I was hoping to get a feel for this UVA Football team from tonight’s season opener with Coastal Carolina.
Considering the way the 48-7 drubbing the new-look ‘Hoos handed to the Chanticleers played out, not sure we got that.
That group over there, under third-year head coach Tim Beck, who took the job at Coastal after Jamey Chadwell left for Liberty, and hasn’t been able to build on what Chadwell left him, looks to be in shambles.
Chadwell had put up 11-win seasons in 2020 and 2021 and won nine games in 2022; Beck, whose pedigree as an assistant included stops at Nebraska, Ohio State, Texas and NC State, has overseen a steady regression, with his 2023 team going 8-5, the 2024 team, which lost to Virginia 43-24 in an early-season game, finished 6-7, and now, he’s 0-1 in 2025, with a 41-point loss to a team picked to finish near the bottom of the ACC.
Now, that team – Virginia – is not going to finish near the bottom of the ACC; that much is obvious after what we saw tonight, even if Coastal Carolina isn’t the program that we signed up for when the contracts were finalized for this series a few years back.
We’ve been reporting since the spring that fourth-year coach Tony Elliott was given a $30 million NIL budget in the offseason, and we saw the fruits of that tonight.
The starting QB, Chandler Morris, who chose UVA over Ole Miss and Oklahoma State, was 19-of-27 through the air for 264 yards and two TDs, and added 50 yards on the ground.
The hold your breath news with Morris: if you were watching, you know that he had to leave early after taking a helmet-to-helmet hit on a third-quarter scramble, and the word from the locker room postgame is, left shoulder injury, specifically, AC joint, so, fingers crossed there.
Cam Ross, late of JMU, had 123 yards and a TD through the air and a 100-yard kickoff-return TD.
J’Mari Taylor, a Walter Payton Award finalist at North Carolina Central last year, had two rushing TDs.
Jahmal Edrine, a transfer from Purdue, had a TD catch.
The depth is most noticeable on the defensive side of the ball, as is the size, speed and sheer talent there.
Beck installed an Air Raid offense in the offseason to try to get more productivity out of a unit that ranked 81st nationally a year ago.
His new QB, MJ Morris, a former starter at NC State, finished with what would appear to be decent numbers – 20-of-36 passing, 163 yards – but most of that was against the guys not on the two-deep that UVA D coordinator John Rudzinski got some snaps in the third and fourth quarters, with the game out of reach.
It was 28-0 at the half and 35-0 three minutes and change into the third quarter.
There was lots of subbing on the UVA side, on both sides of the ball, which is good going forward.
With Chandler Morris on the sidelines after the big hit in the third quarter, the backup, Daniel Kaelin, a redshirt freshman, looked shaky, as you would expect a guy taking his first college snaps – 3-of-9, 26 yards, all on pretty basic stuff, and notably, he wasn’t in there with the ones – but, hey, at least he got game snaps, in case he needs to take the ball next week at NC State.
Hold your breath there.
Hey, Kaelin was a four-star recruit out of high school, so, he’s expected to be a guy who can lead a Power 4 team eventually.
The weapons that he has around him should help there.
You know, that $30 million roster.
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Chris Graham
