UVA Football: We have the 2025 schedule; what’s the magic number for Tony Elliott?

UVA Football opens what appears will be a make-or-break season for fourth-year coach Tony Elliott with Coastal Carolina coming to Charlottesville on Saturday, Aug. 30.

The ACC announced everybody’s schedules Monday night on a show on the ACC Network that I’m sure got a couple dozen viewers.

Seriously, ACCN was showing repeats of midweek men’s basketball games on Saturday afternoon; they know nobody’s watching.

Elliott has done a bang-up job on the transfer portal – OK, let’s be real here, the money people did well in terms of giving him millions to spend on retaining and attracting talent.

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ICYMI

• UVA Football: ‘Hoos land grad transfer from national champ Ohio State to D line
• UVA Football: ‘Hoos land JMU grad senior wide receiver Cam Ross from the portal
• UVA Football: Elliott adds four-star Monroe Mills, might be done with O line

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Rivals has the transfer class ranked 20th, 247Sports 24th, On3 has UVA 35th.

One analyst suggested that Elliott picked up as many as 15 starters from the portal this offseason, and then you factor in the guys that the staff was able to retain – edge linebacker Kam Robinson being the key guy there.

This is why I’m thinking of the coming season as a make-or-break one for Elliott, who is 11-23 through three years, with last year’s 5-7 the best of the three.

What I’m hearing from behind the scenes is that this year’s roster has an NIL payroll in the $15 million range.

The people who write the checks to fund that aren’t giving up that kind of money to go 6-6 or 7-5 and get blown out after Thanksgiving by Virginia Tech, which, incidentally, doesn’t have anywhere near that amount of money for its NIL budget.

Quick glance at the schedule

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Four of the first five games are at home, with Coastal Carolina and William & Mary (Sept. 13) sandwiched around a nonconference game at NC State (you read that right), then ACC games with Stanford (Sept. 20) and Florida State (Friday, Sept. 26).

It would be wise to start 4-1, with the way the rest of the schedule plays out.

There’s games at Louisville and Duke (both were 9-4 last season) and a home game with Washington State (8-5 in 2024), with road trips to Cal and North Carolina (both 6-7 last year), and November home games with Wake Forest (4-8 in 2024) and Virginia Tech (6-7 in 2024).

One thing to be thankful for: the open date before the Tech game.

The stakes

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I’m thinking eight is the magic number for Elliott to stay off the hot seat.

The coming season is Year 4 of a six-year deal, so the dead money isn’t as much a factor going forward.

Now, I say this while thinking, Elliott has the makings of a roster that can be successful in the ACC.

Folks inside the program feel really good about what they have to work with, but as one assistant coach told us this morning, they still have to coach them up.

2025 UVA Football Schedule

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Video: Early look at the 2025 UVA Football schedule

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