It sure would be nice if Virginia could get center Brady Wilson back in time for Friday night’s game with #8 Florida State, but as of Tuesday, Wilson is “day to day,” according to head coach Tony Elliott.
Wilson went down in the third quarter of the 48-20 win over Stanford on Saturday night with a calf strain. Drake Metcalf logged 27 snaps at center, sliding over from right guard.
“If Brady’s not ready to go, then, you know, Drake will be an option for us at center,” said Elliott, who then went into what moving Metcalf from right guard does to the rest of the rotation on the O line.
Kevin Wigenton and Tyshawn Wyatt “got to be ready to go at guard,” Elliott said.
Wigenton, a transfer from Illinois who played two years at Michigan State, logged 21 snaps at right guard in the Stanford game, and has played on 74 snaps on the season, with a 62.3 Pro Football Focus grade, and one QB pressure allowed on 38 pass dropbacks.
Wyatt, a JMU grad transfer, logged eight snaps at right guard in the Stanford game, and has played on 26 snaps on the O line total in three games in 2025 for Virginia.
Wilson, a grad transfer from UAB, has a unit-best 78.7 PFF grade on 231 snaps in 2025, allowing four pressures on 120 dropbacks.
Metcalf has a 66.9 grade through the first four games of 2025. He has been on the field for a unit-high 261 snaps, and has allowed two QB pressures on 134 pass dropbacks.
Left tackle McKale Boley is your reigning and defending ACC O Lineman of the Week, after earning a career-best 91.1 PFF grade for his work in the Stanford game, in which he had a clean sheet on his 77 snaps.
Elliott said tackles Ethan Sipe and Wallace Unamba are getting closer to being back in the lineup, “so we hope in the next couple of weeks that we’ll get several of our offensive linemen back. But right now, it’s next-man-up mentality.”
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Elliott had expected punter/kickoff specialist Daniel Sparks (hip flexor) back for the Stanford game, but ended up holding him out.
Junior Elijah Slibeck handled both the punting and kickoff jobs in the Stanford game, and was solid – with punts of 48 and 58 yards, and an average hangtime of 4.52 seconds, and recording seven touchbacks on his nine kickoffs, with an average starting field position of 23.9.
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Safety Antonio Clary got back on the field for the first time in nearly a year on Saturday night, in limited action – six snaps on one series.
Clary, when healthy, is a dude – he had a 79.6 PFF grade on 295 defensive snaps last year, and a 69.2 grade on his career-high 543 snaps in 2023.
“I think we said last week he was probably a max of about 15 to 20 reps, and with another week of practice, that will go up,” Elliott said. “The biggest thing was just to kind of get him introduced to the game to see how the knee was going to be without the brace, how he was going to handle it. And again, he was mad at me all the way up until the game because I had him in a brace. But yesterday, I said alright, let’s really get after it, took the brace off, let him go full speed and practice. And I think he looked pretty good, so I think you’re going to see that snap count increase.”
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Chris Graham
