UVA Football addressed two needs with transfer portal pickups over the weekend, landing Tyshawn Wyatt, an offensive lineman from JMU, Kevin Wigenton, an offensive lineman from Illinois, and UNLV D lineman Fisher Camac.
Wyatt, a JMU alum, will compete as a sixth-year player, after missing the 2024 season 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.
The pass-block efficiency rate would rank higher than the likes of Ty Furnish (95.7 percent) and Charlie Patterson (89.7 percent), who are headed out via the transfer portal.
Wyatt logged 900 snaps at left guard at JMU in 2021, before shifting to left tackle in 2022 and 2023.
The Virginia O line has returning two guys who split the snaps at left tackle in 2024 – McKale Boley (463 snaps) and Jack Witmer (358 snaps) – 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.
The biggest need is at right guard, where Furnish (489 snaps) and Ugonna Nnanna (319 snaps) got the bulk of the action.
Nnanna is headed to North Texas for his final season of college football.
Right guard is where Wigenton can 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.
O line room is filling in
The other big O line pick-up to this point is former UAB center Brady Wilson, a three-year starter at center whose blocking numbers were off-the-charts good: no sacks allowed in 2024 on 542 pass-block snaps, and over the course of three years and 2,304 total snaps, and 1,265 pass dropbacks, he’s allowed a grand total of one.
Wilson slides in to fill the void left by the loss of two-year starting center Brian Stevens, who competed as a sixth-year senior in 2024.
Two other guys of note in the O line room: Drake Metcalf and Ethan Sipe both missed the 2024 season with injuries.
Both are listed as grad students on the UVA Football roster page, so, presumably, they’d need to get approval for a medical redshirt year.
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.
I count eight guys there now in the O line room who have significant college experience.
We can still use more depth here.
D line adds depth
Now, to Fisher Camac.
I particularly like this one, because Camac is a big (6’7”, 250) guy with two years of eligibility remaining, after a solid redshirt sophomore season at UNLV, in which he had eight sacks, 34 total QB pressures and 41 tackles on 572 snaps.
His 75.6 Pro Football Focus grade stands out as well.
Camac is a big get at defensive end, and is a nice pairing with the other D line portal pick-ups to date:
- former Alabama DT Hunter Osborne, a 6’4”, 298-pound redshirt freshman, who was a Top 300 player nationally in the Class of 2023, but barely got on the field at ‘Bama in two seasons there (19 total snaps).
- DE Cazeem More (2024 at Elon): 540 snaps, 38 QB pressures, six sacks, 76.7 PFF grade.
- DT Jacob Holmes (2024 at Fresno State): 416 snaps, 28 QB pressures, four sacks, 70.4 PFF grade.
The top returners on the D line include:
- DT Jahmeer Carter (581 snaps, 12 QB pressures, one sack, 63.0 PFF grade)
- DT Anthony Britton (446 snaps, 10 QB pressures, two sacks, 56.7 PFF grade)
- DE Terrell Jones (282 snaps, nine QB pressures, 57.3 PFF grade)
- DT Jason Hammond (141 snaps, two QB pressures, one sack, 59.3 PFF grade)
That’s eight guys on the D line with good college experience.
Quick math there: five interior guys, three edge guys.
Going to need at least another edge guy before we can call it a day.
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Chris Graham
