UVA Football coach Tony Elliott met with the media on Wednesday to talk up his 2025 transfer portal class, which Rivals ranks 20th nationally, and 247Sports has 23rd.
What a difference a year can make there – Rivals had Elliott’s 2024 portal class ranked 61st, and 247Sports had the ’24 class at 55th.
What I should be saying here is, what a difference millions of NIL dollars coming in from the donors can make.
Big-money donations announced in December reportedly gave Elliott a budget that I’m hearing is between $15 million and $20 million to work with this time around.
The admissions folks helped out some, but there can be more progress made there in the future.
All told, though, it was a “crazy last couple of months,” Elliott said, understating the situation by a lot.
What Virginia picked up
The priorities going into the portal season were: QB, with two-year starter Anthony Colandrea leaving, and ending up at UNLV, where he’s going to have to compete for the QB1 job; O line and D line, with losses to graduation and a couple to the portal; the wideout room, with Malachi Fields hitting the portal, and ending up at Notre Dame; and the secondary, which has needs all over.
The secondary is still a position group of need, which Elliott concedes will need more attention in the spring portal season.
Elsewhere, though, he and the staff did well.
The QB room landed Chandler Morris (3,774 yards, 31 TDs in 2024 at North Texas) and four-star true freshman Danny Kaelin, an Elite 11 prospect who redshirted in 2024 at Nebraska.
The O line added talent and depth with the pick-ups of tackles Monroe Mills (Louisville) and Tyshawn Wyatt (JMU), guard Kevin Wigenton (Illinois) and center Brady Wilson (UAB).
The D line added edge rushers Mitchell Melton (Ohio State), Fisher Camac (UNLV) and Cazeem Moore (Elon), and interior guys Hunter Osborne (Alabama) and Jacob Holmes (Fresno State).
The wideout room adds Jayden Thomas (Notre Dame), Camryn Ross (JMU) and Jahmal Edrine (Purdue).
The other notable pickups included safety Devin Neal (Louisville), cornerback Ja’son Prevard (Morgan State), linebacker Maddox Marcellus (Eastern Kentucky) and tailback J’Mari Taylor (North Carolina Central).
All of these guys will be on the two-deep, and there’s at least 12 starters – one AFP reader will argue me on that point, that he sees as many as 15 – on the 2025 roster from among this group.
Contrast this to what Elliott and the staff got from the portal in 2024: four starters in the secondary (Jam Jackson, Kempton Shine, Kendren Smith, Corey Thomas), linebacker Dorian Jones, tight ends Sage Ennis and Tyler Neville, wideouts Andre Green, Trell Harris and Chris Tyree, and a bunch of guys who didn’t see the field – fourth-string QB Gavin Frakes and O linemen Drake Metcalf and Ethan Sipe, who spent the season on the injured list.
Aside from Neville and Harris, the 2024 portal class was basically a group of innings-eaters
The 2025 recruiting haul makes Virginia markedly better at QB and on both lines, and I think better in terms of talent and depth in the wideout room.
Get some more guys for the secondary in the spring, and this is a roster that Elliott can win with.
Credit where credit is due
Elliott, at the Wednesday presser, acknowledged that the difference between 2024 and 2025 was “that we got a couple of major gifts that really, really changed the landscape for us.”
“To the individuals and the folks that are part of that, man, just want to say, thank you on behalf of my staff and also the team, because I think the ones that feel the biggest impact are the young men in this program,” said Elliott, who is 11-23 in his three seasons as the head coach at UVA.
“To have an opportunity to go out and show we’re serious at the University of Virginia in terms of football being successful and being provided an opportunity to be able to do that, I’m very, very grateful and appreciative,” Elliott said. “Being able to know we got the financial support of the folks that contributed both on the football side and also on the nutrition side, I think it’s going to really make an impact. I think we’re already seeing some of the impact that’s made.
“I want to let those individuals know how grateful we are. A lot of work to get to where we are today, but we still got a lot more. I think everybody is in a good space to just continue to move forward,” Elliott said.
Alright, so, no more excuses going forward, right?
Elliott’s move to blow up the foundation of the program that he had inherited from Bronco Mendenhall, who had just taken Virginia to the Orange Bowl two years before stepping down, precipitated back-to-back three-win seasons in 2022 and 2023.
His 2024 team started 4-1, had a lead inside of two minutes to go at home against Louisville in Week 6, lost that one, and went on to go 1-6 down the stretch to finish a disappointing 5-7.
Elliott entered the 2024-2025 offseason knowing that the fall 2025 season could very well be make-or-break for his tenure, with his buyout winnowing down for the final two years of the six-year deal that he signed in 2021.
The infusion of cash to boost the NIL efforts is obviously welcome, but it also raises the stakes for Elliott and his staff going in the 2025 cycle – the spring practice and portal season, summer conditioning and training camp, and then the actual games in the fall.
I don’t want to say Elliott is on the hot seat, because I want to take the positive view, from looking at the roster that he has, the growth that we saw in 2024, that he’s going to get it turned around this season.
But it’s clear: he needs to win now.
At least he has what he has at his disposal.
“I think the vision of the program is really starting to come to life,” Elliott said on Wednesday. “I shared that with the staff. When we look at where we were three years ago and where we are today, I think it’s just confirmation of the hard work, but then also the belief and the vision of what’s ahead.”
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Chris Graham
