Tony Elliott came in telling everybody that he wanted to upgrade the ground game at Virginia. The renewed emphasis on the ground that got talked up in the spring, through training camp and into the season, unfortunately, and emphatically, didn’t work.
Virginia averaged 123.1 rushing yards per game in 2022, down a literal tick from the 123.2 yards per game the pass-heavy offense put up in 2021.
And this was with the 2022 offense averaging 32.9 rushing attempts per game, up from the 28.3 attempts per game the offense averaged with Robert Anae calling the plays in 2021.
Blame it on the loss of the 2021 offensive line, sure, but the guys who left only did so when it became clear that Elliott wasn’t going to retain either Anae or Jason Beck, Anae’s QB coach, both of whom bolted for Syracuse, so that one was self-inflicted.
And even if you still want to blame it on what happened with the O line, the line is not going to be a point of strength heading into 2023. Two O line starters from 2022’s underwhelming group are in the transfer portal, and two others have decided not to use their final year of eligibility, meaning the line is going to be a rebuild from the ground up yet again.
Which is a shame, because the running backs room has as much talent as we’ve seen at Virginia in a long time.
Battle for the #1 TB spot
Virginia returns 5’8”, 180-pound super senior Perris Jones (365 yards, 4.5 yards per carry) and 5’9”, 186-pound rising sophomore Xavier Brown (210 yards, 4.2 yards per carry), and there’s hope that Mike Hollins (215 yards, 4.1 yards per carry), a 5’9”, 208-pound grad student, will be able to return as he works to recover from life-threatening injuries that he suffered in the Nov. 13 shooting that took the lives of teammates Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr. and D’Sean Perry.
Cody Brown, a 5’10”, 227-pound four-star prep recruit who transferred in from Miami last spring, should also get a look, along with Amaad Foston, a 6’0”, 218-pound sophomore, who has yet to get a touch at the college level.
Elliott added two more names through the 2023 recruiting class – Donte Hawthorne, a 6’0”, 215-pounder from Spotsylvania, and Noah Vaughn, a 5’8”, 185-pound back from Maryville, Tenn.
The big addition came from the transfer portal in the form of 5’10”, 205-pound junior Kobe Pace, who rushed for 641 yards and averaged 6.2 yards per carry for Clemson in 2021, but dropped to third on the depth chart at tailback in 2022 behind Will Shipley and Phil Mafah, and only saw action in eight games, getting 30 carries and catching six passes.
To get a sense of what he can do as a featured back, Pace was named ACC Player of the Week after gaining 191 yards on 24 carries in Clemson’s 48-27 win over Wake Forest in 2021, and he had 125 yards on 18 carries in a 19-13 win over Boston College earlier in the 2021 season.
The former three-star recruit will have two years of eligibility remaining.
Assessing the battle
Elliott, who coached Pace at Clemson, talked up his power – “he was 365-pound bench guy, 500 squat. I mean, he was like a weight room warrior,” Elliott said.
The biggest thing that Elliott sees with the addition of Pace, he said, “is the talent to really, really push the guys in the room.”
“When you look at the rest of the room, obviously Mike was trending in the right direction, we’ll see where he is when he comes back,” Elliott said. “Perris is a good change-of-pace guy that that worked to become a starter. Cody Brown is a guy that we brought in last year. I’m excited about him because he’s another big another big body, downhill kind of guy, but he didn’t have the offseason, going through the transfer process, that he needed, so I’m excited about him.
“We’ll see where Foston is, when he gets cleared. And then you got Xavier, who is another change-of-pace guy. And then you got Noah (Vaughn), obviously Noah is coming off of a leg injury, broke his leg there late in the season. And then Donte is another big guy. So, you’ve got a combination of big guys and then a couple of change-of-pace guys to really, to really kind of complement each other.
“I think what Kobe brings us is he started six games, you know, he was a starter in six games, he averaged, I think, in his career or the season where he played the most, like, six yards of carry. So, he’s done it at the at the highest level in one of the biggest programs, one of the most competitive situations,” Elliott said. “I think he brings a competitive toughness that we’re looking for, the talent, and then also, I think y’all will love Kobe, man. He’s a very, very high character young man, about the right things.”
Share
Chris Graham
