville game that he hoped to have the starting center, Brady Wilson, “after the bye week,” which is, you know, this week.
Coach also told us in the Louisville pregame that he would have updates this week on the Week 1 starter at right tackle, Wallace Unamba (20 snaps in 2025), and left tackle David Wohlabaugh (who hasn’t gotten on the field yet this year).
Update: we have an answer on the status of Wallace Unamba:
Special teams
Punter/kickoff specialist Daniel Sparks has been out since early in the William & Mary game with a hip flexor, and Elliott had been saying, each of the past two game weeks, that he expected Sparks to be back in the lineup.
The backup, Elijah Slibeck, has been solid in relief – averaging 42.3 yards per punt, with a long of 71, and 67.3 yards per kickoff, with 22 touchbacks on his 31 kicks.