Anthony Colandrea should be the QB1 going into the spring, if only because he put up slightly better numbers in 2023 than Tony Muskett, the QB1 going into the 2023 season, and then also because Colandrea is the future – he’ll be a sophomore next fall, and Muskett will be a grad student.
But Virginia coach Tony Elliott seems intent on going into the spring with a quarterback controversy, because he apparently didn’t study the Mike London era, which was marked by one quarterback controversy after another after another.
Elliott, addressing the state of the roster earlier this week, indicated that Muskett should be a go for spring practice after having surgery on his left (non-throwing) shoulder, for an injury that Muskett suffered in the fourth quarter of UVA’s 49-13 Week 1 loss to Tennessee.
“Doing well. Talked to him the other day. And in spring, what we’re anticipating is he’ll be able to start back throwing. So, that’s what we anticipate for the spring,” Elliott said.
Muskett had won the starting job in the final week of training camp, but despite Colandrea, the true freshman brought in to develop behind Muskett and Jay Woolfolk, playing well in his first three starts, Elliott went back to Muskett when he was available for Week 5, citing the narrow win in the training-camp battle as the reason.
Muskett did lead Virginia to a 31-27 upset of then-#10 North Carolina, but then was lost for the season in the first series of the loss to Georgia Tech one week later with a high ankle sprain.
The numbers for the two are very much comparable, with Colandrea getting a slight edge:
- Colandrea: 153-of-245, 62.4 percent completion rate, 1,903 yards, 7.8 yards/attempt, 12 TDs, 9 INTs, 87.5 NFL passer rating
- Muskett: 94-of-50, 62.7 percent completion rate, 1,036 yards, 6.9 yards/attempt, 6 TDs, 5 INTs, 82.5 NFL passer rating
It’s a nice luxury to have, of course, with two QBs who played as much as each of those guys did, and who played as well as each of those guys did.
Which is me conceding here that, OK, yes, this situation, on the surface, isn’t at all a bad thing, having two QBs who played a lot, and played well, at the top of the depth chart.
There aren’t a lot of coaches who know with certainty that their #2, if pressed into action, can get the job done.
The hard part to the Virginia story is, either way you go here, the other guy is going to feel slighted.
If Elliott goes with Colandrea, Muskett goes into his grad-senior year as a guy holding a clipboard.
Flip side, Elliott goes with Muskett, and Colandrea’s development as a QB that Elliott should be building around is stunted.
And then there’s the one other challenge here – the lack of depth behind Colandrea and Muskett.
The third-stringer is Grady Brosterhous, a walk-on who was used in short-yardage situations in 2023.
Elliott had said back in November that he wanted to address depth in the QB room on the recruiting trail, but to date, efforts in that direction have come up empty.
Sounds like Elliott having two guys who can obviously start in 2024, one of whom is a guy who should be around for another two years, is making the recruiting more difficult there, particularly via the transfer portal.
“Quarterback recruiting was always accelerated, always happened faster than any other position group, but naturally so, right? Now, it’s crazy,” Elliott said. “And for us, we were more targeting younger developmental guys, right, to keep the distribution. But even those guys, man, at the high school level, man, those guys are hard to come by.
“So, I think it’s more a function of just the state of quarterback recruiting, and then when you do have two guys that have had production and had success to a certain extent, it does, especially in the transfer world. Younger guys, maybe not so much, because there’s distribution, there’s spacing, but in the transfer world, it does make for a difficult conversation.”
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Chris Graham
