UVA Football coach Tony Elliott has confirmed what we first reported last week about impact O line transfer Monroe Mills, who is out for the coming 2025 season with an ACL injury.
Elliott told reporters after practice on Thursday that Mills, a transfer from Louisville, has had surgery, and he’s “back, kind of moving around,” enough to be listed on the roster for Saturday’s spring game, though he’ll be on the sidelines on crutches.
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“Man, I hate that, hate that for him,” said Elliott, who was counting on Mills, a 6’7”, 315-pound left tackle, to anchor the O line in the fall.
The injury came in a non-contact situation, according to Elliott.
“He was braced up. It was a low-impact drill. Just very unfortunate,” the coach said.
Mills, who was on the field for 566 snaps at Louisville in 2024, grading out at 82.3, per Pro Football Focus, was a seven-figure NIL/transfer portal pickup when he committed to the UVA Football program in January.
Virginia was to be the fourth stop for Mills, who was at Oklahoma State for two seasons, barely getting on the field there, before spending two seasons at Texas Tech.
At Texas Tech, Mills logged 1,750 snaps, and was deemed responsible for three sacks and 40 total QB pressures on 1,000 pass dropbacks.
At Louisville in 2024, Mills allowed one sack and seven total QB pressures on 300 pass dropbacks, while splitting his time between right tackle (306 total snaps) and left tackle (260 total snaps).
Mills was listed as a four-star transfer recruit by 247Sports.
He’s already begun the lengthy rehab that one has to go through with an ACL injury.
“He’s in good spirits and excited, and we’re going to do everything we can to help him, you know, recover fully, and you know, hopefully we’ll be able to see him out, you know, on the field in a Cavalier uniform in the future,” Elliott said.
Moving forward
The money part of the issue being what it is, there is still depth on the O line.
In addition to landing Mills off the portal, the unit added from the portal Tyshawn Wyatt, a JMU alum, who will compete as a sixth-year player, and Kevin Wigenton, an O lineman from Illinois.
Wyatt missed the 2024 season at JMU with an injury that he suffered toward the end of JMU’s 2023 campaign.
Wyatt was on the field for 2,157 snaps in four seasons at JMU, allowing 14 sacks and 65 total QB pressures on 1,086 pass dropbacks for a 96.2 percent efficiency rate.
Wyatt logged 900 snaps at left guard at JMU in 2021, before shifting to left tackle in 2022 and 2023.
I was figuring Mills would slot in as the starter at left tackle, so Wyatt would seem to be in the mix to be the next man up at that spot, along with two returning guys who split the snaps at left tackle in 2024 – McKale Boley (463 snaps) and Jack Witmer (358 snaps).
“One of the positives is, we got Boley coming back, so, Boley, Boley will be back in the fold, we get him back. You know, Jack’s a guy that that’s been repping all spring. We got, you know, Tyshawn, the swing guy that can swing tackle and guard,” Elliott said.
“I mean, we’ll look to see if there’s a possible guy out there in the portal, in this next portal window, just to, because that’s the area, we gotta add a little more depth from that standpoint, from competition, and more of a true tackle body type,” Elliott said. “So, we feel like we got some guys in house that will be able to step up, and we will explore maybe an opportunity to bring in another guy to compete when we get back together in a fall camp.”
Right guard is where Wigenton looks to fit in. The 6’5″, 330-pounder only got 36 snaps in three games with the Illini in 2024, after transferring from Michigan State, where he had played 470 snaps at right guard in 2023.
In 549 career snaps across three seasons in the Big Ten, Wigenton has yet to surrender a sack and has been dinged for 10 QB hurries on 308 pass dropbacks, for a 98.3 percent efficiency rate.
The O-line room also returns the guy who got the bulk of the snaps at left guard, Noah Josey (703 snaps), and Blake Steen, who got 736 snaps at right tackle.
Two other guys of note in the O line room: Drake Metcalf and Ethan Sipe both missed the 2024 season with injuries.
Metcalf has primarily played at center in his three college seasons, logging 200 snaps at center at Central Florida in 2023 – allowing one sack and two total QB pressures on 90 pass dropbacks.
Sipe logged 672 snaps at right tackle at Dartmouth over the 2022 and 2023 seasons, and allowed just three sacks on 282 pass dropbacks.
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